eGods: Faith versus Fantasy in Computer Gaming

by William Sims Bainbridge

What is the relationship between religion and multi-player online roleplaying games? Are such games simply a secular distraction from traditional religious practices, or do they in fact offer a different route to the sacred?

In eGods , a leading scholar in the study of virtual gameworlds takes an in-depth look at the fantasy religions of 41 games and arrives at some surprising conclusions. William Sims Bainbridge investigates all aspects of the gameworlds' religious dimensions: the focus on sacred spaces; the prevalence of magic; the fostering of a tribal morality by both religion and rules programmed into the game; the rise of cults and belief systems within the gameworlds (and how this relates to cults in the real world); the predominance of polytheism; and, of course, how gameworld religions depict death. As avatars are multiple and immortal, death is merely a minor setback in most games. Nevertheless, much of the action in some gameworlds centers on the issue of mortality and the problematic nature of resurrection. Examining EverQuest II, Lord of the Rings Online, Rift, World of Warcraft, Star Wars: The Old Republic, and many others, Bainbridge contends that gameworlds offer a new perspective on the
human quest, one that combines the arts, simulates many aspects of real life, and provides meaningful narratives about achieving goals by overcoming obstacles. Indeed, Bainbridge suggests that such games take us back to those ancient nights around the fire, when shadows flickered and it was easy to imagine the monsters conjured by the storyteller lurking in the forest.

Arguing that gameworlds reintroduce a curvilinear model of early religion, where today as in ancient times faith is inseparable from fantasy, eGods shows how the newest secular technology returns us to the very origins of religion so that we might "arrive where we started and know the place for the first time."

Genres: Religion

338 pages, Paperback

First published February 25, 2013

Reviews

[Aaron · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really, really wanted to like this book, but I couldn't even make it all the way through. The basic argument of the book -- that online gaming is, for many players, fulfilling a similar function to participants in religious traditions, is reasonable enough. Unfortunately, its execution is nearly unreadable. For one thing, the author (whose blurb calls him "a noted sociologist of religion") throws around phrases like "religion evolved because" and "false superstition" in a manner unlike any scholar of religion I've ever encountered, or at least any scholar of religion since, say, the 1930s. I also have to wonder where OUP's editor was in this process -- each chapter seems to feature pages-long digressions that are tied to the supposed argument of the chapter by only the thinnest of threads. It is telling, I think, that unlike many academic works in the field, this one features no acknowledgments section thanking colleagues and reviewers who read drafts and contributed to workshopping the book. So disappointing.

[Liquidlasagna · Rating 1 out of 5]

This deserves Absolute Zero Stars

negative score

He takes his obsessive sociology of religion weirdnesses and dumps it on video games, so he can milk a new fad. It's like he said there's watermelon in the fridge, and ranch dressing and he mixed the two together.

Unfortunately, ranch dressing is liked on watermelon.

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this book feels like Chris Christie just ate ten boxes of Ex-Lax for a $500 bet

And the proof of the pudding is this review

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eGods succeeds in showing the many ways in which religious myths, values, and practices have increasingly colored the cosmological and ethical landscapes of the most popular MMORPGs (massively multiplayer online role-playing games).
The Journal of Religion

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Amazonia

More about Gameworlds than about Religion
4/10

This book tells us more about the content and protocols found in gameworlds than it does about religion, much less about faith.

Procedurally, the author uses nine conventional and less than nuanced categories sociologist use in studying religion as guides or filters for pursuing his research into the relationship between gameworlds and religion.

Accordingly, each chapter begins with a brief introduction to a 'religious' category – deities, souls, priests, shrines, magic, morality, cults, death, and quests – and then proceeds to identify, compare and contrast the occurrence of those same elements within the gameworlds he examines.

Thus, for example, after noting that Western religions typically include the notion of god, he proceeds to identify the pantheon of fourteen deities in EvenQuest II, the six deities in Sacred 2: Fallen Angle, and the fourteen deities in Gods and Heroes: Rome Rising.

The book includes eighteen tables that summarize many of his results.

For example, there is a table that lists the six schools of magic found in Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, another the eighteen Voodoo dolls found in Pirates of the Caribbean Online.

If nothing else, this book reflects an immense amount of work, including by the author’s reckoning thousands of hours engaged with playing more than forty videogames.

[An appendix includes a useful annotated bibliography of the gameworlds on which his research is based.]

In general, the author discovers that religion in gameworlds in more secular and less dependent on the supernatural than the religion found in the 'real world' and thus reflects a form of religious compensation that is more appropriate for a secular age.

[gag me with a spoon]

eGods provokes many comments and questions but I will limit my response to two:

a. After reading the book, I am not sure I can answer the question: So what?

What’s the point or take-away of the author’s research?

Discovering religious elements in gameworlds is not so very different than finding religious elements, or better religious dimensions, in sports for example.

Perhaps more telling, what is the utility of exhaustively listing all 34 deities found in three computer games, or for that matter cataloging eighteen voodoo dolls?

Once he’s made the point that there is a pantheon or polytheism of gods in gameworlds, does listing 34 instances add significantly to offering four or five examples?

The author provides an immense amount of data but fails to provide a clear framework or context for interpreting that data.

Tellingly, the book as a whole does not contain a conclusion; indeed the author states in the opening chapter that his research methodology does not include testing a hypothesis. Without either a hypothesis or thesis statement, what the data “proves” is unclear?

b. On a number of occasions, the author self-confidently reflects nothing less than disdain for conventional religion.

Thus he states that shamans are either crazy or frauds, that religion is often a 'confidence game', that priests get to 'parade around in splendid clothing during their narcissistic public rituals', and that superstition 'falsely believes that there is a unique, unitary self within every human being, and that the self is somehow immortal'.

Given this disdain – a disdain that from my perspective is based on literalism and a naive understanding of how language is used in religious contexts – I wonder why the author has spent so much time and effort in establishing a link between discredited and illegitimate beliefs and gameworlds.

hy not just study gameworlds from a different and presumably less fanciful perspective?
Why not just abandon religion entirely and move forward toward something else?

Several worthwhile titles that explore the relationship between religion and media, including gameworlds, are:

Godwired: Religion, Ritual, and Virtual Reality - Rachael Wagner
Media, Religion and Culture: An Introduction - Jeffrey Mahan
A Theology for a Mediated God: How Media Shapes Our Notions About Divinity - Dennis Ford

Dennis Ford

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honestly the guy just loves cataloging eighteen voodoo dolls in a game, and wrote a book on playing games, pontificating in Bizarro-World

FAITH VS FANTASY

rock'em
sock'em
robots

THE THEOLOGY OF METAL MEN BEATING THE SHIT OUT OF EACH OTHER

[Dmitry Ryabchuk · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting exploration into the religious side of online games. We never really look in detail at the religious systems that we encounter in games, it is more of a tick in the list rather than an experience. Obviously different games handle it in various ways, some more memorable than the others, but the author isn't content with just a surface examination of the religious landscape, instead he goes on for a detailed exploration. Interactions between Gods, divine interventions, rituals and customs are analyzed from both a functional perspective and from a believer point of view. As a result the reader is getting an in-depth analysis of the religious systems from such games as EverQuest II, Lord of the Rings Online, Rift, World of Warcraft, and Star Wars: The Old Republic without the need to actually play them for hundreds of hours.

As interesting as it sounds it still is an academia-oriented book, so the journey may be slower, but no less rewarding in my opinion. Additionally the analysis the author provides may be useful for world-building enthusiasts.