Finding religion in video games?

What is it about?

In this article we demonstrate how players of video games - using World of Warcraft as a case study - engage with religion in the game world. Players tend to do this in three ways: by performing religious stories in their gaming, by thinking and reflecting on religions they encounter in the game, and by creating personal religions that give meaning beyond the game world. We try to show that popular media such as video games provide people with virtual laboratories where they can freely experiment with religion and spirituality. Furthermore, we argue that this should be taken seriously as players attribute much value to these meaning-making processes - as much as with most known religions such as Christianity, Islam and Hinduism.

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Why is it important?

In the sociology of religion, personal meaning-making processes based on popular media such as movies, books or video games, are often not taken very seriously. With the increasing secularization of Western societies, such meaning-making processes actually become all the more salient. Furthermore, instead of merely assessing that fiction-based religion exist, we try to demonstrate how and why people attribute such meaning to fictitious media texts.

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