1.6. Outline of thesis

For these reasons, to research the cultural production, representation and consumption of religion together is the only way to find out comprehensively what religious functions and meanings are offered up in videogames. That is why this dissertation employs a media studies approach to religion in videogames. That means that as much attention is given to how games represent religion (just as one might read a text); as to who produces, why and in which conditions; and who consumes it, why and in which ways it is meaningful to them. As such, I ask:

• Which choices lead game-makers to use religion in their videogames? • In what ways and which contexts is religion represented in videogames? • How do players make sense of, and relate to these representations?

Based on my answers to these questions, I will return to the question of ‘what does religion have to do with videogames anyway?’ Or more specifically, in the conclusion I will ask:

• How should we theorize the appearance of religion in the biggest cultural industry of the (supposedly) secularized West, and what kind of religious change does this entail?

1.6. Outline of thesis

As a consequence, the thesis is divided into three empirical sections: encoding (videogame production); content (videogame representation); and decoding (videogame consumption). After this introduction and the methodology, six empirical chapters provide answers to the sub-questions listed above.

Chapters 3 and 4 on ‘encoding’ deal with the production of religion in videogames. Chapter 3 is based on field work and 22 interviews at the main office of Ubisoft in Montréal (the biggest game studio in the world) in order to find out how religion is used in AAA videogames. By looking at one corporate case study, this chapter outlines the choices by which revolving teams of around 1,000 employees end up producing a specific representation of religion in one game series: Assassin’s Creed. Who decides to put religion into popular best-selling videogames? How does an amorphous team of

creative directors, historians, writers, designers and others decide on what hundreds of programmers, narrative designers and others end up making a small part of? And why do Assassin’s Creed games come to incorporate religion in the way they do? Especially when it has been prefaced since 2007 by the disclaimer that “[t]his work of fiction was designed, developed and produced by a multicultural team of various religious faiths and beliefs.”

Chapter 4 contrasts this study of AAA design with a study of 35 individual independent (‘indie’) designers from different religious backgrounds, each of whom self-reportedly deals with religion in their games. Indie games (as both a genre and a production context) are presented as original, diverse, and often autobiographical: how does that translate to religious representation? Do indie developers represent their own religious positions, how do or do they not do so, and why (not)? By looking at the popular indie phenomenon, this chapter both reduces its scope to singular game designers, while also broadening its scope outside of the hegemonic AAA videogame industry and into designers hubs throughout the Western world, including the Netherlands, Belgium, North-America and Australia.

In Part II on ‘content,’ chapters 5 and 6 present two content analyses. By analysing two types of games in which religion plays a central role, I look at the signs offered by these encyclopaedic, participatory ‘texts’ themselves, separate from both the intentions of developers and the interpretations of players. Thus, chapter 5 analyzes fantasy videogames as a typical site of representing religion. It takes the Final Fantasy series as a primary case study, and as typical for what I call ‘Eclectic Religion:’ the combination of mythologies and active religious traditions along with more recent fictional traditions.

What are the consequences of placing these forms of cultural heritage alongside each other, as equally true and interchangeable? This chapter looks at the ‘fantasy’ genre as a pre-text of placing religion outside of history, despite there being contemporary religious practices of people doing exactly that: combining religious traditions into ‘multiple religious belongings.’

Chapter 6 looks into the future instead, through an analysis of post-apocalyptic science fiction. How do games such as the Fallout series and Horizon: Zero Dawn imagine human life, societies and religion after the erasure of contemporary society’s

existing structures? By choosing two games indicative of the genre, chapter 6 explores the concept of the apocalypse – a distinctly religious concept – to analyse how games form their own modern eschatologies. In what ways does the context of collapsed societies and lost institutions nonetheless lead to representing worship and divinity? Specifically, this chapter analyses the way in which those very technologies that caused the apocalypse (the atom bomb, artificial intelligence), end up being revered as divine in these fictional worlds.

In Part III on ‘decoding,’ chapters 7 and 8 deal with the way in which players ‘decode,’ or make sense of the games they play. Chapter 7 analyses player communities at large by looking into the five most popular gaming forums as a way into gaming subculture. How do these ‘gamers’ speak about religion, and how do they deal with both their divergent religious backgrounds as well as their different interpretations of religion’s role in the games they play? These debates prove particularly interesting in the context of theories suggesting there is a retreat of religion from the public sphere. Instead, the chapter proposes four ideal-typical positions from which players end up debating religion, faith and god in a ‘Pop Theology,’ prompted by the games they play.

Chapter 8, finally, further delves into the individual relationships of players with games and religion. Based on interviews with agnostics, atheists, Hindus, Christians, Muslims and others, this chapter asks how players on a personal level use games to explore the identities and worlds of those who believe differently. By ‘playing the Other,’ they may gain access to other faiths and worldviews, but what does that do to their own beliefs and belongings? And how does that relate to existing conceptions of religion and absolute meaning?

Throughout these six empirical chapters, a broad range of processes is laid out through which religion is produced, appears in, and is understood in videogames. In the conclusion, I will relate the alienated disenchantment of religious production back to the engaged re-enchantment performed by players and player communities in their varied use of the commodified signs of religion offered up by the games themselves. Finally, I will consider what implications this has for religious change, in order to propose my own theory on the role of developers, games and consumers in playing ‘at’ religion through 21st century videogames.