Playing the Other: Role-Playing and (non-)Religious Identity in Video Games

Millions of people play video games every day, which makes the game industry among the biggest contemporary cultural industries (ESA, 2014). Notwithstanding different genres, it has previously been assessed that games’ virtual worlds are suffused with religious and spiritual narratives, cosmologies, narratives, symbols and rituals (Krzywinska, 2006; Aupers, 2007; Campbell et al., 2014). Given the fact that most of such studies are based on textual content analysis (e.g., Šisler 2008), analyzing in-game representations of religion; the question remains if, how and why players relate to religious content while playing such games. To address this question we took on the approach developed in cultural (media) studies, i.e. focusing on the process of “encoding/decoding” and consumer practices of “textual poaching” (cf. Hall, 1980; Jenkins, 2015). We adopt this perspective in studying religious meaning-making in games for two reasons. First of all: dominant representation-based studies in the field hold on to an approach that is more suitable with static or non-interactive (mass)media. Looking at representations in games is particularly problematic because it disregards the medium-specificity of digital game-play: players are not simply passive consumers but actively “reconfigure” games (Raessens, 2005) through the act of role-playing (partly) as their avatar (e.g., Rehak, 2003; Klevjer, 2007). Secondly, representation-based research neglects the specificity, divergence of and differences between individual players. Players’ accounts of meaning-making are variable, often resulting in mutually exclusive understandings of the same video game. Specifically in the case of religion, we hold, players from different religious backgrounds understand in-game religious meanings in vastly different ways (e.g., Aupers & Schaap, 2016). The research question is then: in what ways do players with different (non)religious backgrounds identify with and come to reflect on religious identities through the characters and worlds of video games? In order to answer this question we resorted to qualitative semi-structured interviews (N=20). A general call was put out on different video game forums to arrive at a set of theoretically selected Christian, Muslim, Hindu and religiously non-identifying (atheist, agnostic, etc.) video game players. By interviewing them regarding their (non-)religious background, the religious content and characters of the games they played; and the connections they experienced between the two, we were able to formulate a number of conclusions. Our research indicates that, rather than alienating themselves from religious ‘others,’ players frequently have experience role-playing as the religious other. This activity of role-playing the Other, so we demonstrate in our analysis, has three implications. Firstly, they come to familiarize themselves with religious worldviews and practices that they could not normally access, such as the mosque-filled streets and Islamic calls to prayer of Assassin’s Creed. Secondly, they came to distance themselves from their own (non)religious worldviews as a particular construction, rather than a natural and taken-for-granted reality. This process we conceptualize as “de-familiarization” (cf. Shklovsky, 1991). Thirdly, players suggested that avatars allowed them to experience and believe, temporarily, what they could otherwise not experience: religious players frequently reflected on the assumed atheism of video game characters, and in some cases, underwent (small) conversions due to games they played. Meanwhile, religious ‘nones’ reported on the queerness of a world with the certainties of rituals and gods, prompting one of them to sum up: “What if I’m wrong? 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