Shaman, paragon, God-mode: modern video games are heavily coded with religious undertones. From the Shinto-inspired Japanese video game Okami to the internationally popular The Legend of Zelda and Halo, many video games rely on religious themes and symbols to drive the narrative and frame the storyline. Playing with Religion in Digital Games explores the increasingly complex relationship between gaming and global religious practices. For example, how does religion help organize the communities in MMORPGs such as World of Warcraft? What role has censorship played in localizing games like Actraiser in the western world? How do evangelical Christians react to violence, gore, and sexuality in some of the most popular games such as Mass Effect or Grand Theft Auto? With contributions by scholars and gamers from all over the world, this collection offers a unique perspective to the intersections of religion and the virtual world.

Introduction: What Playing with Religion Offers Digital Game Studies / Heidi A. Campbell and Gregory Price GrievePart 1: Explorations in Religiously Themed Games1. Dreidels to Dante's Inferno: Toward a Typology of Religious Games / Jason Anthony2. Locating the Pixelated Jew: A Multimodal Method for Exploring Judaism in The Shivah / Isamar Carrillo Masso and Nathan Abrams3. The Global Mediatization of Hinduism through Digital Games: Representation versus Simulation in Hanuman: Boy Warrior / Xenia Zeiler4. Silent Hill and Fatal Frame: Finding Transcendent Horror in and beyond the Haunted Magic Circle / Brenda S. Gardenour WalterPart 2: Religion in Mainstream Games5. From KumaWar to Quraish: Representation of Islam in Arab and American Video Games / Vit sisler6. Citing the Medieval: Using Religion as World-Building Infrastructure in Fantasy MMORPGs / Rabia Gregory7. Hardcore Christian Gamers: How Religion Shapes Evangelical Play / Shanny Luft8. Filtering Cultural Feedback: Religion, Censorship and Localization in Actraiser and Other Mainstream Video Games / Peter LikarishPart 3: Gaming as Implicit Religion9. The Importance of Playing in Earnest / Rachel Wagner10. "God Modes" and "God Moods": What Does a Digital Game Need to Be Spiritually Effective? / Oliver Steffen11. Bridging Multiple Realities: Religion, Play and Alfred Schutz's Theory of the Life-World / Michael Waltemathe12. They Kill Mystery: The Mechanistic Bias of Video Game Representations of Religion and Spirituality / Kevin SchutsGameographyContributorsIndex