2023 | 1

Recent Submissions

Now showing 1 - 13 of 13
  • Article
    Reconfiguring Daoist Cultivation in a Video Game. A Case Study of AMAZING CULTIVATION SIMULATOR
    Yuan, Ye (2023) , S. 105-132
    With AMAZING CULTIVATION SIMULATOR (GSQ Studio, CN 2019) as a case study, this article analyses how this video game reconfigures the practice of self-cultivation, which has deep roots in religious Daoism, and how it was inspired by online novels in a contemporary context. The game draws on Daoist worldviews, the five elements, and cultivation methods which can be found in the Daoist scriptures. However, the religious elements presented in the game are more aligned to reformed 20th century Daoism, while the game developers’ interpretation of cultivation follows secular and nationalistic discourses from the 20th century onwards. Those facts collectively mark the distance between the game and pre-20th century cultivation tradition, which is underpinned by the abundant Daoist texts. In addition, cultivating transcendent novels, mainly distributed online, provide readers with some cultivation narrations which are relevant but alternative to the Daoist cultivation tradition. The game borrowed features from such online novels, so that the content of the game is in fact a contemporary reconfiguration of heterogeneous sources. The game’s popularity and commercial success not only suggest that players accept such reconfiguration of cultivation, but also concede that the game somewhat satisfies the contemporary comprehension of cultivation tradition. Through the media of video games, Daoist cultivation tradition is stimulated but reconstructed in the contemporary context.
  • Article
    “Giving Back”. An Interview with Video Game Designer Ken Wong, by Frank Bosman and Alexander D. Ornella
    Bosman, Frank; Ornella, Alexander Darius (2023) , S. 13-24
    In this interview conducted by issue editors Frank Bosman and Alexander D. Ornella in August 2022, Ken Wong discusses the relationship between video game design, video game aesthetics, religious imagery, and cultural storytelling. He discusses how (secularized) religious tropes, ideas, and images can become part of the game design and the story of the game, sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously. He discusses how the ideas of “giving back”, of atonement, and forgiveness can become elements of successful and very well received video games.
  • Article
    Paradise Lost – and Found Again. METRO 2033, the Ghosts of the Past, Moral Choices, and Game Rewards
    Krottmaier, Sina; Zuanni, Chiara (2023) , S. 133-153
    This article focuses on memories of the past and moral values in the video game METRO 2033: REDUX (4A Games / Deep Silver, UA/AT 2014). The game, situated in a postapocalyptic Moscow and based on a book by the Russian author Dmitry Glukhovsky, is focused on the adventures of Artyom, with whom the player identifies, in the metro system. On their journeys, players face different situations and decisions, to which they can choose how to react. Furthermore, in this dystopian world the player not only travels through different tunnels, but also encounters memories of a lost past and different belief systems. Unbeknownst to the gamer, almost every segment of this journey holds an invisible moral evaluation, which will grant the player “moral points” if passed. The balance of moral points then defines the possible endings of the game. Drawing on approaches in the study of historical narratives in video games, this article analyses the romanticisation and criticism of the past shown in the game as well as the various categories and situations in which moral points are awarded, exploring how they are related to moral values and how they affect the gaming experience. In addition, characters with different belief systems are present both in the book and, to a limited extent, in the game, and this article will reflect on the representations and role of beliefs throughout the Metro series.
  • Article
    The Devil as Doppelganger: Instinctual Faith and the Exhausted Rant of Evil in LAST DAYS IN THE DESERT (US 2015)
    Yergensen, Brent (2023) , S. 157-171
    LAST DAYS IN THE DESERT (Rodrigo García, US 2015) portrays the devil as Jesus’s doppelganger, demonstrating the rivalry between good and evil as the two compete over the efficacy of Jesus’s faith. With Jesus assessing himself as he responds to the devil, the film offers a self-reflexive evaluation of faith as it is challenged by skepticism. By analyzing the film using the idea of an evolutionary faith instinct, the article presents Jesus’s trust in God as empowerment that allows him to endure elements of nature and find signs of divinity. The devil’s eventual exhausted impatience and his loss of his wager with Jesus bolster the applicability of a faith instinct. Ultimately, the film is an opportunity for this rendition of Jesus to be articulated in terms of evolutionary discourse.
  • Review
  • Review
    Song Review. Little Simz, "Introvert"
    Griese, Hannah (2023) , S. 181-188
  • Review
  • Review
  • Article
    Video Game Romanticism: On Retro Gaming, Remakes, Reboots, Game Nostalgia, and Bad Games
    Bosman, Frank (2023) , S. 25-44
    In recent years, a relatively new phenomenon in the video game industry has emerged: the re-appreciation of games from previous generations by individual gamers in combination with the production of new games aesthetically and/or ludologically clearly based on these older games. The phenomenon has been described as ‘retro gaming’, ‘game nostalgia’ or ‘vintage play’ and has been associated with parallel phenomena like reboots, remakes, and ‘bad games’ (or Kusoge). As ‘primer’ of this special issue of the Journal of Religion, Film, and Media on ‘Paradise Lost’, the author identifies and describes all these interrelated by distinguishable notions as forms of ‘video game romanticism’: the appropriate a romanticized version of our collective past to construct an appealing digital, interactive, narrative complex.
  • Article
    The Virtual Rebirth of Paganism
    Bainbridge, William Sims (2023) , S. 45-68
    A quarter millennium ago, monarchies began to vanish from the Earth, and some utopian computer games implicitly explore how that might also happen in Heaven, through the resurrection of many competing gods. This essay begins by examining how two very popular massively multiplayer online games, DARK AGE OF CAMELOT and AGE OF CONAN, manage complex social and cultural structures. Both combine real history with legends, the first including the Norse pantheon of gods and the second emphasizing the Egyptian serpent deity, Set. They offer different degrees of fantasy and of conflict between three primary factions of players, each represented as a culture or coalition of cultures. With that background, a series of diverse examples will suggest a variety of ways in which computer games and virtual worlds are exploring the modern meanings of ancient religions that were replaced by monotheism. The concluding section examines in closer detail the connections between religion and aspects of everyday life of virtual ancient Egyptians, in A TALE IN THE DESERT. Post-modern gaming culture endorses tribalism, enjoys imagining the collapse of civilization, and seeks escape from traditional faith, possibly even from any coherent philosophy of ethics. However, this is a form of idealism rather than criminality, imagining the rebirth of creative legends and total religious freedom, often through the metaphor of repaganization.
  • Article
    SKOOL DAZE. A Plea for Dissentience
    Uskoković, Vuk (2023) , S. 69-104
    The historic sandbox computer game SKOOL DAZE, released by Microsphere for ZX Spectrum in 1984, is analyzed in the context of its importance for the game development industry, with conceptual parallels extended into the domains of natural science and arts. The ability to accomplish the game only by displaying rebelliousness in an inherently cruel academic system is connected with a similar principle applying to innovation in science and art. Both science and art are exercises in imagination that require mischievous playfulness, a point that is intrinsic to SKOOL DAZE. The article also makes the case for this game as a potential source of inspiration for the creation of conceptual art or science when viewed in a historical context. A sense of nostalgia about the early days of computer games pervades the paper, which ends on a confessional but high-spirited note.
  • Article
    Editorial. Paradise Lost: Romanticizing as Playing the Imagined Past
    Bosman, Frank; Ornella, Alexander Darius (2023) , S. 7-11
  • Journal Issue
    Paradise Lost: Presentation of Nostalgic Longing in Digital Games
    (2023)
    Since Milton’s poem, the notion of “Paradise Lost” (1667) has found its way into popular culture in general and digital games specifcially. While digital games have been an arena to imagine the past since their early days, in the past decade, there has been a surge in retro-gaming as a kind of narratological, ludological, visual, and technological longing for the early days of gaming, prime examples being CUPHEAD, CELESTE or UNDERTALE. Linked to such a longing for the early days of gaming is an emergence of various remakes of old-school classics, like ODDWORLD: ABE’S EXODDUS as ODDWORLD: SOULSTORM. Yet other games explicitly and deliberately employ and reflect on the idea of a rupture in human history; that is, the loss of an earlier (potentially utopian) state one strongly longs for but is beyond reach, like HORIZON ZERO DAWN. Articles in this issue reflect on and discuss the various phenomena in digital gaming that play with and cater to an idealized, romanticized, and glorified past, a more innocent time in human history.