Playing with Religion in Digital Games

"This collection builds on and adds to the best criticism in this young and exciting subfield and will grow more important as religion integrates further into our digital games."

~Library Journal

"...[A]n ambitious and impressive compendium offering intriguing possibilities for further research and theory for the burgeoning field of cultural studies."

~Publishers Weekly

"This fine collection of essays represents a well-documented study of the effects and influences that religion (in general) has had on digital gaming and its players. . . . This volume will be a good launching pad for future research."

~Choice

"This edited collection is uniformly good and well worth reading. As the editors and authors note, the study of religion and gaming stands very near its beginning. They invite others to take up the study and this book offers a good starting point."

~Communication Research Trends

"Games and gods are very old partners, but this book shows they are also on the cutting edge of religious studies today. The editors have assembled a wonderful range of essays that advance the conversation, soar over traditional boundaries, and ought to work like a charm in the classroom. The task of scrutinizing religion in gaming is important because the issues are play, imagination, leisure, and vast sums of capital. If the sacred does not shimmer in the hand-held screens of modern entertainment, then its fire has gone out of the universe—until, of course, it returns in the shape of a dark-caped knight and a gleaming sword"

~David Morgan, Duke University

"This volume brings together the fields of religion studies and game studies in valuable ways. It helps us see the many and complex roles that religion and spirituality can take on within contemporary videogames, and it also explores how the practice of gameplay itself can be a religion-like experience. The many excellent writers included here demonstrate the value of cross-disciplinary approaches to understanding games, and also how digital games have become a key element of contemporary life—in both its sacred and its profane expressions."

~Mia Consalvo, Concordia University

"This volume offers, finally, a space for legitimate discussions on the nature of 'play' within our notions of religious participation or spiritual searching. The greatest benefit of this book is that it highlights how engaging in digital gaming represents new questions about what makes a thing (be it a story, an action, or a symbol) religious."

~Paul Emerson Teusner, RMIT University