Nicholas Dease: Personal Blog 3

Video Games as the catalyst for religious experience

One possibly absurd topic that I've always thought would be interesting to investigate is the possibility of a virtual experience or video game creating an emotional event similar to that of a religious experience. Interestingly, I'm not the first to research this matter. There's actually an entire body of articles written on the medium and its capability to producing momentous or emotionally significant experiences. But what is it that constitutes a religious experience? And how might a synthetic experience give way to a real religious experience? These are the questions I will explore in this blog.

As we've discussed in class, a Hierophany, or more commonly, a revealing of the sacred, is an experience that provides a system of value and order to ones life. The profane world, frequently understood to be the realm of the human world order, is a universe devoid of objective value and one requires an experience of the sacred in order to find a point-of-center in life. Video games, are thus associated with the profane world order. But what I find interesting is that so much of so-called “religious experience” takes place and is structured according to profane actions. Rituals, for example, are facilitated by humans, yet the experience itself held sacred. So then, is it possible for a virtual experience crafted by humans in profane existence to generate a sacred and religious one?

According to an article written by Kyle Chayka, it can and it does. World of Warcraft, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game, provides a massive environment rife with mythology for players to interact in and experience together. Chayka compares this experience to that of entering a cathedral such as Chartes. As is commonly known, Cathedral's, especially from the high gothic period, were created in order to sustain an other-worldly experience. Stained Glass, which creates colored light and high pointed arches all draw one's eyes up toward heavens. As Sam Lieth notes in his article on World of Warcraft and religious experience, “Cathedrals don’t really have narratives […] but they do have a mythos — a system of stories — behind them.” These mythologies, present in both video games and religion, provide a backdrop for the individual's experience of the space. Walking into a Cathedral without a belief in Christianity may still create a profound seemingly “religious” experience in the same way that seeing the expertly crafted world in a video game might.

Ultimately, it is matter of personal opinion as to whether these experiences are true or not but the topic is incredibly interesting nonetheless.