Religion and Video Games dissertation - ideas?

[Faulkie]

Hi guys. I'm not sure how much traffic this site gets nowadays, or whether anyone here even remembers me, but I'll give it a shot. I'm Alex, and I'm a third year Religions and Theology student. I am due to begin work on my dissertation (worth 25% of my entire degree), and have chosen to focus this on video games.

The topic itself has been accepted by my supervisor, but now is the time to narrow it down. Together with my supervisor, I have come up with a number of potential areas to be explored in depth in my dissertation, which are (broadly) the following:

1) Religious themes in video games. (E.g. messianic/saviour figures, apocolypse, religious systems and the nature of the divine.)

2) World religions represented in video games.

3) Morality. How are good and evil portrayed in video games?

4) The relationship between real life and virtual life.

I have a few ideas already, and I will be posting this on a number of forums, but I'd like to hear what you think. The name of the game with a brief reason as to why it explores one of these areas would be very helpful.

Thanks a lot!

[K_I_R_E_E_K]

For the moment no game comes to mind, but i might change this statement.

[Uae]

1) Religious themes in video games. (E.g. messianic/saviour figures, apocalypse, religious systems and the nature of the divine.)

Only game I can think of for that is God of War (ancient gods) and Dark Siders which I think is based on the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse.

3) Morality. How are good and evil portrayed in video games?

I think this is an interesting area. Many games that have these kind of choices, for example fable and mass effect, which make the choices a simplistic good or evil and then make the changes obvious such as through appearance. There is rarely a grey area in video game morals.

Good luck in your dissertation, I enjoyed doing mine!

[K_I_R_E_E_K]

Age of mythology?

Darksiders, played that game and yes, it's based on the 4 horseman, but i'm not sure if it fits anywhere.

[Faulkie]

That's great guys, thanks a lot.

Uae, what was your dissertation on?

[Uae]

Uae, what was your dissertation on?

Did a law degree and my title was "Does dignity have any meaning in international Human Rights Law?"

[Faulkie]

Wow, that's some heavy stuff. Sounds interesting though.