Computer games and religion - part 1 - Atheist games

Computer games is a special media by many sense: first of all, due to the relative freshness of the media, it is much more open mouthed then many other genre, hence we can find much more radical statements in these works then many we encounter today. The second is, that the performative act of (playing) the games give infinite opportunity to both missionary work by religious groups and the opposite, satirical usage by secular minds.


Unlike cinema, which is a rather passive media, and the full content of the artistic product unveils for the audience, - who still have the freedom to interpret or misinterpret it as she/he likes - computer games need you active participation to explore the full message, capacity of the media, which, we might see later a crucial point for understanding satire in these games.

Direct, satirical anti-religious content is quite rare, yet many of these games circulate in the blog sphere, like the fighting game Bible Fight (Macromedia flash required) in which we can compete for example Noah with the Holy Mar or with Satan in single fight, each of them with unique special attacks and moves. Ofcourse the hidden character is god, but you can only play him after you have defeated all the other biblical celebrities. I have to admit, that this game should be set in parallel to the other famous fighting game portraying past dictators and present state rulers in a satirical way.


Faith Fighter and Operation Pedopriest by the Italian multimedia art group Molleindustria are another two examples of satirical portrayal of church/belief - much the same way and with the same aesthetics of for example as South Park does. Even the notion that religious "powers" can compete against each other is a highly atheist, pragmatist idea, yet the satiric approach needs no further explanation in this case. Molleindustria is very well know for their radical, political games in the media/blog culture, and these works fully expose the games ability to speak about a moral/belief issue by involving the "viewer" in this case the player. In Faith Fighter, for example, anything we do with the mighty prophets during the game, destroys buildings and cars in enormous quantity in the background, hence anything we do is harmful to humanity one way or another. In case of Operation Pedopriest there is no goal for the game, other then convince the media and police constantly to not report/investigate in sexual crimes which is committed by unattended priests - an circular loop, which has no solution.

As artist has the freedom to hide the context into the processes of accessing the media, rather then to insert into the direct text of it, games seems to be an ideal tool of critique of dogmatic thinking. Lets keep on an eye on it, as the media becomes widespread, it might be an excellent tool of not aimed only amusement but political discussion.