Ruth Gledhill comments on the interest in “gaming” at Greenbelt, an annual Christian festival in the UK.
One new subject being explored at Greenbelt this year is the theology of gaming. This video shows a trailer for Sony’s Shadow of the Colossus.
Guest blogger Paul Govan, who writes as GeekDad at Wired and also writes at GamePro Family and Game People, will be running a workshop at Greenbelt on video gaming and Shadow is one of the games he discusses.
Writing exclusively for Articles of Faith,… he explains why gaming can be good news. Doubtless there will be critics who see gnostic heresy in the eternal and complex battle between dark and light in the fantasy worlds of video games. But in an era where it has become a new heresy to judge that there is any qualitative difference at all between individuals, especially children, a medium that teaches that there are indeed such things as good and bad, right and wrong, has in my view to be Good News.
Paul Govan writes:
Video games are a happily mindless escape from the taxing realities of everyday life – leisure perfected. But, we discover, they are also therapeutic spaces with real bite and potential to know ourselves better. Like books and media, video games inevitably tell stories. These tales aim to connect to the player through serious, fun, haphazard, emotional or curious narrative. Here, gaming changes from an entertainment pastime to something a little more meaningful.
Read more here.