Faith in Gaming

Introspection of a Recovering Christian

Faith in the video game community has always been a volatile subject. In one game, the player could be standing reverently in a cathedral, lighting candles and praying in hopes of finding relief for a child dying from cancer. Another game could catapult the player into a loose version of Hell, hacking at demons that project human genitalia as a form of ranged attacks. Obviously the method for which religion is approached dramatically different between each game, but both seek to fully immerse the player in a unique experience. Video games are a multi-billion dollar industry in the United States and, despite having humble beginnings with simple arcade games such as Pong and Pac Man in the late 20th century, a number of companies, commentators, and players have begun to investigate the depths of gaming’s spirituality. There are a number of video games that portray themes commonly found in Catholicism. The three that will be analyzed are Dante’s Inferno, Binding of Isaac, and That Dragon, Cancer. Many commercially advertised games, such as Dante’s Inferno explored the visually grotesque themes of Christianity. Indie games, however, such as Binding of Isaac, and That Dragon, Cancer, offer a much more open and honest interpretation of Christianity. This essay seeks to explore whether the more widely known games such as Dante’s Inferno negatively impacts the gaming communities perception of the Roman Catholic Church and whether Binding of Isaac and That Dragon, Cancer redeems those perceptions.

At its very core, Dante’s Inferno is a story of a man seeking to save the woman he loves. The game is loosely based off Dante’s The Divine Comedy, a book that has been a cornerstone in Christianity’s understanding of the afterlife by enrapturing and terrifying audiences through it’s detailed and imaginative description of Hell. According to Wagner, “In games, play is the “space of possibility” afforded a player to explore and to make choices within the game’s systems” (Wagner, p.32). Dante’s Inferno is an example of a video game interpreting scripture with a heavy emphasis on the idea of ‘play’. In this case, play is more important than the narrative itself and this shows in the developers execution of the game. Instead of Dante being a 14th century poet that starts his journey in Hell, he is now a young crusader who becomes disenchanted with war and returns to his fiancée Beatrice in Florence. When he arrives, he finds his house destroyed and Beatrice lying dead outside. Even worse, as he approaches, Lucifer appears and steals away her soul, dragging her screaming into the depths of Hell. Dante chases them through the circles of Hell, trying to save his love before she is lost forever. He faces his own sins and mistakes before a final showdown with the fallen angel. Already we see a sharp departure from the original narrative. This in itself is not terribly sacrilegious and perhaps can be seen as developers taking creative license in order to make a story more palatable to a general audience. However, it is the games depiction of Hell and the mechanics that it borrows from Christian mythos that truly set it apart from any other action game of it’s type.

It is more than understandable for a game to have it’s mature moments, especially if it is a game based on the sins of the Divine Comedy. Dante's Inferno, however, literally pushes the Mature rating to its most extreme point, as the player passes scenes of souls being tortured, copious of violence, and plenty of male and female nudity from level to level. Obviously, this is not a game for kids, but much of what developers choose to show is appropriate for a game that tries to explore the extreme nature of Hell and its punishments. Many reviewers have expressed that they have felt sympathetic to some of the damned souls. On the other hand, there are times when the game seems to include things just for shock value such as monsters that project human genitalia as a ranged attack. The gameplay of Dante’s Inferno can only be described as a mindless gorefest similar to another popular game that came out around the same time, God of War, with pixelated blood and body parts never being in short demand. When using finishing moves on monsters, the player has two options: Punishment (i.e. smash their face in) or Absolve (i.e. smash their face in but in a ‘pious’ way). The player can perform a Punishment by destroying them with their scythe and earn Unholy points. Absolve will blast a spirit with a cross   in order to net the player Holy points. Collecting points helps you to gain levels and purchase new attacks and abilities. This may be the games attempt to introduce a moral choice system into the story which would make a certain amount of sense and would be a great benefit to the game’s overarching Christian themes of retribution and forgiveness. However, there is really no difference whether you play the game one way or the other. “It (the combat system) is more like there’s a violent option or an equally violent but better spirited option” (Croshaw, Escapist). The developers might have been setting it up for their to be multiple endings to the game where if the player has too many Unholy points they are damned but if they have more Holy points they are saved. Yet the whole game seems to be rushed in development, possibly due to time constraints, thus the end is the same no matter what points you chose to invest. The lesson this seems to teach the player is that no matter what they choose to do while on their quest through Hell, they will be saved no matter the souls they may have damned on their journey. This is not at all what Christianity preaches in its message and is not even faithful to the Divine Comedies own overall message. It’s a cheap, cheesy, blasphemy that tries too hard to be like other games of the time and teaches the player that morality doesn’t really matter in the Christian faith when mindless violence will be able to solve any problem encountered. 

Binding of Isaac takes an overall different approach. The game was a result of developer Edmund McMillen’s desire to create a roguelike showcasing his feelings about both the positive and negative aspects of religion that he had come to discover from conflicts between his Catholic and born-again Christian family members while growing up. The story of the game was inspired by the biblical tale of the Binding of Isaac and shares many themes even as it seeks to turn the traditional narrative on its head. After Isaac's mother receives a message from God demanding the life of her son as proof of her faith, Isaac flees into the monster-filled basement of their home, where he must fight to survive. The premise itself seems rather outlandish in the 21st century but it is in the subtle storytelling woven through gameplay mechanics and cutscenes that the game is able to start an honest conversation about religion. In a sense, the story is a form of fanfiction; What would it be like if the Binding of Isaac happened today? Wagner makes the point that, “Consumption becomes production; reading becomes writing; spectator culture becomes participatory culture” (Wagner, p.46). The narrative thrives because of the alternative retelling. The content can be shocking, gross, ugly, distasteful and arguably gratuitous. But, unlike Dante’s Inferno, that’s the whole point. It’s not the gameplay that is supposed to engage the player, it’s the content as a whole.

The tone and layers of the game accurately portrays growing up in a conservative religious household. The player takes control of Isaac, a young boy locked in a basement by a mother that received a message from God. Isaac must escape, fighting past monsters using his own tears as projectile weapons. The entirety of the experience is littered with scatalogical humor, blasphemy, and obscenities. The main enemies at the starting area of the game are aborted fetuses and the multitude of power ups scattered across the stages will often give the player various diseases, mutilations, or grotesque mutations. Isaac is corrupted, contaminated, mutilated, and soiled throughout their journey to escape confinement. To progress, the player must orchestrate their own defilement even as they recoil at it. However, it is the childlike viewpoint of these very adult themes that gives the game it’s unique perspective. The gross imagery needed to be childish in order to establish the irredeemably corrupt and dirty world that the player must fight through. The entire premise would be lost if the game were to try and take an intellectual and mature approach to religion because it’s not intellectual and mature religion that causes harm, it’s the pagan superstition of childhood that will leave a child scarred and feeling dirty and ashamed. In the Bible it is written, “Because of this I say to you, all sin and evil speaking shall be forgiven to men, but the evil speaking of the Spirit shall not be forgiven to men” (Matthew 12:31). If a kid is told that speaking against God will lead them to eternal damnation, they will run with the idea and spend the rest of their childhood wondering if whispering ‘I hate God’ too loud is enough to damn them forever. Conservative Christianity only exacerbates this problem, teaching children that the world is ‘unclean’ and they must guard themselves against it. The problem worsens as the child matures. 

The game is, in a sense, trying to reconcile the conservative religion with the experience of growing up in the real world. Journalist Arthur Chu had this to say about the subject, “The dichotomy of learning to be a Typical Christian Hypocrite who plays D&D and surfs Internet porn and gets to third base with your girlfriend in the backseat of a car is… yes, it is kind of equivalent to The Binding of Isaac’s narrative of trudging through a revolting world made of excrement and entrails, becoming a disease-ridden pus-oozing monster and eventually murdering your own mother” (Chu, Arthur). The game teaches the player that by surrendering themselves to the unclean, by actively becoming part of the World, they are getting stronger and overcoming every obstacle in their way. It makes the journey all the more impactful when the game pits the player, a now disease-ridden, mutilated, and mutated version of Isaac, against the final boss, the original and angelic Isaac as which the player had started out. ‘Winning’ in a very real sense meant the player had to confront their past self, come face-to-face with their own naivety and not only overcome it, but also accept that they’ve lost that pureness and become something that their past self would have thought abhorrent. And the player must decide if they are okay with that. Few games are able to accomplish what Binding of Isaac does in such a simplistic manner. It forces the player to recognize the vast difference between who they were and what they have become.

That Dragon, Cancer is an autobiographical game that documents Ryan and Amy Green’s experience of raising their son Joel, who had been diagnosed with brain cancer at twelve months old and only given a few months to live. According to Wagner, “it’s easy to see why tragedies make bad video games - the notion of alternatives (gameplay loops) could ruin the pathos and thus the catharsis of the experience” (Wagner, p.48). However, the game itself was designed to be a completely cathartic experience because the events within the game are unchangeable. Despite That Dragon, Cancer being an interactive experience, the gameplay takes a backseat in order for the narrative to develop and allow the player to become attached to the story and characters. With the player taking control of either Ryan or Amy for a majority of the narrative, the game was designed as a simple point-and-click adventure game in order to create a sense of immersion that film would fail to capture. The games developers worked closely with the couple while Joel was still alive and Ryan himself personally contributed to the games growth and success. Ryan continued to develop the game and even reworked much of the project after his sons passing in order to better memorialize and personalize the players experience. When the focus of the game is a child dying of cancer, the overall message becomes loss. The player is destined to lose and needs to lose in order to understand that loss in all its depth. That Dragon, Cancer is an enriching, story driven experience with Christian themes heavily used throughout the narrative. 

Despite video games often being viewed as a medium of entertainment lacking in poignancy, That Dragon, Cancer is one of the few games that can provide its audience with a truly cathartic experience mixed with Christian beliefs. A game journalist had this to say about the experience, “The activity on the part of the player does not change: guidance and witnessing” (Zucchi, KillScreen). In the game and woven throughout the narrative, faith is used as a presence. Players are constantly in control of different characters, usually Ryan, Joel, or Amy, but the perspective of these characters and how they are controlled is what makes the experience unique. The player is allowed into the thoughts of these people and can move them to some degree with mouse and keyboard, but they can not interact seamlessly with the images on screen. Much like the story of Job in the Bible, the player is seen as a God like figure watching a tragedy unfold. They must acknowledge the grief as it develops even as they can’t change it. However, much like Job, self-awareness does not always lead to satisfactory answers. The game doesn’t ask God ‘why’ a young child was diagnosed with cancer. Instead, it struggles to answer the question of ‘how’ God is present in these moments. In That Dragon, Cancer, faith and God are not themes or characters, but instead the presence of the player and the silences that stretch between moments of lighting candles and praying for a child’s cries to lessen. There is no battling monsters or killing demons. There is no souls to collect or reconciliation. That is not the objective of the game. The player need only reach an understanding of Joel and his love for dogs and limited vocabulary as well as the pained expressions of Amy and Ryan as they watch their son suffer. There is only the silent comfort of empathy, of the assurance of a sympathetic witness, of the promise of understanding. That Dragon, Cancer is an experience that reflects the texture of belief.

Video games have commonly been seen as a source of mindless violence, but it is in the rare, truly introspective and great video games where faith can be further explored. Games such as Dante’s Inferno poorly portray Christianity due to the industry developing games as a mindless cash grab that fails to fully expand on ideas and narratives. However, there are games that can accurately and portray Christian themes and faith. Binding of Isaac, while crude in it’s delivery, does its best to engage the player in a conversation about faith as they progress through the narrative. The game constantly poses difficult questions about religion, the world, and coming of age to the player in hopes of reconciling all three. That Dragon, Cancer provides a more subtle use of faith. Religious imagery is used throughout the story, often being used as an identity for the family, but it is in the moments of interactivity between game and player that faith truly shines. Moving forward, it’s important that games dealing with religion be carefully constructed and well-thought out. Even if the religion is being used as more of a set piece, such as in Dante’s Inferno, developers should attempt to remain true to the source material or at least try and emulate the themes and theory behind the religion being used as accurately as possible. 

Works Cited

“BibleGateway.” Matthew 12:31 - Bible Gateway, www.biblegateway.com/verse/en/Matthew%2012%3A31.

Chu, Arthur. “A Defense of Binding of Isaac from a Former Fundamentalist Christian.”Polygon, Polygon, 26 Jan. 2015, www.polygon.com/2015/1/26/7907061/binding-isaac-fundamentalism.

Haynes, Jeff. “Dante's Inferno Review.” IGN, IGN, 3 Feb. 2010, www.ign.com/articles/2010/02/03/dantes-inferno-review-2.

TheEscapistMagazine. “DANTE'S INFERNO (Zero Punctuation).” YouTube, YouTube, 22 July 2011, www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0ujx2JnjkA.

Wagner, Rachel. Godwired: Religion, Ritual and Virtual Reality. Routledge, 2012.

Zucchi, Sam. “Have a Little More Faith in That Dragon, Cancer.” Kill Screen, 22 Feb. 2016, killscreen.com/articles/have-a-little-more-faith-in-that-dragon-cancer/.