Procedural religion: Methodological reflections on studying religion in video games

Abstract

The article discusses the methodological aspects of studying religion in video games. It examines the concept of “procedural religion,” that is, the representations of religion via rule-systems in games, and investigates how we can formally analyze these representations. The article uses Petri Nets, a mathematical and a graphical tool for modeling, analyzing, and designing discrete event systems, in order to analyze how religion is represented in the rule-systems of two different mainstream video games— Age of Empires II, developed in the United States, and Quraish, developed in Syria. By comparing the rule-systems of both games, the article provides empirical evidence on how game rule-systems migrate between cultures and influence local game production by providing local game developers with pre-defined formulas for expressing their ideas while simultaneously limiting the scope of such expression with schematized patterns. On a more general level, the article discusses what rule-system analysis can tell us about video games as cultural and religious artifacts.