Philosophy Spirituality

God in the Machine

videogames as spiritual pursuit

by Liel Leibovitz Review by David Lorimer, August 2014

Published: 2013
Publisher: Templeton Press
Format: Hardback
Pages: 144 pp.
ISBN: 9781599474816

Publisher’s description

If he were alive today, what might Heidegger say about Halo, the popular video game franchise? What would Augustine think about Assassin’s Creed ? What could Maimonides teach us about Nintendo’s eponymous hero, Mario? While some critics might dismiss such inquiries outright, protesting that these great thinkers would never concern themselves with a medium so crude and mindless as video games, it is important to recognize that games like these are, in fact, becoming the defining medium of our time. We spend more time and money on video games than on books, television, or film, and any serious thinker of our age should be concerned with these games, what they are saying about us, and what we are learning from them. Yet video games still remain relatively unexplored by both scholars and pundits alike. Few have advanced beyond outmoded and futile attempts to tie gameplay to violent behavior. With this canard now thoroughly and repeatedly disproven, it is time to delve deeper. Just as the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan recently acquired fourteen games as part of its permanent collection, so too must we seek to add a serious consideration of virtual worlds to the pantheon of philoso-phical inquiry. In God in the Machine, author Liel Leibovitz leads a fascinating tour of the emerging virtual landscape and its many dazzling vistas from which we are offered new vantage points on age-old theological and philosophical questions. Free will vs. determinism, the importance of ritual, transcendence through mastery, notions of the self, justice and sin, life, death, and resurrection—these all come into play in the video games that some critics so easily write off as mind-numbing wastes of time. When one looks closely at how these games are designed, at their inherent logic, and at the cognitive effects they have on players, it becomes clear that playing these games creates a state of awareness vastly different from that which occurs when we watch television or read a book. Indeed, gameplay is a far more engaged process—one that draws on various faculties of mind and body to evoke sensations that might more commonly be associated with religious experience. Getting swept away in an engrossing game can be a profoundly spiritual activity. It is not to think, but rather simply to be, a logic that sustained our ancestors for millennia as they looked heavenward for answers. Today, as more and more of us look screenward, it is important to investigate these games for their vast potential as fine instruments of moral training. Anyone seeking a concise and well-reasoned introduction to the subject would do well to start with God in the Machine. By illuminating both where video game storytelling is now and where it currently butts up against certain inherent limitations, Liebovitz intriguingly implies how the field and, in turn, our experiences might continue to evolve and advance in the coming years.

With the unlikely subtitle of 'videogames as spiritual pursuit', this book will open up a completely new field for most readers. The author has been playing games since the age of seven and now researches the field at New York University. It turns out that we spend more time and money on videogames than on books, television or film, so this is certainly a legitimate new area of research. The games are coded with the end in mind, allowing for a progressive mastery or 'grip' to be acquired. The uninitiated reader may be amazed that some of these games are designed to take between 60 and 100 hours to complete. The author likens them to ritual and analyses his own engaged and absorbed states of mind while playing. The third chapter is devoted to rules and breaking them, and I learned that one can insert cheat codes into the programme so as to create some shortcuts. Heidegger makes an appearance in the final chapter in a discussion of rule-based environments and the embodiment of tension on the way to resolution. I'm not sure that all readers will be convinced of the author's conclusion that 'videogames provide that rarest of havens, an environment in which to learn, without fear of consequence, how to live differently…. experiencing not anxiety but joy, not doubt but faith, not just the prickly self but the world entire.' However, the book makes for an intriguing perspective.

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