How to Cite

Raffety, Erin: Doing Theology “with” Videogames – Insights for Computational Theology, in Nunn, Christopher A. and van Oorschot, Frederike (Eds.): Compendium Computational Theology, vol. 1: Introducing Digital Humanities to Theology, Heidelberg: heiBOOKS, 2024, p. 51–67. https://doi.org/10.11588/heibooks.1521.c21939

License (Chapter)

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Identifiers (Book)

ISBN 978-3-911056-19-9 (PDF)

Published

12/19/2024

Authors

Erin Raffety

Doing Theology “with” Videogames – Insights for Computational Theology

Abstract This chapter explores the intersections of Computational Humanities, Digital Theology, and videogames, asserting that a definition of Computational Theology must clarify how its assorted methods, both digital and computational, inform knowledge-making, and avoid separating users from computers, something the field of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) has been instrumental in establishing (especially when it comes to disabled users). Drawing on a mixed-methods pilot study, in which disabled users helped to design and play a videogame to enrich Protestant Christian faith experiences in the Northeastern United States, the author provides three guiding insights for doing Computational Theology with videogames:

(1) Computational theologians wishing to engage videogames must center users in prototype development and methods for study; 

(2) Computational theologians must appreciate play as a site of theological knowledge-making, moving from observing structural symmetry between religion and games to doing theology with games and gamers themselves;

(3) Even when games are created with specific users in mind, computational theologians must not mistake games for neutral objects; rather, they must continually interrogate the theological underpinnings of computational models.

Keywords Computational Theology, Digital Theology, Game Studies, Human Computer Interaction