Sacred Symbols+, Episode 167: Gaming While Christian (Patreon)

It's interesting: Nearly a third of the Earth's population is Christian, and yet they have virtually no meaningful representation in video games, whether in the products themselves, in the studios and publishers that make and manufacture them, and in the outlets and entities that cover them. Yet, on the periphery are people doing the work of fusing religion and gaming into something coherent, and one such person is Paeter Frandsen. Paeter runs Spirit Blade Productions and its Christian Geek Central offshoot, and he's the perfect person to have on + to delve into the intersection of faith and gaming. Our topics are wide-ranging, and include an analysis of what fiction and fun means to people who believe in God, and what (if any) examples of games we love and enjoy speak to a Christian audience specifically. We also spend a great deal of time on motifs, genres, and other means of categorization -- sci-fi, horror, magic, sex, violence -- to determine how it all might come off to a devout Christian, and how the polytheism of Final Fantasy, the religious horror of Castlevania, and more comport to and challenge such a worldview.