When gamers talk about religion there tends to only be one focus to it, that being the political manifestations of a religion on a person(s) or culture(s). What I think many people that don't belong to a religon (for whatever reason) often don't understand about the contemporary shapes its taken in organizations like the Roman catholic church. Today religion often, but not always, takes the form of inborn philosophy. A way of life that a community can embrace and an ideal to strive for. However these internal philosophies are almost never spoken about and instead people often focus on history, mythology, and/or politics to either praise or demonize the religion in question (or just religion itself).
There are many games where fictional religions were the cornerstone of plots and these turned out to be good games. The main one that comes to my mind was Final fantasy 10, a game where the ideas of corruption and loss of faith in religion (but regaining faith in ones self) by one of the protagonists was a cornerstone of the game. It said something meaningful about humanity and our faith in the unknown and was therefore a piece of art. However there are games that handle religion very poorly as well, like Fallout 3. Now I love fallout 3 but its various religions really only showed how odd a religion can seem to outsiders. Not one religion in that game (that I can recall) had a real tangible philosophy behind it. Even worse the very context needed to explain religious rites of groups like the church of atom was poorly done with no real thought put into them. It would be like if someone went to a catholic church and witnessed the ritual of communion. Without proper context into the symbolism it would be very easy to mistake the ritual as one embracing cannibalism. As is seeing the church of atom, and listening to their rituals, just made you think you were listening to a bunch of crazy people. That's a really bad way to handle religion (luckily the Lonely hearts DLC of fallout new vegas turned that on its head and the Kings is also a perfect atheist religion due to their inborn philosophy)
I guess what Im saying is to make a game about religion you have to do something meaningful with it. Also just to talk about another point that's tangentally connected that Im personally getting bored of is all the religious antagonists the games industries use as of late. We just don't get any truly admirable people to play positive roles and do something good with their faith. It would be nice to see a character like Sam Childers (a preacher who has spent much of his life saving war orphans and child soldiers in South Sudan) or Pope Francis (who has spent much of his career eschewing wealth for the sake of others while simultaneously building bridges with people of all faiths) in gaming. Just someone positive rather then the generic religious antagonist army #34 that we've gotten in game after game after game and probably will get again in the future (Im looking at you wasteland 2)
To close this, I just want to suggest a religion themed game that I think would be awesome to play. I want someone to make a detective style game based around Catholic demonology specialists that had to solve mysteries and ultimately banish a creature back to hell. If it was intellectually focused where the player had to find clues to the indentity of the creature, its victims, its powers, and more to help them excorcise it I think it would be amazing but hey maybe that's just me.
There are many games where fictional religions were the cornerstone of plots and these turned out to be good games. The main one that comes to my mind was Final fantasy 10, a game where the ideas of corruption and loss of faith in religion (but regaining faith in ones self) by one of the protagonists was a cornerstone of the game. It said something meaningful about humanity and our faith in the unknown and was therefore a piece of art. However there are games that handle religion very poorly as well, like Fallout 3. Now I love fallout 3 but its various religions really only showed how odd a religion can seem to outsiders. Not one religion in that game (that I can recall) had a real tangible philosophy behind it. Even worse the very context needed to explain religious rites of groups like the church of atom was poorly done with no real thought put into them. It would be like if someone went to a catholic church and witnessed the ritual of communion. Without proper context into the symbolism it would be very easy to mistake the ritual as one embracing cannibalism. As is seeing the church of atom, and listening to their rituals, just made you think you were listening to a bunch of crazy people. That's a really bad way to handle religion (luckily the Lonely hearts DLC of fallout new vegas turned that on its head and the Kings is also a perfect atheist religion due to their inborn philosophy)
I guess what Im saying is to make a game about religion you have to do something meaningful with it. Also just to talk about another point that's tangentally connected that Im personally getting bored of is all the religious antagonists the games industries use as of late. We just don't get any truly admirable people to play positive roles and do something good with their faith. It would be nice to see a character like Sam Childers (a preacher who has spent much of his life saving war orphans and child soldiers in South Sudan) or Pope Francis (who has spent much of his career eschewing wealth for the sake of others while simultaneously building bridges with people of all faiths) in gaming. Just someone positive rather then the generic religious antagonist army #34 that we've gotten in game after game after game and probably will get again in the future (Im looking at you wasteland 2)
To close this, I just want to suggest a religion themed game that I think would be awesome to play. I want someone to make a detective style game based around Catholic demonology specialists that had to solve mysteries and ultimately banish a creature back to hell. If it was intellectually focused where the player had to find clues to the indentity of the creature, its victims, its powers, and more to help them excorcise it I think it would be amazing but hey maybe that's just me.