Category Archives: games

Two items on horror and psychology

July 6th, 2020 | Posted in evolutionary psychology, games, horror, horror studies

A couple of items have appeared over the last week or two that are worth noting in regards to horror and psychology. The first is “An Infectious Curiosity: Morbid Curiosity and Media Preferences During a Pandemic” published in Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture. This article was picked up by a lot of popular media outlets, […]

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Titles of Interest – Dangerous Games: What the Moral Panic over Role-Playing Games Says about Play, Religion, and Imagined Worlds

September 24th, 2014 | Posted in Dungeons & Dragons, fantasy, fantasy role playing games, games, religion, Titles of Interest

Dangerous Games: What the Moral Panic over Role-Playing Games Says about Play, Religion, and Imagined Worlds (University of California Press, 2015), by Joseph P. Laycock. The 1980s saw the peak of a moral panic over fantasy role-playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons. Before you read the rest of this article, you might want to […]

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Titles of Interest – Virtually Sacred: Myth and Meaning in World of Warcraft and Second Life

July 13th, 2014 | Posted in fantasy, games, religion, Second Life, Titles of Interest, video games, World of Warcraft

Virtually Sacred: Myth and Meaning in World of Warcraft and Second Life by Robert M. Geraci (Oxford University Press, 2014). Millions of users have taken up residence in virtual worlds, and in those worlds they find opportunities to revisit and rewrite their religious lives. Robert M. Geraci argues that virtual worlds and video games have […]

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Bainbridge on eGods and Faith Versus Fantasy

April 12th, 2013 | Posted in fantasy, fantasy role playing games, games, religion, video games

PopMatters includes a lengthy excerpt and summary of an intriguing volume by William Sims Bainbridge, eGods: Faith Versus Fantasy in Computer Gaming (Oxford University Press, 2012). The publisher’s website includes the following description: What is the relationship between religion and multi-player online roleplaying games? Are such games simply a secular distraction from traditional religious practices, […]

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