Thesis: Video games hold promise for situating players within a religious education curriculum that sponsors playful engagement with the ethical and the transcendent.
* At its best, video game curriculum integrates both narrative (explicit) and procedural (implicit) educational strategies.
* However, some evidence suggests that religious video game designers fail to understand either the full curricular potential of the video game medium or the implicit curricular significance of conventional video game procedures.
The "Games for Change" organization sponsors video game innovations that seek to teach justice and compassion through digital play. Play encompasses many dimensions: learning and growth, perspective taking, self-reflection, critical thinking, and adaptive thinking. However, the educational aims of these games may be diluted by the latent structural qualities within the chosen medium of digital play. In addition, religion appears to be an underutilized resource within these games, despite the great promise and potential of religious education.
The ubiquity and popularity of video games suggest a new medium for religious education. However, the capitalistic and militaristic architecture of many evangelical Christian video games undermines their potential for faithful religious education. Thus, these video games ironically propagate a curriculum of redemptive violence. Video games with religious educational aspirations call for a distinctively religious architecture that intertwines aspects of myth, identity, contemplation, discernment, revelation, transcendence, mutuality, and creativity.
Keynote address delivered at the Third Educational Conference, Church of the Nazarene, held at Pasadena College, Pasadena, California, October 17-19, 1951.
