Religion in Virtual Worlds

While video-games as a form of technology and art-form has made many leaps over the last 30 years, there are still areas of our culture that are difficult to express in the medium and are considered very controversial. Religion as concept is used often in games and virtual worlds as device to explain game mechanics and the structure of the virtual space. Almost all virtual worlds have a fictitious back-story to explain why the player should care about their surroundings and some form of fictitious religion is usually part of this narrative and often based somewhat on real world religions. The concept of current religions being used in virtual worlds and games is very rare and usually met with displeasure by the users of the game for various reasons, for example not all members of the game community practice the same religion, or the interpretation of the religion by the creators of the game is considered inaccurate by religious members of the game community.
Some games attempt to make very broad statements about religion that may be offensive to people of faith. A recent example of this is the game Assassins Creed 2 where the antagonist is the Pope. In regards to the specific genre of virtual worlds, more leeway is given in what can and can not be done, as much of the content is created by the players themselves. Several guilds in World of Warcraft are themed around real-world religion's. The religious themed virtual world called The Bible Online is currently in development, and as the concept of morality figures more prominatly into games, the concept of religion will most likely increase as well.

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