{"title":"The digital brush paints a flourishing world: enacting religion and aesthetic traditions in Ōkami","authors":"Brandon J. Harwood","doi":"10.1080/13537903.2022.2099084","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The video game Ōkami encourages players to immerse themselves in a digital gamescape that incorporates Japanese aesthetics, stories, and religious philosophies. The designers have gamified Shintō holographic reasoning, Confucian virtues, and Buddhist metaphors of fighting demons of the mind to create a world modeled after a mythological retelling of medieval Japan. A significant portion of the player’s gameplay involves purifying pollutants from the environment, which improves the player character and the Japanesque world’s citizens. The game acts as a playable metaphor that teaches the player about Japanese religion and culture by allowing them to enact an interpretation of it interactively.","PeriodicalId":45932,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Religion","volume":"37 1","pages":"419 - 434"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8000,"publicationDate":"2022-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Contemporary Religion","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13537903.2022.2099084","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"RELIGION","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
ABSTRACT The video game Ōkami encourages players to immerse themselves in a digital gamescape that incorporates Japanese aesthetics, stories, and religious philosophies. The designers have gamified Shintō holographic reasoning, Confucian virtues, and Buddhist metaphors of fighting demons of the mind to create a world modeled after a mythological retelling of medieval Japan. A significant portion of the player’s gameplay involves purifying pollutants from the environment, which improves the player character and the Japanesque world’s citizens. The game acts as a playable metaphor that teaches the player about Japanese religion and culture by allowing them to enact an interpretation of it interactively.
期刊介绍:
Journal of Contemporary Religion is an international peer reviewed journal. Its purpose is to both document and evaluate the anthropological, sociological, psychological, and philosophical aspects of emerging manifestations of religiosity in any part of the world—whether within innovative movements or mainstream institutions. The term ''religion'' in the title of this journal is understood to include contributions on spirituality. Moreover, as the journal title suggests, the focus is on contemporary issues. Therefore, the editors of Journal of Contemporary Religion welcome submissions which deal with: classical topics in the study of religion, such as secularisation and the vitality of religion or traditional sectarian movements; more recent developments in the study of religion, including religion and social problems, religion and the environment, religion and education, the transmission of religion, the materialisation and visualisation of religion in various forms, new forms of religious pluralism, the rise of new forms of religion and spirituality, religion and the Internet, religion and science, religion and globalisation, religion and the economy, etc. theoretical approaches to the study of religion; discussions of methods in relation to empirical research; qualitative and quantitative research and related issues. The Journal includes reviews of books which reflect the above themes.