Interview with Prof. Robert Geraci: Video Games, Avatars, and Virtual Religions

Preface:

Prof. Robert Geraci is easily the most tattooed member of the Manhattan College Religious Studies Department. Though his most prominent forearm tattoos are replicas of 30,000-year-old cave paintings, his scholarly interests cluster around futuristic topics like virtual reality and artificial intelligence. His new book, Virtually Sacred, explores the way that gamers in virtual worlds are achieving the kinds of experiences that were once thought to be the domain of traditional religion; things like transcendence, salvation, ultimate meaning, and a higher power. Our intrepid MC RELS News team secured a semi-exclusive interview with Prof. Geraci, and despite his reputation as the “Wild Man” of Riverdale (to quote a senior colleagues with the initials SK), we found Dr. G. to be a hospitable southern gentleman, who mixes strong, if nostalgic, sidecars, who knows how to keep a campfire burning, and who plants fruit trees in his spare time.

Interview:

MC: Before we get into the truthiness of your new book, let’s talk about video games. Inquiring minds want to know your top 3 Video games of all time.

RG: 1. Ninja Gaiden (original Nintendo) -- as a friend puts it: "when you can beat Ninja Gaiden, you know you can do anything in life." ... and that includes growing up and becoming professor of religious studies and writing books about videogames. ;)

2. Legend of Zelda (original Nintendo) -- you can play this one for hours and still want to keep playing

3. (tie) Zork (Commodore 64) and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Commodore 64) -- these text-based adventure games were amazing! They lead you on journeys where you actually had to make choices and find your way around. They pushed our imaginations.

MC: Have you ever played the Cones of Dunshire (from Parks and Recreation) or have you invented any similar games? You recently wrote about the anniversary of Dungeons and Dragons, a fantasy table-top role playing game? In your mind, are there essential differences in the experience and effect of playing a fantasy table-top game vs playing an online fantasy game?

RG: I don't watch TV, so I had to search for Cones of Dunshire on the Internet. :) When I was young, I played a lot of different role-playing games (generally fantasy or science fiction) and during that time I invented a couple of games that had complete rule sets for character generation, adventuring, etc. There are HUGE differences between table-top games and online games. First and foremost, table-top games are a collaborative, open-ended, storytelling process. The players don't just follow along, they are integral to the imaginative process in ways that cannot really be understood without playing them. Online fantasy games can offer some really interesting experiences, but they absolutely pale in comparison to a game like Dungeons & Dragons. D&D teaches young people how to dream rigorously, and that strikes me as being pretty much the most valuable thing a child could ever learn.

MC: Experts as eminent at Raffi have argued that "screen time" is bad for kids. I get the feeling that you disagree with this, at least in part?

RG: Only in part. I think that the world around us is immensely rich and that overprotective and neurotic approaches to parenting have created ferocious walls that inhibit the lives of children. I believe every kid should spend massive amounts of time out of doors running around. Sadly, we have schools with declining amounts of recess and parenting in which someone is supposed to hover over kids all the time and the kids are supposed to be in sight and in earshot. I think that's crazy, and it's certainly not how I grew up. That said, I don't see anything wrong with moderate use of digital screens, though I do put them in a pecking order. I'd rather my kids played an active, involved game than that they stare at a television. All things in moderation. If the kids spend lots of time running around and lots of time away from authority figures, that's a good thing. If they spend lots of time reading, that's a good thing. If they live up to those ideals, there's nothing wrong with a few videogames or movies or whatever. To unilaterally dismiss kids' screen time is silly, especially when the adults spend all their time staring at their iPhones.

MC: Its been rumored that you are using your office at Manhattan College as a workshop for building devoutly secular robots. We are not asking for a comment on these allegations. But would you kindly tell us your top 3 robot characters in film or TV?

RG: 1. Marvin in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (recent adaptation with Alan Rickman as the voice of Marvin)

2. Maria in Metropolis

3. Sylvester Stallone is a robot, right?

MC: In virtually every public appearance that you have made since the late 1990s you have gone out of your way to insist that Al Gore is not a blood relation. Indeed you have gone so far as to claim that you have never even played Angry Birds with the man. Even so, could you please tell us about the first time you heard about the internet?

RG: My father was a participant in the Defense Department's ARPAnet, out of which the Internet emerged. I remember the old modems that you used by picking up the handset of your phone and physically inserting it into the modem. I also joined the Commodore 64 Internet-like thing in the late 80s and early 90s and used to visit dial-up bulletin boards with a friend of mine during that time. Of course, we didn't call those the Internet.

MC: Ian Barbour, a seminal figure in your field of 'science and religion', recently died. Can you tell us one of his ideas that you agreed with and one that you disagreed with?

RG: Well, the fabulous thing that Barbour did was fight long and hard to demonstrate that there is no great, monolithic thing called "religion" at war with some great, monolithic thing called "science." His efforts dominated the entire last half of the 20th century and were crucial in opening the door to research in religion and science. He was not the first to reject the "conflict thesis" of folks like John Draper and Andrew White, but his was voice that made the conflict thesis only part of the conversation. Unfortunately, he did this by establishing a typology of religion and science that fails to capture the complexity and richness of relationships in religion and science. It is, for example, quite possible for a person to hold positions in which religion and science are in "conflict" and yet also "integrated" (to take two of options in Barbour’s typology). As such, the typology is not particularly helpful for anyone interested in religion on the ground or the actual, empirical life of science. So, the thing I liked best is simultaneously the thing I liked least about Barbour's work. What he did was essential for someone like me to do what I do, and yet I don't like the way he did it. : )

MC: Let’s turn to your book: Virtually Sacred explores the ways that people experience and relate to religion in virtual worlds such as Second Life and World of Warcraft. You make a compelling case for the vast similarities between virtual worlds and offline religious worlds. But I am wondering if in your research you became convinced of inherent differences between these alternate "worlds".

RG: There are definitely substantive differences between various online worlds and between any online worlds and the conventional (physical) world. Online worlds are each constructed out of design decisions, and so what could be done in one virtual world may not be possible (or even imaginable) in another. Of course, that's part of the delight of virtual worlds...one can build worlds where one's imagination has possibilities that conventional life lacks. And so one can play with one's religious identity in new and interesting ways. There's a price to pay for this, however, and while virtual worlds give us ways to think about ourselves and our world differently, they are fundamentally less compelling than conventional reality. After all, we know how and why they allow us these choices, whereas we are still bewildered by the immensity of the universe and the probability of our presence in it. We know why and how we got into World of Warcraft, but we haven't foggiest notion how the greater cosmos works. That mystery lends itself to a kind of metaphysical weight that imposes itself upon us and becomes the basis for the gravitas of traditional religious life.

MC: I am thinking especially about the role of avatars--or stand-in identities that people adopt when entering these worlds. Is this a fundamental difference the human experience of offline religious worlds? Or would you say that our offline religious identities are not so dissimilar from online avatars?

RG: Reality is performed. In every environment, we take on roles appropriate to the environment and with respect to the roles that others have already adopted. There's no doubt that this is as true of conventional reality as of virtual reality. Imagine the person who attends church, synagogue, mosque, forest glade, whatever. In the middle of whatever service her or she enjoys, the practitioner is likely under the impression that one must be tolerant and patient of others (at least those others at the event!). Then put the practitioner in his or her car out in the parking lot and watch as each cuts the other off or lurches around with little regard for one another or even plain common sense. So, yes, the performance in a virtual temple is different from the performance in a conventional temple. It comes with different clothes (the former can be attended naked if you so choose, but you'd probably be arrested for that in the latter), it comes with different postures, and with different ways of reflecting upon and reacting to others. So it's definitely different. But at the same time, in both we see how our transcendent visions emerge in performative moments...we make them real by acting them out, rather than the other way around.

MC: Part of what makes your book so interesting is that you apply theories of religion, theories of how religion functions in offline human life, in "traditional forms", to these new kinds of online human experience that most people wouldn't consider "religious" at all. In other words, you use what you know about traditional religious practices to make sense of online fantasy worlds. But I am wondering if in the course of your study you found yourself understanding "traditional" religious practices differently in light of what you learned about how religion functions in these new, online forms.

RG: In many respects traditional religion is virtual, just like online worlds. When practitioners enter sacred spaces or immerse themselves in sacred books, they no doubt wander through virtual worlds...it is clear enough that the makers of cathedrals and illuminated manuscripts understood this. But the lineages and authorizations, the histories and the power structures, are entirely different. The videogamer might experience transcendence, but he or she does so in a tradition that encompasses Gygax, Lucas, and Tolkien rather than apostles or rabbis. When the traditionally religious person focuses upon the world religiously, he or she lays a sacred geography atop the mundane world, and thus seeks to transform the world according to the transcendent likeness of his or her inherited tradition. It's much like the wonderful story "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" by Borges, in which the people described seek to refashion the world in the image of an imagined world. While the transcendent realities of traditional religion may, in fact, be real, they are nonetheless imagined by practitioners who seek to remake the world in accordance with their enchanted visions.

MC: Second Life has no narrative behind it; no teleology; its just a world. World of Warcraft has a narrative and a teleology; you are part of an advancing drama. I might be asking for too much of a generalization here, but do you think that we learn something about a person by learning which of these online worlds they prefer? I am thinking especially about the 21st century context in which more people feel more comfortable than at anytime in history with believing that the real world has no inherent meaning, no teleology, no narrative written into its fabric? In light of this, do you think World of Warcraft represent a more nostalgic urge?

RG: I don't think any people, ever, have felt comfortable with the fact that world is meaningless. I think we have always recognized it as such, and have strategically rejected that fact through religion, art, science, economics, you name it. As for the distinction that you draw, however, I think you're right in calling on it. I know of SL residents who couldn't get past level 10 in WoW (which you can do in your first few hours) and WoW players who wouldn't have the least clue what to do in SL. Of course, that's true of many people in SL also, wandering around trying to figure out how to make money in the world (which is very much not the point) and many of the goals people articulate in WoW are absurd or awful (as with people who simply want to harass other players). But the open-endedness of SL speaks to a different set of goals and expressions. Who do you want to be? In WoW, you want to be a hero of some sort, or a master of other players. In SL, you have quite a few more options. It's funny, though, how WoW players often try to subvert the usual narrative (e.g. by leveling a character only by gathering herbs and never by fighting) and how often SL residents relax into a comfortable capitalist consumerism that tells them what is appealing and what is worth becoming. Overall, though, the more experimental personality will settle into SL much more comfortably and the more traditionally narrative will settle into WoW. Nostalgia is an interesting way of thinking through that. On the one hand, in SL people lovingly recreate the past. On the other, WoW players are part of a seemingly more traditional game structure. But really, SL is more like the games we first play when our imaginations take off. It is, in that sense, more childlike even if WoW is more comforting. (((I highly doubt that was a very good answer to a perfectly reasonable question)))

MC: Before we conclude, may I please have another sidecar?

RG: Yes.

MC: Thank you. Its delicious. Ok, now take us 20 years down the road: what kinds of virtual gaming will we be partaking of...and how will religion function in these worlds/whatevers?

RG: Much better immersion in the virtual worlds, though whether through headsets or holographic projection I couldn't say (I'm skeptical of direct brain interfaces which, if possible at all, are much further than 20 years away). Lots of virtual games will still involve shooting one another. Quite a few will be the latest and greatest in Tetris-like games. Some will involve companionship and conversation. And some will be online worlds that take advantage of most all other game types. Our desire for meaning will underwrite almost all of these efforts, and thus the games will remain religious to the core. Many will more explicitly engage our religious instincts (both consciously and unconsciously) through play, user interface, imagery, etc. I think the percentage will continue its current trajectory because religious elements provide so much of the incentive for good storytelling and game play. The questions of ethics, of personal meaning, of transcendence--becoming more than you thought possible--are integral to gaming and designers are becoming more competent in their efforts to trade on that.