Call for Papers: Gaming Worlds and the Human

What kinds of worlds do video games create, and what theological and religious questions emerge from within them? As video games have developed into complex narrative and experiential forms, they have increasingly constructed immersive worlds that invite sustained engagement with questions of meaning, agency, transcendence, morality, and what it means to be human. These virtual worlds not only provide entertainment, but are spaces in which theological and religious ideas can be staged, contested, and reimagined.

This volume seeks to examine the internal logics of video game worlds as sites of theological and religious reflection. Rather than treating games as superficial carriers of religious imagery, we invite contributions that attend closely to how particular games or series construct systems of belief, metaphysics, ritual, ethics, and cosmology. How do these worlds configure the relationship between player and avatar, origins and ends, freedom and determinism? In what ways do they reproduce, transform, or resist already established religious and theological frameworks?

At stake is not only the interpretation of religious motifs in digital media, but a broader inquiry into how interactive worlds reshape questions central to theological anthropology: what it means to act, to choose, to suffer, to persist, and ultimately, to be human.

We welcome submissions that engage specific games and offer critical analyses of their theological or religious dimensions. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• Conceptions of divinity, creation, and cosmology within internal video game worlds
• Ritual and liturgy in game design and player practice
• Theological implications of world-building and environmental storytelling
• Eschatology and teleological narratives
• Morality, ethics, and judgement mechanics within gameplay
• Relationality and interdependence of individuals, structures, and cultures within game worlds  The function of death in game worlds

Contributors are encouraged to ground their analyses in close readings of particular games while employing relevant theoretical, theological, or philosophical scholarship. Games to consider (among others):

• Claire Obscur: Expedition 33
• Baldur’s Gate
• Final Fantasy
• The Elder Scrolls                        
• Resident Evil
• Cyberpunk 2077 (Souls)         
• The Last of Us
• Eldenring/Dark  
• Fallout
• Death Stranding

Abstracts should be submitted by 5pm EST August 17th, 2026 to videogamesandthehuman@gmail.com and should include:

Name, Institutional Affiliation (if applicable), and Contact Email Address

Title of the Proposed Submission

An Abstract (200-250 words) Potential contributors will be notified of acceptance by Monday, September 7th. Full paper drafts will be due by April 2nd, 2027.