Leonid Moyzhes is a PhD candidate in Charles University, Prague, originally from Moscow Russia. He graduated from the Center for Religious Studies in Russian State University for the Humanities. His thesis, as well as broader research interests, focus on representation of religion in role-playing games with a particular attention to the way that games may serve as a platform for identity experimentation, with a particular focus on games taking place in the settings of classical and urban fantasy and post-apocalypse.
Proliferation of cults in post-apocalyptic videogames: case study of Metro: Exodus.
FROG 2024 – Talk
My presentation analyzes the proliferation of the post-apocalyptic settings, using Metro: Exodus as a case study. This game has been chosen because among its six levels, three biggest ones are built around different post-apocalyptic cults, conveniently coded as ethically good, bad and neutral. The game serves as an example of the wider trend exemplified by numerous other games, both digital and analog. I use the idea of resonance to connect in-game reality with wider cultural context (Apperley 2010), as well as procedural rhetoric (Bogost 2007) and research on simulation (Frasca 2003; Simpson 2011; Tuomas 2022). The main research question is why game designers tend to include simulations of cults in their projects about post-apocalypse.
I understand cults as a form of religious organization described by Marc Galanter (1999), and approach specific in-game cults as a form of imagined religions that can be analyzed by organizing their elements as a specific architecture of different dimensions of religions proposed by Ninian Smart (1996). This optics helps to notice that social considerations lie at the heart of imagined cults, making them tools of (semi-)conscious social engineering, and a way to make political statements for game developers. Alternative approaches to cults would be to frame them as a way to encode a post-apocalyptic world as a re-enchanted one (Taylor 2007; Saler 2012) as opposed to the disenchanted pre-apocalyptic world familiar for the players.
However, the engineered character of cults in question frames them as an ultimately insincere attempt to use an enchanted character of the post-apocalyptic world to establish control of societies, with the player character himself serving both as a disenchanting and anti-cultic actor. This makes inclusion of cults an ideal way for game developers to signify the exotisation of post-apocalyptic world, while, ultimately, staying true to the notion that modern worldview is the best, or even the only possible one, despite the fact that on the surface level the very idea of apocalypse, especially a man-made one in the case of Metro:Exodus, seems to be a critique of modernity and a cry for an alternative.
Bibliography
Apperley, T. 2010. Gaming Rhythms: Play and Counterplay from the Situated to the Global. Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures.
Bogost I. 2007. Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Frasca, G. 2003. Simulation Versus Narrative: Introduction to Ludology. In The Video game Theory Reader 2: 221-236. London, UK: Routledge
Galanter, M. 1999. Cults: Faith, Healing and Coercion. Oxford University Press.
Taylor, C. 2007. A Secular Age. Cambridge, USA: Harvard University Press.
Tuomas, H. 2022. Simulation. Encyclopedia of ludic terms. Accessed 26.07. 2024 URL: https://eolt.org/articles/simulation
Saler, M. 2012. As If: Modern Enchantment and the Literary Prehistory of Virtual Reality. NY, USA: Oxford University Press
Smart N. 1996. Dimensions of the Sacred: An Anatomy of the World’s Beliefs. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Simpson, J. 2011. Identity crisis: Simulation and models. In Simulation & Gaming, 42(2), 195-211. LA: Sage.
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