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1. “Western” – in this thesis is being used, for a lack of a better word, to describe something being of the modern consumerist, capitalist and colonialist European / North American (and anywhere else specifically drastically influenced by this type of pop culture and socio-political power such as Australian) society.

2. Athens and Sparta – two ancient Greek cities involved in the Peloponnesian war, 431 BCE. The main difference between them being their government, economy, and society. Athenian society, which was based on trade, valued art and culture and was ruled under a form of democracy. Spartan society, on the other hand, was a militant society whose economy was based on farming and conquering.

3. Tzu – (Sun Tzu) was a Chinese general, military strategist, writer, and philosopher. He is traditionally credited as the author of The Art of War, 5th century BC, an influential work of military strategy that has affected both Western and East Asian philosophy and military thinking.

4. Shelley – (Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley) was an English novelist who wrote the Gothic novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, 1818, which is widely considered as the beginning of science fiction and her as the originator of this genre while only 21 years old at the time.

5. Murakami – (Haruki Murakami) is a Japanese essayist and novelist bestseller worldwide. Known for his richly plotted narratives and particular take on magical realism filled with an oppressive sense of loneliness, having written such famous works as: Norwegian Wood, 1987, Kafka on the Shore, 2002, A Wild Sheep Chace, 1982, etc.

6. Medium /Media – the difference here being made is between “medium” – a platform, tool and way for expression without any predefined content, and “media” – the specific publishing, art, writing, content, etc. made within it.



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7. Herodotus – an ancient Greek historian and geographer from the Greek city of Halicarnassus. He is known for having written the Histories – a detailed account of the Greco-Persian Wars. Herodotus was the first writer to do systematic investigation of historical events.

8. Horus – or Heru, Hor, Har in Ancient Egyptian, is the falcon-headed god who served many functions, most notably god of kingship and the sky. He (or his eye) has become one of the most commonly used symbols of Egypt, seen on modern Egyptian airplanes, and on hotels and restaurants throughout the land.

9. Apollo – one of the Olympian deities in classical Greek and Roman religion and Greek and Roman mythology. The national divinity of the Greeks, Apollo has been recognized as a god of archery, music and dance, truth and prophecy, healing and diseases, the Sun and light, poetry, and more.

10. Osiris – one of ancient Egypt's most important deities, was the god of fertility, agriculture, the afterlife, the dead, resurrection, life, vegetation and the underworld. He also symbolized death, resurrection, and the cycle of Nile floods that Egypt relied on for agricultural fertility. According to the myth, Osiris was a king of Egypt who was murdered and dismembered by his brother Seth.

11. Dionysus – is the god of the grape-harvest, winemaking, orchards and fruit, vegetation, fertility, insanity, ritual madness, religious ecstasy, festivity and theatre in ancient Greek religion and myth. He is also known as Bacchus, the name adopted by the Romans; the frenzy that he induces is bakkheia. As Eleutherios ("the liberator"), his wine, music and ecstatic dance free his followers from self-conscious fear and care, and subvert the oppressive restraints of the powerful.

12. Moros – is the ancient Greek hateful personified spirit of impending doom, who drives mortals to their deadly fate. It was also said that Moros gave people the ability to foresee their death. His Roman equivalent was Fatum.

13. Prometheus – is a Titan god of fire in ancient Greek myth. He is best known for defying the gods by stealing fire from them and giving it to humanity in the form of technology, knowledge, and more generally, civilization. In some versions of the myth, he is also credited with the creation of humanity from clay.

14. Ovid’s Metamorphoses – is an 8 AD Latin narrative poem by the Roman poet Ovid, considered his magnum opus. Comprising 15 books and over 250 myths, the poem chronicles the history of the world from its creation to the deification of Julius Caesar within a loose mythico-historical framework. It has famously further inspired such authors as Dante Alighieri, Giovanni Boccaccio, Geoffrey Chaucer, and William Shakespeare.

15. Genesis 19:1 – (Sodom and Gomorrah) were two legendary biblical cities destroyed by God for their wickedness. Their story parallels the Genesis flood narrative in its theme of God's anger. They are mentioned frequently in the prophets and the New Testament as symbols of human wickedness and divine retribution, and the Quran also contains a version of the story about the two cities. The legend of their destruction may have originated as an attempt to explain the remains of third-millennium Bronze Age cities in the region, and subsequent Late Bronze Age collapse.

16. “To know someone” (in a biblical sense) – to have sex.

17. Biblica – formerly International Bible Society, is a company founded in 1809 and is the worldwide copyright holder of the New International Version of the Bible.



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18. “E” and “X” – generally in the gaming industry it is agreed upon that in most computer games the button “E” would give the player the ability to interact with objects and people, as well as, in most XBOX console games the button “X” would serve the same function.

19. Cognitive dissonance – the term is used to describe the mental discomfort that results from holding two conflicting beliefs, values, attitudes, person's actions, feelings, ideas, and things in the environment. People tend to seek consistency in their attitudes and perceptions, so this conflict causes feelings of unease or discomfort.

20. Tripple A titles – the term generally refer to games that boast a large budget for both production and marketing, made by major publishers with deep pockets. Due to that, they are expected to be of high quality and sell in a substantial number of copies, typically going into millions.

21. GamerGate – is an online harassment campaign, initially conducted through the use of the hashtag #GamerGate, that promoted sexism and anti-progressivism in video game culture. Beginning in August 2014, the campaign targeted women in the video game industry — notably game developers Zoë Quinn and Brianna Wu, and feminist media critic Anita Sarkeesian. The harassment campaign included doxing, threats of rape, and death threats.



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22. Systemic oppression – is the intentional disadvantaging of groups of people based on their identity while advantaging members of the dominant group (gender, race, class, sexual orientation, language, etc.) which is not just happening within the social structure but according to which the whole structure is based upon.

23. Fight or flight (when faced with opposing information) – is referred to as “identity protective cognition” which specifies to the tendency of individuals to unconsciously dismiss evidence that does not reflect the beliefs that predominate in their group. This is also sometimes called “motivated reasoning”. This type of behaviour is largely duo to the fact that being proven wrong activates the same area of the brain as physical pain.

24. Hyperobjects – are objects of which effects may be experienced even if they cannot be necessarily touched, like race or class, or climate change. They are entities of such vast temporal and spatial dimensions that they defeat traditional ideas about what a thing is in the first place and thus cannot in a sense be even fully comprehended by the human mind.

25. Militarism – is the belief or the desire of a government or a people that a state should maintain a strong military capability and to use it aggressively to expand national interests and / or values.

26. Portmanteau – is a blend of words in which parts of multiple words are combined into a new word, as in smog, coined by blending smoke and fog, or motel, from motor and hotel.

27. Soteria – in ancient Greek mythology, was the goddess or spirit (daimon) of safety and salvation, deliverance, and preservation from harm. She was also an epithet of the goddess Persephone, meaning deliverance and safety.

28. Ouroborous – having the core traits of the symbol in the form of a snake biting its own tail, used especially in ancient Egypt and in Hermetic philosophy as an emblem of eternity – Ouroboros.

29. Phonoi – were the personifications of murder and killing in Greek mythology, sons of the goddess of strife Eris. They were responsible for the violent deaths and murders that happened outside the battlefield.

30. Mercury – was a major god in Roman religion and mythology known for his speed, being one of the 12 Dii Consentes within the ancient Roman pantheon. He is the god of financial gain, commerce, eloquence, messages, communication (including divination), travellers, boundaries, luck, trickery, and thieves; he also serves as the guide of souls to the underworld.

31. Lelantus – was a Titan god in ancient Greek mythology. His name means "something that goes unobserved"; therefore, he became the Titan of air, hunter's skill of stalking prey, and the unseen.

32. Kafkaesque – having the characteristic or reminiscent of the oppressive or nightmarish qualities of Franz Kafka's fictional world, such as bizarre and impersonal administrative situations where the individual feels powerless to understand or control what is happening.

33. Janus – some scholars regard him as the god of all beginnings, progression, gates, transitions, time, duality, doorways, passages, frames, and endings. The beginning of the day, month, and year, both calendrical and agricultural, were sacred to him. He is usually depicted as having two faces.

34. Aine – is an Irish goddess of summer, wealth and sovereignty. She is associated with midsummer and the sun, and is sometimes represented by a red mare. She is remembered for overcoming adversity and exacting powerful revenge on the man who wronged her.

35. Loki – is a god in Norse mythology who is often simply described as the 'trickster' god for his love of playing pranks on both his family of gods and his or their opponents. He sometimes assists the gods and sometimes behaves maliciously towards them. Loki's positive relations with the gods end with his role in engineering the death of the god Baldr, and eventually, Váli binds Loki with the entrails of one of his sons. With the onset of Ragnarök, Loki is foretold to slip free from his bonds and to fight against the gods.

36. Hestia – is the virgin goddess of the hearth, the right ordering of domesticity, the family, the home, and the state. She maintained the hearth fire of both Mount Olympus and the homes of the ancient Greeks. This fire was important because it was used for cooking and for keeping the home warm. Hestia also helped to keep peace in the family and taught people how to build their homes.



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A thesis by
Jonas Mindaugas Paberzis

[O]

Press Play

What are the current most prominent values we propagate and worship in video games? I am interested in investigating how our value system and, in an allegorical sense, the pantheon of worshiped gods has been redesigned, reinvented, or remained the same as before in our currently most dominant, both in use and profit, new medium – video games. I have been researching both topics of the “value = worship” equation and the industry, culture and community of video games for quite a while in various works of mine. In them I addressed modern idols of oppression and expression, and the freedom of digital interaction while crossing over to reality. By the end of this thesis, I hope to contextualise and find out what exactly some of the more vivid values are that we internalise and worship within these digital experiences we so gladly devote ourselves to. I wish to explore the history and social aspects of worship in religion and mythology up to the modern day, followed by a brief history and present context of video games in “western” society, and conclude with the analysis of selected datasets and contemporary references to refine and isolate the values most common and present in this newly emerging coded field, that I then recontextualise and portray as “a pantheon of deities”.

During this whole process I intend to use mostly qualitative artistic research methods, building up from the very base cultural, societal and psychological concepts towards historical and modern examples to create a context both for the importance of my thesis question and foreseeable conclusion. Conclusively, I have proceeded step by step to support my initial assumption, but by uncovering deeper connections and more drastic issues I surpassed the anticipations I had when I started my research.


Tutorial

The fields of societal mythological, religious worship and the values we share, portray, consume in our most modern and prominent mediums, in this case video games, have always interested me. Even more so when I started questioning the links between them that kept seemingly popping up as I delved deeper into these topics, both in theoretical research and daily active engagement. More and more essays, books and other online texts about systemic issues, historical cultural speculation and analysis, theological reasonings and generational tendencies seemed almost completely intertwined or allegorical to these links.

The question of what I or those close to me were taught through the digital storylines and archetypes, – we so gladly worshipped – also seemed to arise. I use the word “worship” in the sense of people in the modern age are devoting their wealth, time and focus while internalizing the given values of these designed worlds similarly to all other societies through known history building from a certain dogmatic structure brough forth by religion, otherwise, mythology in at the time most prominent mediums such as oral tradition, still image, writing, etc. These social value systems dictate communally agreed upon behaviours both represented by and enforced on an individual, they are subject to change as the community develops but since they represent a certain collective standard, they as well have a tendency to stagnate and oppress.

A clear example of such a more “western” 1 associative deity and / or the act of worship translating into the value upheld by the group that praise it can be observed especially vividly within the ancient Greek pantheon. Each individual god, goddess or other story/myth worthy character represents a specific virtue in itself, often even the word describing it deriving from the name/title of these icons. Zeus, the god of thunder but also hospitality (the ancient Greek word xenia (hospitality) linked with Zeus Xenios), Athena, goddess of war but also wisdom and clear mindedness, Artemis, goddess of the hunt but also respect for the balance of nature, Aphroditie, goddess of beauty but also overwhelming love and connectedness, Hephaestus, god of fire but also smithery and innovation, so on and so on, both explaining and contextualising not just core natural phenomena but also very crucial societal values that the communities at the time agreed upon. To further the point, since ancient Greece was quite the expansive civilisation (amongst others at the time, such as Egypt, Persia, etc.), they also specified worship to a smaller selection of these deities according to the most glorified values in each region. That is why famously Athens and Sparta 2, both focussing on icons of war, they each chose a representation that fits with how they view the act too – Athens opting for wisdom and strategy in battle, while Sparta saw more importance on dedication and brute force. This “worship=value” equation, of course, goes further than just the Mediterranean coast and can be interconnected with other societies, for example, the ancient Greek “goddess of the dawn” – Eos, then later in Roman mythology named Aurora, shares resemblance with the Lithuanian deity – Ausrine, (originating the word dawn in Lithuanian – ausra), the Irish deity – Brigid, the Slavic – Zorya, the Norse – Dellingr and the Germanic – Eostre, which even originates the modern celebration of the Christian myth of the dawn / rebirth – Easter, as it was a way to integrate the new Christian practices with people of other, older beliefs celebrating the solstice. In a sense trying to bond over these same exact separately upheld values. With and through time the practices of worship did not necessarily diminish, as hordes of religious preachers would have you believe, but developed and translated with the change of communication mediums and newer media.

The oral traditions sharing these godlike allegories of high regard even in the very beginning of the human age were accompanied by acting out these storylines and depicting these characters in still image. Later, followed by writing down more exact plots and archetypes, as example, the bible, but also any of the highly regarded memetic myths filled with moral values we as a society praise and consume, such as the works of Tzu 3, then Shakespeare, then Shelley 4, then Murakami 5, etc. With the development of new technology new ways of recording and translation came to be, reaching the public who now devote and worship the gods of the cinema, after video killed the radio star, with their money, time, attention and silence. These “pixelated gods” then followed the individual and the collective society back home to their television sets. After which and most recently they started interacting and engaging with us in a more in-depth way as video games are drastically overshadowing any other medium by daily use, profit and expression in our little “western” world.

All of this randomly ranted through and loosely interconnected together, I must return and reiterate the very first question I brought up for you, my dear reader: What new or simply redesigned / rebranded old gods (values) do we worship, share and internalise through video games? Or via simply our most prominent and potential filled medium /media 6?


Level 1:
Mythology, Religion and the “Worship = Value” Equation

New branches of government, mythology and religion, both clinging to the past and abandoning it to focus on the future, develop through changing and preserving values that a society upholds and, in a sense, “worships”. In his book The Selfish Gene, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins coins the term “meme”, basing the theory of memetics on Darwinian evolution within the fields of culture and societal information transfer.1 In the vein of a gene, it is instead a “unit of culture” which propagates through the minds of individuals, jumping from one to another. Thinking of it analogous to genetics, a meme is only as successful as its contribution to the effectiveness of its host, similarly to myth it is only effective if it is helpful in guidance and upholding value.

More recently, that is where the wider spread and less defined expression of meme culture comes from. Sharing certain digital representations of emotions, ideas, socio-political views, types of humour and values over the world wide web. French sociologist David Emile Durkheim defined these specific values as social facts - things external to, and coercive of, the actor. They develop from collective influences and in doing so do not emanate singularly from the one. They cannot be analysed through simple reasoning or thought but require a study of history and socio-politics in order to observe their long-lasting, deeply rooted effects and understand their complex nature. The concepts of these memetic social facts bring about a clearer image of the previously mentioned interconnected pantheons - why there are deities representing the same human ideas between cultures and through time, as well as, why these deities differ between each other with how they approach or interpret their assigned ideas according to the approach and interpretation of the societies worshipping them. The American theologian and biblical scholar Mark Smith has written extensively on issues relevant to myths moving from one people to another in his work on “divine translatability”. Responding to and further developing on the works of Assmann, Smith in his incredibly detailed book God in Translation: Deities in Cross-Cultural Discourse in the Biblical World offers a basic statement of the concept: “translatability involves specific equation identifications of deities across cultures and the larger recognition of deities of other cultures in connection to one's own deities.”2

SNL Greek Gods

Figure 1: “Greek Gods” sketch from “Saturday Night Live”, Season 37. 2011.

SMITE Roster

Figure 2: First season playable god character roster of “SMITE”. 2014.

Smith also brings up the famous example of Herodotus 7 who, in his travels to foreign lands, recognised an Assyrian, Arabian, and Persian goddess as versions of Aphrodite, Horus 8 as Apollo 9, and Osiris 10 as Dionysus 11. For example, we can recognise such allegorical value system applications and development with a few key differences analysing yet again the ancient Greek to modern Christian myths. Firstly, and most notably, the actual idea of worshiping these deities or deity, that at its core represents accepted communal values, has changed drastically with the widespread influence of monotheistic Abrahamic religions. As Stephen Fry in his book Mythos: The Greek Myths Retold so beautifully puts it: “Greeks did not grovel before their gods. They were aware of their vain need to be supplicated and venerated, but they believed men were their equal. Their myths understand that whoever created this baffling world, with its cruelties, wonders, caprices, beauties, madness and injustice, must themselves have been cruel, wonderful, capricious, beautiful, mad and unjust […] it is their refusal to see any divine beings as perfect, whole and complete of themselves, whether Zeus, Moros 12 or Prometheus 13, that makes the Greeks so satisfying.”3 In other words, the worship comes with understanding and internalising the relatable metaphor and worth of it without unreasonably glorifying it beyond mortal doubt. That contrasting with the oppressively perfect, unfathomable and incomprehensible image of the modern Christian God, resulting in a cultural conservatism as the religion further continues to exist in our ever-developing world without questioning the relativity of certain values and prejudices it propagates. Other examples of moral or exemplary differences between these mythoi can be more clearly seen in the specific overlapping narratives that share similar if not the same motives and subjects. If we take the storylines of Philemon and Baucis (Ovid’s Metamorphoses) 14 and Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19:1) 15, both depicting a divine visit in disguise, in the first of Zeus and Hermes and in the latter of two angels, we see the common highly regarded value of hospitality, but at the same time the changes made to the story also depicts drastic societal moral differences too. In this story of theoxenia other underlying worshiped values, of eternal love and devotion (between two people) and the acceptance of a life well lived, are depicted as the elderly couple agree to turn around together to then be morphed into trees, symbolising this and the persistent connection to nature. In contrast to, the guilt-ridden ideas of human debauchery, vilification of alternative sexuality, genuine remorse for other people, and the objectifying and violent expression towards women, depicted as Lot offers his daughters to be mass raped instead of the male presenting angels, because the whole city wants to “know them” 16 in the biblical sense, and afterwards his wife being punished (turned to a pillar of salt) for turning around towards the burning city in grief and thus defying God. And with this divine translation the translation of societal values is apparent. Or the lack thereof. It is also adamantly clear within a singular myth’s development through time, too.

American Gods Poster

Figure 3: Character posters for “American Gods”, Season 1. 2017.

Taking, again, as example the bible, we can see examples of forced and sneaky (purposefully hidden and minute) changes in the language of scripture through history for the purpose of societal value shifts and oppression. For instance, the widespread new reasonings of religious homophobia since 1983, following the U.S. AIDS epidemic, explored more in-depth by the theological writer Ed Oxford, as an American company Biblica 17 spent enormous amounts of money to retranslate the German bible by replacing the words “boy molester” or “paedophile” and the phrase “lie with a boy” to “homosexual” (the word being first coined in Germany 1863) and “lie with another man”, and then later on importing this new reedited bible back to America to then be translated yet again into English and mass published throughout the continent. But, as introduced before, the change and spread of mythology and worship of the modern age is not just solely confided within what we regard as religion or religious beliefs. This type of social value mythology, either rooted in religion or pop culture, or anything else that carries the same memetic tendencies, resonates through the population influencing it and representing it simultaneously.

Rigged by Kate Cooper

Figure 4: Kate Cooper – “Rigged”. 2016.

She Who Sees the Unknown by Morehshin Allahyari

Figure 5: Morehshin Allahyari – “She Who Sees the Unknown”. 2016.

As the French literary theorist and semiotician Roland Barthes states in his book Mythologies: “The cultural work done in the past by gods and epic sagas is now done by laundry-detergent commercials and comic-strip character” – or the industry, the community and the culture of rich, expansive, fluid, immersive, allegorical, exemplary, full of endless technological and socio-political potential, yet still clinging, at the very least in the mainstream, to outdated views of certain social myths – video games.4


Level 2:
History and Present Context of Video Games in Society

The history of video games, from their creation to this very day, if studied even in the most basic sense shows a clear map of value change and thus the change of the industry, not in any way separated from but instead influenced by the world around it. In a sense being not quite a mirror but more a caricature of the surrounding society as any potential-filled artistic medium should be (even if, just as any revered previous medium, it still stays oppressed by the ideologies of the past and those that came before it). As every previous “generation”, the “generation” before us opted out to express from the very inception of the video game world that it is a passing phase and, it being a new somehow “foreign” medium, pushed the blame of violence and corruption onto it.

As Douglas Adams writes in his book The Salmon of Doubt: “I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies: 1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. 2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. 3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.”5

This seems to ring quite true and somehow timeless when we take as example even the radio when it was first invented and called the “new invader of the privacy of the home”, “a disturbing influence” and how “it has gained an invincible hold of their children” according to the American Journal of Psychiatry.6 Yet from tongue to paint, to dance and song, to pen, to print, to vibrating membranes moving the air around ear drums, to light projected on fabric and then shot at glass through cylinders, to coded pixels responding to our touch – the storylines, architypes, moral subjects and socio-political views as values have been retold, rewritten, redesigned and rebranded through time and through culture, teaching and sharing what we agree upon and / or what we don’t and shouldn’t. Apart from the simple, but so incredibly important for our little modern capital “C”, the capitalist “western” world, fact that the video game industry in 2021 was estimated to be worth over 178 billion dollars ($178,000,000,000.00), more than the print, the movie and the social networking industries combined, the act of play and interaction is simply and unmistakably crucial to human nature and society, to teaching, to evolving as people, it is primary to and a necessary condition of the generation of culture.7

Johan Huizinga, a Dutch historian and one of the founders of modern cultural history, states in his book Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture: “Our point of departure must be the conception of an almost childlike play-sense expressing itself in various play-forms, some serious, some playful, but all rooted in ritual and productive of culture by allowing the innate human need of rhythm, harmony, change, alternation, contrast and climax, etc., to unfold in full richness.”8 Accepted or not, the medium, the industry, the community and the culture of video games exists and is as deeply rooted in today’s society as society is deeply rooted in it. Not losing track of worship and value, them relating and correlating as one, they are fully expressed and structured upon within video games. From ancient tales of allegorical godly figures carved into stone to pushing “E” or “X” 18 to interact with them.

Before developing the point any further, as the development of myth was previously expanded upon, so should there be at the very least the bare minimum of explanations of video game history. In October 1958, physicist Villiam Higinbotham created what is thought to be the very first video game on an oscilloscope resembling the far more famous later released game PONG!.9 After this invention non research targeted gaming started being developed until it was finally released in arcades in 1971 and for the first home video game console in 1972. Even if overlapping a new measurement of console generations has begun and with-it new heights of graphics, immersion, accessibility, depth and complexity. First 1972, second 1976, third 1983, fourth 1987, fifth 1993, sixth 1998, seventh 2005, eighth 2012 and finally the ninth generation 2020. But with all this progress hand in hand came oppression and stagnation copied to a T from the society it was developing in. Before 1983 video games in general were created and marketed to a wider demographic of individuals – famously designed, developed, coded and founded by a significantly less disappointing ratio of men to women. The games were sold as entertainment for the entire nuclear family, not to mention, that by focussing on a more inclusive crowd the actual gamers were more diverse. As Ms. Pac-Man (independent in her title and in her admiration, though still stereotyped in her depiction as an independent woman) was a wildly more successful successor – Electronic Games Magazine in 1982 wrote: “the game’s record shattering success derives from its overwhelming popularity among female gamers”.1011 Yet all of that changed with the “video game crash” of 1983, as publishers started flooding the market with subpar releases such as the infamous and downright despised “worst game ever made” – E.T. for the Atari 2600, and most adults simply stopped playing them.12 Following the crash, when it came time to market the brand-new Nintendo Entertainment System, to revive the industry, instead of selling it in the electronics section, Nintendo started selling it in the toy section and since toys were separated into a binary selection of boy and girl, they made the decision to target the male demographic. This decision was followed up with relentless marketing (by Nintendo and all other top brands such as Atari, Sega, etc.) based on toxically masculine attributes, at the time regarded as the absolute norm in other industries, focussing on the objectification of women, oppressive gender roles, the sexualisation of children or gaming and the simple alienation of any other demographic.

1980's-2020's Video Game Advertisement 1 1980's-2020's Video Game Advertisement 2 1980's-2020's Video Game Advertisement 3 1980's-2020's Video Game Advertisement 4 1980's-2020's Video Game Advertisement 5 1980's-2020's Video Game Advertisement 6 1980's-2020's Video Game Advertisement 7 1980's-2020's Video Game Advertisement 8 1980's-2020's Video Game Advertisement 9 1980's-2020's Video Game Advertisement 10 1980's-2020's Video Game Advertisement 11 1980's-2020's Video Game Advertisement 12

Figure 6: A small sample collection of the homophobic, racist, sexist, rape propagating, etc. video game advertisements in magazines and TV, popular between the late 1980’s to the early 2020’s.

Tragically so, since throughout the whole of the industry to this day, according to Entertainment Software Association: Annual Report 2015, more adult women play video games than even teenage boys do.13 This type of behaviour resulted in the significant decrease of non-male engagement in both the production and consumption of this budding new medium. With the decrease of in any way varied engagement and consistent gatekeeping, gaslighting and cognitive dissonance 19 from the community, that feels violently entitled in their singular white, straight, “western”, cis male representation (which the before mentioned, movie, tv, literature – any outside industry at all influenced, marketing has led to), inevitable stagnation, the monotony of broken triple A titles 20 and xenophobic tribalist white saviour complexes expressed in misguided online harassment campaigns disguised as “social movements”, such as “GamerGate” 21 in 2014 (later, manifesting from this example, the forming of world wide web attack group culture into political, subsequently social stands and patterns of behaviour, in a sense worshiping the act of hatred, spilling into real life), started to seek solidity as the status quo: making the games worse, losing the industry money and propagating toxic, dehumanising and dismissing behaviours within the interacting society, picked up from the sheer force of habit of marketing and lack of representation from previous generations of mediums. Such as the stagnation and oppression of certain cultural / religious / mythological worship, the same are some specific outdated and very blatantly violently oppressive values within the new art form of video games, mirroring and creating a cartoonish hyperbolic caricature of the surrounding society from the 80’s until now.

Graph of the 1984-2020 Decrease of Women In Computer Sciences

Figure 7: A graph depicting the drastic decrease of women in computer sciences since 1984, according to the National Science Foundation, American Bar Association of Medical Colleges, made by the Code/Art non-profit organisation. 2020.

But all that said, the bright shining future and present possibility for truly feminist, in the sense of equally representative, equally non-oppressive and equally non-discriminatory – as the American author, professor, and feminist social activist, bell hooks so eloquently put it in her book Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center: “The struggle to end sexist oppression that focuses on destroying the cultural basis for such domination strengthens other liberation struggles. Individuals who fight for the eradication of sexism without struggles to end racism or classism undermine their own efforts. Individuals who fight for the eradication of racism or classism while supporting sexist oppression are helping to maintain the cultural basis of all forms of group oppression.”, expression and the opportunity for these completely logical, intersectional, unnecessarily overly vilified beliefs / values is and always has been there.14

A Collection of Objs by Jazmin Morris 1 A Collection of Objs by Jazmin Morris 2

Figure 8: Jazmin Morris – “a collection of objs”. 2019.


Level 3:
Deities / Values of the Video Game Pantheon We Worship Now

Now, anxiously hopeful for the future and furiously critical of the past and present, after two chapters of laying down the sociological and theological, contemporary and historical groundwork for this topic, the questioning “if” we actually worship these digitally displayed values, “if” our devotion to them and to the forceful propagation of them is actually that drastic and impactful, or “if” we even had / have a choice in choosing them, is finally and completely redundant. The “if” by this point becomes blatantly purposeful and intentionally malicious ignorance, no longer fuelled by cognitive dissonance but by the need to uphold a systemically oppressive 22 personally favourable structure.

Yet before any reader, feeling as if their previous representation, fulfilment or deeply positive attachment to video games as a whole disregard anything that has been pointed out so far, enters a fight or flight 23 response, due to a part of their identity being attacked by anything that has thus far been discussed. Then, please, Dear Reader, think of the contrast, in regards to all the presented facts, between how relatively small and monochromatic your included community is and how overwhelmingly, almost at the sense of a hyperobject 24, large, diverse and purposefully collectively insulted, dehumanised, disregarded and dismissed are the communities who barely ever, or maybe even just recently, solely to fill a quota, had a chance to see any small thing to associate with. As the already previously introduced bell hooks in her book Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism writes: “For how does one overthrow, change or even challenge a system that you have been taught to admire, to love, to believe in?”15

Even if drastic or overly dramatic sounding, these thoughts, apart from being exemplary supported by all the previous research analysed in this thesis, shine through in other works crucial to the field such as: The Ethics of Playing, Researching, and Teaching Games in the Writing Classroom by lecturer and professor of rhetoric Richard Colby, associate professor of English Matthew S. S. Johnson and associate teaching professor Rebekah Shultz Colby, Augmented Learning: Research and Design of Mobile Educational Games by the director of the Scheller Teacher Education Program and professor Eric Klopfer, Values at Play in Digital Games by the founding director of Tiltfactor Lab, the CEO of Resonym, artist and designer Mary Flanagan and professor of information science Helen Nissenbaum, A Method for Discovering Values in Digital Games by design researcher, lecturer, applied mathematics instructor and author Shadi Kheirandish and professor of designing interactive systems and author Matthias Rauterberg, The Gamification of Learning and Instruction by professor of instructional technology and author Karl M. Klapp, The Relationship between Player’s Value Systems and Their In-Game Behavior in a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game by post-doctoral fellow Chaoguang Wang and assistant professor of electrical engineering Gino Yu, and, not to mention, Game Value by professor and author Vedat Yiğitoğlu, in which he introduces the reader to the subject matter by stating that: “”Game” as a term, implies the game beyond its meaning and expands on it. This work solidifies the idea that, in essence games are “a form of communication” between numerous planes of thought. As such along with their rising importance, it’s no longer sufficient for games to be investigated under any single discipline, instead requiring the subject to be investigated under a variety of disciplines.”16171819202122

The value of representation and diversity or lack thereof in, at the very least, most recognisable and popular triple A titles, which stand at the forefront of the industry, exemplifies a widely disregarded, ignored and quite often purposefully disputed bias, that is propagated not just by the advertisers and producers but also by a substantial part of the generation of gamers raised while taught outdated and stagnating socio-political ideals integrated from the mediums predating and around the development of this one, so eloquently discussed in the Misogyny, Racism and Homophobia: Where Do Video Games Stand? conference presentation by video game developer and known spokesperson for diversity in video games Manveer Heir.23 The impact of some of these mass worshiped video game culture values, for example “militarism” 25 is worrying and clearly detrimental. As is incredibly pedantically dissected and brought forth into the spotlight by associate professor of communication studies and author Roger Stahl in his book Militainment, Inc. in which he argues that a new interactive mode of militarized entertainment is recruiting its audience as nationalised, tribalist and xenophobic virtual-citizen soldiers, by presenting and viewing war and the designed righteousness or play of it as entertainment – or “militainment” – in contemporary pop culture.24 But as I keep reiterating again and again, in this new, still budding, promising interactive and continuously developing medium there is still tremendous potential to fight and unlearn oppressive social facts and memetic tendencies groomed into the public consciousness. Not just that, but there is and has been from the very beginning decisive hope and determination within the wider community of this ground-breaking industry to use it for revolutionary and, in the most attainable and realistic sense of the word, utopian social visions.

Misogyny, Racism and Homophobia: Where Do Video Games Stand? by Manveer Heir

Figure 9: A slide from the presentation “Misogyny, Racism and Homophobia: Where Do Video Games Stand?” at GDC 2014.

Serious Games III: Immersion by Harun Farocki

Figure 10: Harun Farocki – “Serious Games III: Immersion”. 2009.

With this sentiment in mind, it is finally time to return to our core questions: what do we decide to worship in our modern day, what are the values we choose to propagate and internalise? In seeking another, more quantitative, granted still relatively subjective, hint of an answer to these queries, I have developed through a multi-step process to refine a selection of these worshipped values, appearing in direct response to the player’s interaction with the game. Firstly, collecting rankings, ratings and charts of video games according to their popularity, income, sales, community sizes, etc. with at the time most recent data. Then proceeding to cross-reference the titles of each dataset and compiling a new one according to the frequency of repetition throughout. After which picking the twenty seemingly most popular through all datasets and creating a list of possible interactions and immediate responses for each game. And lastly, cross-referencing the frequency of repetition of the responses to create yet another dataset in which socio-political values, akin to those of religious / mythological deities in days gone by, would be attributed to them. These top ten most common, but in no way the only, values, personified representations (given my own fun little broken portmanteau 26 names) and relative sister deities from other pantheons, representing our own designed reflections of the contemporary world, through the pre-coded and pre-rendered mirror of video games, in my research ended up being:

1. “Ab’spre’sa” – the deity of “abandoning, self-preservation and salvation”, an utterly selfish version of the ancient Greek goddess Soteria 27,

2. “Imp’ex’up” – the deity of “implementation, extension and upgrading”, analogous with the godly Greek smith Hephaestus,

3. “Consum’im” – the deity of “consumerism”, a perverse ouroborous 28 offshoot of the Roman Bacchus,

4. “Vi’mur” – the deity of “violence and murder”, resembling an amalgamation of all the Greek Phonoi 29,

5. “Spe’eef” – the deity of “speed and efficiency”, similar to a drugged out Roman Mercury 30,

6. “Lu’sta’su” – the deity of “lurking, stalking and survival”, like a bloodthirsty version of the Greek titan Lelantus 31,

7. “Gri’pr” – the deity of “grinding and progression”, mimicking a Kafkaesque 32 Roman Janus 33,

8. “Fr’a’ove” – the deity of “freedom, agility and overcoming”, a less fulfilling version of the Celtic goddess Aine 34,

9. “As’vica” – the deity of “association and vicariousness”, a less family trauma plagued Norse Loki 35, and

10. “Nour’ri’co” – the deity of “nourishment, ritual and cooking”, similar to the Greek Hestia 36.

My Quantitative Research 1 My Quantitative Research 2 My Quantitative Research 3 My Quantitative Research 4 My Quantitative Research 5

Figure 11: My research process of cross-referencing top video game lists, their top contenders, the immediate outcomes of a player’s interaction within them, values attributed to the outcomes, and the top most popular values emerging from these steps.

Each of these made-up digital deities representing a completely real collection of values, from a real selection of games, picked from real lists of numerical data based on interaction, to simply make clear in a hyperbolic sense that in no way is it “JUST A GAME” but it is a continued, translated and pixelated way of worship, reinvented, redesigned or even created a new for the modern day from the ones in the distant past, that fair maidens, fierce warriors and live animals would be sacrificed to. Only in contrast now we sacrifice time, money, wealth, physical and mental health, and whatever space we have still echoing inside our heads to internalise what we worship in these video games (as well as the rest of the internalised media around them), to learn the social facts, the memetic tendencies and teach them or act out (systemically, violently, dehumanizingly or otherwise possibly more positively) according to them in contrast to other people.

1980's-2020's Video Games With Feminst Or Inclusive Values 1 1980's-2020's Video Games With Feminst Or Inclusive Values 2 1980's-2020's Video Games With Feminst Or Inclusive Values 3 1980's-2020's Video Games With Feminst Or Inclusive Values 4 1980's-2020's Video Games With Feminst Or Inclusive Values 5 1980's-2020's Video Games With Feminst Or Inclusive Values 6 1980's-2020's Video Games With Feminst Or Inclusive Values 7 1980's-2020's Video Games With Feminst Or Inclusive Values 8 1980's-2020's Video Games With Feminst Or Inclusive Values 9 1980's-2020's Video Games With Feminst Or Inclusive Values 10 1980's-2020's Video Games With Feminst Or Inclusive Values 11 1980's-2020's Video Games With Feminst Or Inclusive Values 12

Figure 12: A small sample collection of video games with more inclusive and feminist values between the late 1980’s to the early 2020’s. (“Caper in the Castro”, 1989. “GayBlade”, 1992. “The Orion Conspiracy”, 1995. “Fallout 2”, 1998. “Lim”, 2012. “Gone Home”, 2013. “Radiator 2”, 2017. “Dys4ia”, 2012. “Journey”, 2012. “Dream Daddy: A Dad Dating Simulator”, 2017. “Life Is Strange” series, 2015-2021. “Foobar Vs. the DEA”, 1996.)


Boss Fight

Having gone step by step building up from the very base cultural, societal and psychological concepts towards historical and modern examples to create a context both for the importance of my thesis question and the conclusion of “what are the current most prominent values we propagate and worship in video games”, we arrive at the previously exemplified values in the last chapter and my allegorical redesigns of their godly counterparts which permeate through our collective subconscious as the dichotomy of progressive and stagnating memetic myths, systemic norms and social facts. In the hierarchy, image and interaction of these modern and not at all new archetypes we can more clearly see what we as “western” society really devote ourselves to, what do we uphold, what do we support? And what hope and beautiful possibilities for new ever-expanding worlds, including and representing anyone looking for such a supportive and fulfilling mirror, do we have only if we indeed take an admittedly hard but mandatory step to call ourselves and the ones around us out. Conclusively, we should not dismiss or fearmonger video games as the creators and propagators of all modern evils, preaching the past both in medium and decade as ideology, nor should we accept the socially enforced worst part of video games, their environments and values as a norm, solely because someone said it is “just a game”.




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V. Sherr, Ian, Carson, Erin. GamerGate to Trump: How video game culture blew everything up. CNET, 27 Nov 2017, gamergate to trump: how video game culture blew everything up. Accessed 5 Jan 2022.

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1. Dawkins, Richard. The Selfish Gene. Oxford University Press, 1976.

2. Smith, Mark. God in Translation: Deities in Cross-Cultural Discourse in the Biblical World. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2008.

3. Fry, Stephen. Mythos: The Greek Myths Retold. Michael Joseph, 2017.

4. Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. Les Lettres nouvelles, 1957.

5. Adams, Douglas. The Salmon of Doubt. Pocket Books, 2002.

6. Eisenberg, Azriel. American Journal of Psychiatry. American Psychiatric Association, 1936.

7. Clemens, J. Video gaming market in the United States – statistics and facts. Statista, 19 Nov. 2021, video gaming market in the United States – statistics and facts. Accessed 5 Jan 2022.

8. Huizinga, Johan. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture. Random House, 1938.

9. Electronic Games Magazine. Reese Publishing Company, Inc., 1982.

10. Entertainment Software Association: Annual Report 2015. Entertainment Software Association, 2016. entertainment software association: annual report 2015, PDF file.

11. hooks, bell. Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center. South End Press, 1984.

12. hooks, bell. Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism. South End Press. 1981.

13. Colby, Richard, Johnson Mathew S.S., Colby, Rebekah Shultz. The Ethics of Playing, Researching, and Teaching Games in the Writing Classroom. Palgrave Macmillan. 2021.

14. Klopfer, Eric. Augmented Learning: Research and Design of Mobile Educational Games. The MIT Press. 2008.

14. Flanagan, Mary, Nissenbaum, Helen. Values at Play in Digital Games. The MIT Press. 2016.

15. Kheirandish, Shadi, Rauterberg, Matthias. A Method for Discovering Values in Digital Games. DiGRA, Tokyo, Japan, 2007. Situated Play.

16. Kapp, Karl M. The Gamification of Learning and Instruction. Wiley. 2012.

17. Wang, Chaoguang, Yu, Gino. The Relationship between Player’s Value Systems and Their In-Game Behavior in a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game. International Journal of Computer Games Technology. 2017.

18. Yiğitoğlu, Vedat. Game Value. Gece Kitapligi Yayinlari. 2020.

19. Heir, Manveer. Misogyny, Racism and Homophobia: Where Do Video Games Stand? BioWare Montreal, GDC 2014, Moscone Center, San Francisco, USA.

20. Stahl, Roger. Militainment, Inc. Routledge. 2009.


  1. Dawkins, Richard.
    The Selfish Gene.
    Oxford University Press,
    1976.

  2. Smith, Mark.
    God in Translation: Deities in Cross-Cultural Discourse in the Biblical World.
    Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.,
    2008.

  3. Fry, Stephen.
    Mythos: The Greek Myths Retold.
    Michael Joseph,
    2017.

  4. Barthes, Roland.
    Mythologies.
    Les Lettres nouvelles,
    1957.

  5. Adams, Douglas.
    The Salmon of Doubt.
    Pocket Books,
    2002.

  6. Eisenberg, Azriel.
    American Journal of Psychiatry.
    American Psychiatric Association,
    1936.

  7. Clemens, J.
    Video gaming market in the United States – statistics and facts.
    Statista, 19 Nov. 2021,
    video gaming market in the United States – statistics and facts.
    Accessed 5 Jan 2022.

  8. Huizinga, Johan.
    Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture.
    Random House,
    1938.

  9. PONG!.
    Atari, Inc., Namco,
    1972.

  10. Ms. Pac-Man.
    Midway Games,
    1981.

  11. Electronic Games Magazine.
    Reese Publishing Company, Inc.,
    1982.

  12. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.
    Atari, Inc., Namco,
    1982.

  13. Entertainment Software Association: Annual Report 2015.
    Entertainment Software Association,
    2016.
    entertainment software association: annual report 2015, PDF file.

  14. hooks, bell.
    Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center.
    South End Press,
    1984.

  15. hooks, bell.
    Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism.
    South End Press.
    1981.

  16. Colby, Richard, Johnson Mathew S.S., Colby, Rebekah Shultz.
    The Ethics of Playing, Researching, and Teaching Games in the Writing Classroom.
    Palgrave Macmillan.
    2021.

  17. Klopfer, Eric.
    Augmented Learning: Research and Design of Mobile Educational Games.
    The MIT Press.
    2008.

  18. Flanagan, Mary, Nissenbaum, Helen.
    Values at Play in Digital Games.
    The MIT Press.
    2016.

  19. Kheirandish, Shadi, Rauterberg, Matthias.
    A Method for Discovering Values in Digital Games.
    DiGRA, Tokyo, Japan, 2007.
    Situated Play.

  20. Kapp, Karl M.
    The Gamification of Learning and Instruction.
    Wiley.
    2012.

  21. Wang, Chaoguang, Yu, Gino.
    The Relationship between Player’s Value Systems and Their In-Game Behavior in a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game.
    International Journal of Computer Games Technology.
    2017.

  22. Yiğitoğlu, Vedat.
    Game Value.
    Gece Kitapligi Yayinlari.
    2020.

  23. Heir, Manveer.
    Misogyny, Racism and Homophobia: Where Do Video Games Stand?
    BioWare Montreal, GDC 2014,
    Moscone Center, San Francisco, USA.

  24. Stahl, Roger.
    Militainment, Inc.
    Routledge.
    2009.