Rejected Religion Podcast E38 Free Content Dr. Lars de Wildt, The Pop Theology of Video Games

My guest this month is Dr. Lars de Wildt. Lars is Assistant Professor in Media and Cultural Industries at the Centre for Media and Journalism Studies, at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands. Lars studies how media cultures and industries make contemporary worldviews. Examples are how media industries construct 'global' culture and how local audiences consume it; how Western game developers sold religion to secular audiences; how online platforms birth conspiracy theories; and how Western videogames adapt to Chinese players and policies. His first book,  The Pop Theology of Videogames: Producing and Playing with Religion was published Open Access with Amsterdam University Press. Lars was part of the AHRC-funded project "Everything Is Connected: Conspiracy Theories in the Age of the Internet," was previously a (visiting) researcher at the universities of Leuven, Heidelberg, Bremen, Tampere, Jyväskylä, Montréal, and Deakin, and is working on an NWO Veni project about how the hegemonic worldviews of Western videogames adapt to Chinese players and policies. He is also a Member of YARN (Young ARts Network), anEssay-editor of Tijdschrift Sociologie/ Sociology Magazine, a Fellow at the Centre for Religion, Conflict and Globalization, at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands, a Member of Faculty of the Consultative Body for Teaching Policy (FOO), and a Research Fellow at the Institute for Media Studies, at the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium. In this interview, Lars discusses his book The Pop Theology of Videogames: Producing and Playing with Religion. In it, he is offered up the question by a game designer, “what does religion have to do with video games, anyway?” This question opens our discussion on the relationship between games and religion, the differences between developers and players approaches to gaming, how video games can affect players’ worldviews, and how role-playing games can potentially contribute to a sense of personal identity. These are just a few of the points Lars covers in this interview.