The first chunk of the Persuasive Games reading had to do with historical games and how playing through these docugames gives the player chance to play through a perspective on a historical event and see how the designer colors the experience. The Waco game seemed very intriguing as not only does it show what happened during that siege but having to use the cult’s interpretation of Revelation to activate certain powers means you can more easily understand what exactly was so radical about their theology.
The second part I felt was more pertinent to our discussion, more explicitly to how games can condense vast fields of knowledge into more digestible fragments such as the very nebulous concepts of “Grassroots Politics” or just “Politics” into games like Howard Dean Takes Iowa. Using such simplified forms of messier real world concepts could be useful to illustrate many messy religious concepts. The first thing that popped into my head are sorts of introductory game to various religions where being a member of that religion is condensed into easier to conceptualize bits that the player can then play through and get a better idea of what people are talking about when that religion is discussed.
