A theologian on gods in gaming

By Cory Doctorow at 6:45 am Sunday, Mar 23

Check out this fascinating exchange between Stewart Butterfield, the founder of Ludicorp, a gaming company developing a massively multiplayer game called Game Neverending, and AKMA, a theologian blogger. Stewart's designing the religious pantheon in GNE and wanted AKMA's advice:

Interactions with the divine should have just enough predictability to make them worth bothering with, but absolutely no more (I except simple devices, such as T'aach boosting your karma for eating a mint). The vital element that this contingency serves is making it not worth players' while to try to *work* the game by (as it were) coercing divinities. I'll repeat later on: deities should be only slightly predictable enough for players to observe that they do indeed matter. In fact, it would make a worthwhile argument *within* the game, whether one need adhere to any divinity or not. If you could attain that degree of subtlety, you'd have won outright.

Regarding game play, I ought to be able to interact productively with my patron's enemy-spirit, even if just to placate her or him. Think of classical divinities; they're less mechanistic (by far) than our imaginations would tend to make them. It makes perfect sense for an adherent of T'aach to make a propitiatory sacrifice to Thbwappo, the Source of Halitosis even though the two of them are mortally opposed to one another, and T'aach should be nettled by this only if the adherent in question is a keystone figure. People don't matter that much to divinities.

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