FICTIONAL PRACTICES OF SPIRITUALITY I

»Fictional Practices of Spirituality« provides critical insight into the implementation of belief, mysticism, religion, and spirituality into worlds of fiction, be it interactive or non-interactive. This first volume focuses on interactive, virtual worlds – may that be the digital realms of video games and VR applications or the imaginary spaces of life action role-playing and soul-searching practices. It features analyses of spirituality as gameplay facilitator, sacred spaces and architecture in video game geography, religion in video games and spiritual acts and their dramaturgic function in video games, tabletop, or LARP, among other topics. The contributors offer a first-time ever comprehensive overview of play-rites as spiritual incentives and playful spirituality in various medial incarnations.

Leonardo Marcato is a lecturer of philosophy of computer games at Universität Klagenfurt, Austria. He has a Master’s degree in religious studies from the University of Padua, Italy, and a PhD in philosophy from Ca’ Foscari University. His research focuses on intercultural religion, practical philosophy, and digital philosophy. He is also a project manager at Keywords Studios, where he supervises the multilingual localization process of high-profile titles in the video game industry.

Felix Schniz (Dr.) is co-founder and director of the Game Studies and Engineering Master's programme at Universität Klagenfurt, Austria, where he operates from the Department of Information Technology. An interdisciplinary game studies scholar at heart, he has drawn on philology and literary studies, theories of modernity and cultural studies, philosophy, pedagogy, and psychology. His research focuses on the meaning of experience, genre theory, and the importance of subjectivity in research on video games, analogue games, and virtual worlds.