Current Key Perspectives in Video Gaming and Religion

Gregory Grieve's contribution to this special issue on video gaming and religion argues that religious studies should examine video games through a "cultural dialogic mode," treating games as a space where religion and human meaning-making emerge rather than as objects that either hide timeless sacred symbols or serve merely as products of the scholar's theoretical imagination. Drawing on Mircea Eliade, J. Z. Smith, Mikhail Bakhtin, and Ian Bogost's concept of procedural rhetoric, Grieve contends that in a game such as Minecraft, religious meaning arises from the embodied experience of play, particularly the survival mode's cycle of exploration, resource gathering, construction, and combat.

Grieve recommends a documentary methodology for this work, one that begins from the material itself and allows research questions to surface through sustained engagement rather than being imposed in advance. The approach, which he describes as "close play," requires scholars to actually play the games they study, since procedural meaning cannot be fully grasped through narrative or imagery alone. The method aims at thick description in the sense developed by Clifford Geertz, situating a game's features within the broader context of gameplay, user communities, and media environments. Grieve distinguishes this from New Game Journalism and autoethnography, which rely more heavily on personal anecdote and cultural critique.

The thesis is presented in a conversational, essayistic format, with illustrative examples drawn largely from Minecraft, including a playful discussion of whether scholars must play games to analyze them. Grieve's argument is primarily theoretical and methodological rather than empirical, offering a framework and set of practices for the field instead of reporting survey data or quantitative findings. The piece appears as one of several scholarly theses in a 2015 special issue, where it is positioned alongside contributions from other researchers in game studies and the sociology of religion.