My name is Moses Anthony Loe Norton and this is Gamelogica… or at least an initial public introduction to Gamelogica, the upcoming YouTube channel correlating video games with religion and myth!
I was born in the Aloha state of Hawaii in 1985 where I grew up in a caldera of cultures and traditions trapped on a handful of tiny viridescent islands in the middle of the vast Pacific. The people there had no choice but to mix their tastes, their inventions, and their legends, resulting in an archipelago overflowing with story, song, and spirituality.
Since my childhood, I’ve been fascinated by the heroism, the magic, and the romance of myths and legends, both ancient and modern. I was impressed from an early age with the notion that these ideas mean something, whether they actually happened or not. At my local library, I scoured the shelves for books on the Greeks and Romans, pagans and Christians, medieval cultures, native people groups, Middle and Far Eastern beliefs, Northern sagas, Hebraic scriptures, Polynesian traditions.
“I liked myths. They weren’t adult stories and they weren’t children’s stories. They were better than that. They just were.”
― Neil Gaiman
I’ve talked with people who claimed they found God in the skies or in their hearts, I’ve heard chants in honor of forgotten deities, I’ve touched relics and artifacts describing powerful supernatural events, and I’ve encountered others who claimed there can be no such thing. Those experiences, despite being at odds with each other, gave me an equal fascination for humanity’s faiths and religions, its beliefs.
At age 10, a pattern emerged… thanks in no small part to a little old SNES RPG called Breath of Fire II.
I came to realize that video games are full of religious fact and fable. Video game artists and storytellers from around the world had borrowed spiritual, folkloric, and mythological concepts to build the thoughtscapes of their digital worlds. The great irony: those who wouldn’t learn religious ideas from churches, synagogues, and other houses of worship encountered them unawares in video games.
My young fascination with the metaphysical and supernatural eventually led me down a road of research that stretched on into adulthood. In 2004, my religious and mythological studies transformed from a hobby to an education. My formal instruction has since ended… but my fascination has not.
Life is a journey of change, belief, doubt, and discovery, but not necessarily in that order. I have my own spiritual and metaphysical views, but this channel isn’t about me.
Gamelogica, a somewhat ridiculous insistence upon drawing connections between myth and religion and video games that may not be there, is less ridiculous than you may think. How do games, once seen as mere toys for kids, convey ideas founded in either faith or fairy tale? How are these digital stories vehicles through which we as a species communicate our ideas and ideals, our hopes and fears, our virtues and vices? For many reasons, these are relevant questions.
Religion practiced by billions is still a powerful force for good and evil in this world. Freedom of and freedom from are fundamental rights. Few things are more central to being human than belief. Legends and myths continue to be told and retold on a daily basis everywhere on the planet. And video games still draw inspiration from our stories, our history, our spirituality.
“The value of the myth is that it takes all the things we know and restores to them the rich significance which has been hidden by ‘the veil of familiarity.’”
-CS Lewis
Whether you’re a spiritual person, a religious person, or none of the above, there’s no denying the impact that religious and spiritual ideas have had on video games. This upcoming YouTube channel will be here to capture those ideas whether they’re 10 or 10,000 years old. You’ll find it’s not a dry subject… a little frivolity, irreverence, and open-minded curiosity go a long way.
What to do while you wait? You can learn more by joining our Discord where I’ll be sharing behind-the-scenes pre-production notes, imagery, and teasers leading up to the launch of the channel. I’ve got a prototype video available, as well as a list of episodes and episode ideas! There’s also an Instagram and Facebook group to check out.
Fidem. Fabula. Ludos.
Red formerly ran The Well-Red Mage and now serves The Pixels as founder, writer, editor, and podcaster. He has undertaken a seemingly endless crusade to talk about the games themselves in the midst of a culture obsessed with the latest controversy, scandal, and news cycle about harassment, toxicity, and negativity. Pick out his feathered cap on Twitter @thewellredmage or Mage Cast.
