TRANSCENDENCE
Introduction
Video games possess considerable power to evoke an experience of the transcendent—from the Latin transcendere, literally “to climb beyond.” Simply put, the quest for transcendence is a quest for something more. The study of transcendence deserves a rightful place alongside the study of other psychological, educational, and literary theories at work in video games. Indeed, these theories constitute a rich, conjunctive framework for exploring transcendence within gameplay experience—particularly when brought into dialogue with religious studies. As a research concern, transcendence encompasses certain aspects of religion even as it surpasses religion. In video game studies to date, religion seems underutilized as a framework for inquiry. Of course, the erosion of religion’s relevance stands to reason, following the modernist project of rationalism and empiricism. More recently, however, process philosophy and constructive postmodernism seek to reengage religion as a conversation partner with other disciplines (Griffin, 1988; Slattery, 2013).
Transcendence at the Intersection of Religion and Technology
The precedent literature in technology studies underscores the importance of transcendence as a research concern. Various technology theorists explore the human–technology relationship within the rhetoric of a divine–human relationship (Wiener, [1964] 1966; Drexler, 1986; Mazlish, 1993; Kelly, 1995; Cobb, 1998; Kelly, 1999; Kurzweil, 1999). Heim (1993) presents one of the most carefully developed arguments in this discussion. To Heim, virtual reality stands alongside religion as an expression of transformative art (pp. 124–126). “In the face of the infinity of possible, virtual worlds” he writes, virtual reality sets the stage for “an experience of the sublime or awesome” (p. 137). Heim attributes the allure of virtual reality to eros: the “drive to extend our finite being” and “to heighten the intensity of our lives” (p. 87). At the same time, he argues that the finite computational structure of virtual reality paradoxically weakens its ability to mediate transcendence. Heim explains:
Knowing that the computer God’s-eye view remains closed to the human agents in cyberspace, they will know that such a view exists. Computerized reality synthesizes everything through calculation, and nothing exists in the synthetic world that is not literally numbered and counted.
[…]
Can we be touched or surprised—deeply astonished—by a synthetic reality, or will it always remain a magic trick, an illusory prestidigitation?
[…]
The ideal of the simultaneous all-at-once-ness of computerized information access undermines any world that is worth knowing. The fleshly world is worth knowing for its distances and hidden horizons.
(pp. 105–107)
Visitors to virtual reality take that trip in part because they seek something transcendent, something more. Heim locates the highest expression of transcendence within the human Other, contending that the non-human Other of hardware and software necessarily limits one’s quest for transcendence.
Undismayed, video game players and theorists suggest that video games can mediate various aspects of transcendence. For example, Castronova (2005) argues that the massively multiplayer “synthetic world” invites players toward “vistas” of “longing” (pp. 106–108), wrapped in myth and wonder (p. 276). Castronova writes elsewhere: “Wonder, in the sense of miracle, mysticism, and faith, may well be the single most important contribution of virtual worlds to human experience” (2007, p. 201). Bissell (2010) colorfully compares the “ample” and “complicated” allure of video game worlds to religion, their potency “hard to explain, sort of like religion, of which these games become, for many, an aspartame form” (p. 4). Callaway (2010) suggests that the holistic experience of Wii play can usher players into a spiritual experience through its integration of the sensual, somatic, and affective. Wolf’s research into Tolkienian subcreation argues that the designers of “secondary” video game worlds imaginatively imitate the “primary” world-making creativity of God (2012, pp. 20–25; 283–287).
Reflection upon the intersection of transcendence and particular video games dates from the advent of Pac-Man (Midway Manufacturing, 1981) to the present day (McFarland, 1982). For example, Meneghelli (2007) and Cogburn and Silcox (2009) observe that the “god game” genre often affords players with a sense of virtual omniscience, omnipresence, and omnipotence, which Friedman (1995) describes as “an almost trancelike state” (p. 85) of “complete communion” (p. 83) with the game system. In a related vein, SimCity (Maxis Software, 1989) creator Will Wright recalls an early personal experience with an island-mapping utility that fascinated him with the initial possibility of “bringing a city to life” (Kelly, 1995, p. 235). He further explains his fascination with virtual creation in terms of openness to emergence and appreciation for interconnection (Pearce, 2002). McGonigal (2011) maintains that “epic” video game actions, environments, and projects connect us with “something bigger than ourselves” (p. 97), inducing a sense of reverence—“the expression of profound awe, respect and love, or veneration” (p. 103). McGonigal submits the online Halo Museum of Humanity as evidence (pp. 103–104), arguing that the monumental achievements of the entire Halo community elicit a sense of reverence from its own players (pp. 95–96).
Transcendence at the Intersection of Religion and Psychology
Nineteenth- and early twentieth-century literature in psychology reflects a sustained interest in the multivalent nature of transcendence. For example, James investigates transcendence both in the effects of nitrous oxide (1874, 1882) and in the varieties of religious experience ([1902] 2004). He describes the transcendent in terms of “incommunicability” (1874), “intence [sic] metaphysical illumination” and “unbroken continuity” (1882), ineffability ([1902] 2004, p. 50) and enchantment (p. 52). Throughout his work, he acknowledges that religious experience takes a great many forms. Later, Otto ([1950] 1958) describes religious experience as a sui generis (unique and particular) encounter with God that surpasses rational and ethical terms (pp. 6–7). To Otto, this encounter involves both tremendum and mysterium—a sense of awe before that which is hidden from human understanding (pp. 13–24). Otto writes that God, as mysterium tremendum “exercises a supreme ‘fascination’ … at once an object of boundless awe and boundless wonder, quelling and yet entrancing the soul” (p. 41). In Taves’s recent critique of James and Otto, she argues that “emotional valence” is “not always the most salient feature” of religious experience (2009, p. 11). She argues that the interplay of imagination with reality can also characterize religious experience, especially at the points of ritual play and meditative practice. In summary, religious experience is not coterminous with transcendence, although a strong correlation exists between the two.
Later literature in psychology continues to explore the intersection of transcendence and religious experience. Batson and Ventis (1982) liken religious experience to a lifelong “quest” for existential insight in the midst of unknowing. They write: “There may not be a clear belief in a transcendent reality, but there is a transcendent, religious dimension to the individual’s life. We shall call this open-ended, questioning orientation religion as a quest” (p. 166). Csikszentmihalyi (1991) compares the transcendent aspects of religious experience to “flow”—an immersive experience of pleasure, joy, and fulfillment in which self-consciousness and time-awareness dissipate (p. 49). Csikszentmihalyi also notes the relationship between flow and gameplay, acknowledging the historic and once close link between play and religion (pp. 76–77). Other scholars note this link as well (Huizinga, [1950] 1955; Pannenberg, 1985, pp. 321–322).
Scholtz (2005) explores transcendence through the lenses of religion and psychology in his preliminary, phenomenological exploration of The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time (Nintendo EAD, 1998). Although he is a new video game player, he recognizes their capacity to mediate a flow experience. He acknowledges the presence of religious elements within gameplay. For examples, Scholtz underscores the importance of the game’s mythological images and the quest motif. He associates the player’s fascination with the player’s desire to unveil a mystery. He struggles to describe the ineffable qualities of gameplay. Of course, video games other than Zelda can mediate this kind of religiously infused encounter. For example, home console and arcade cabinet games from Breakout (Atari, 1978) to Pac-Man to Donkey Kong (Nintendo, 1981) facilitate flow experiences within the context of meaningful reflection (McFarland, 1982; Sudnow, 1983; Cunningham and Gordon, 2007; Verrechia and Ruchti, 2007). Role-playing games from Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar (Origin Systems, 1985) to Mass Effect (BioWare, 2007) wrap quests within the trappings of myth and mystery. In Scholtz’s case, he stops short of describing Zelda gameplay as a strictly religious experience. Nevertheless, his work demonstrates that the psychology of religion can prove helpful as a framework for video game analysis.
Transcendence at the Intersection of Religion and Education
The interdisciplinary tradition of religious education outlines the conjunction of religious experience, the learning process, and the process of human development. Astley (1994) maintains that religious education is less a cognitive matter than an affective matter (p. 77), “primarily concerned with emotions like awe, reverence, guilt, fear and love, directed toward certain objects” (p. 219). Whitehead ([1929] 1967) argues that education is inherently religious because it encompasses the search for wonder, reverence, and “the tumultuous desire for merging personality in something beyond itself” (p. 40). Likewise, Dewey ([1934] 1972) contends that human experience is religious—not in an orthodox sense (pp. 43, 51), but to the extent that it seeks wholeness (pp. 18–19), engages the imagination (p. 49), and aspires to ultimacy (pp. 19, 57, 83). The educational “lure of the transcendent” recurs throughout Huebner’s work ([1985b] 1999, p. 360), as do references to both Dewey and Whitehead. Huebner argues that school should be a place for mystery, wonder, and awe ([1959] 1999, p. 8). Elsewhere, he claims: “Education is only possible because the human being is a being that can transcend itself” ([1985a] 1999, p. 345) through openness to possibility (p. 343), creative expression (p. 344), and response to the Other ([1993] 1999, p. 409). Huebner explains: “The religious journey, the process of being educated, is always a consequence of encountering something that is strange and different, something that is not me” (pp. 407–408).
Contemporary curriculum theorists thematically build upon the scholarship of Whitehead, Dewey, and Huebner. Phenix defines the transcendence-oriented curriculum as an experience “of limitless going beyond any given state or realization of being … within a context of wider relationships and possibilities … always open to a neverending web of entailments and unfoldings” ([1971] 1975, p. 324). Like his predecessors, Phenix maintains that the yearning and capacity for transcendence is “essential, not accidental, in the being of persons” (p. 337). He identifies the general dispositions of the transcendence-oriented curriculum as hope, creativity, awareness, doubt and faith, wonder, awe, and reverence (pp. 328–332). Purpel (1999) compares the transcendence-oriented curriculum to the journey of the ancient patriarch Abraham—as “possibility grounded in quest, a process of passionate searching that begins in an emerging awareness of greater possibility and … meaning” (p. 217). Likewise, Slattery ([1992] 1999) suggests that the transcendence-oriented curriculum must be eschatological (future-oriented). Hidden horizons occasion hope, and hope invites learners to seek that not yet revealed. Elsewhere, Slattery (2006) refers to eschatological curriculum as “proleptic”—a literary term that indicates “the moment in a short story or novel when the reader becomes fully cognizant of the past, present, and future events all in one instant” (p. 84; see also 2013, pp. 282–283, 305–306). This brings to mind the epiphanic or “aha moment” in film when insight sweeps over the protagonist and viewer, past and present events suddenly converging with new interpretive meaning. For example, consider Bruce Willis’s proleptic moment at the climax of The Sixth Sense (Shyamalan, 1999). In a cinematic flash, both the protagonist and the viewer suddenly come to understand that Willis’s character has been dead throughout most of the film, reframing the entire story within a greater revelatory frame of meaning.
Jason Rohrer’s Passage (2007) vividly illustrates the transcendent, religious, and educational potential of video games. Exceedingly simple in its technical design, Passage possesses the power to elicit deep discernment from its players. As each five-minute game unfolds, the player searches a maze-like playing field for various rewards such as companionship and intimacy, wealth, and fame. Points accrue with each step, doubling when accompanied by a life partner, even though a life partner’s presence restricts certain aspects of gameplay. Along the way, the player’s character ages—steadily, stubbornly, and almost imperceptibly—until death overtakes him and his life partner. Death in Passage is inevitable, unlike the endless recursion of life and death in other video games. No instructions accompany the game, its meaning subtle and elusive. Thompson (2008) praises Passage as “a fantastically expressive, artistic vehicle for exploring the human condition.” Montfort (2009) observes that the insights of Passage gradually dawn upon the player throughout gameplay, mediating a meditative experience upon the meaning of life. In the most literal sense, Passage constructs an eschatological horizon that is often hazy and blurred, just like memory and hope. It deliberately escorts the player toward a proleptic event in which the meaning of the game—past, present, and future—converges with the player’s own reflection upon life’s brevity and death’s ultimacy. The gameplay of Passage envelops its players in mystery, confronts them with wonder, and invites them into reverence. Passage vividly demonstrates how even a video game “curriculum of transcendence” can usher players into an affective journey of unfolding possibility and profundity.
Transcendence at the Intersection of Religion and Literature
The mythopoeic works of Tolkien and Lewis winsomely and persistently point to the transcendent. Mythopoeia hinges upon the conviction that the modernist world of empiricism and rationalism—starving for imagination and rejecting the spiritual—needs new myths that can “bridge the chasm of a strict, philosophical materialism.” Both Tolkien and Lewis weave their literary fabrics to that end. Quite literally, Tolkien and Lewis understand their myth-making work as a service that points to God. For example, Tolkien understands myth as “a splintered fragment of the true light” (Carpenter, 1979, p. 45), while Lewis explains myth as “the isthmus which connects the peninsular world of thought with that vast continent we really belong to” ([1944] 1970, p. 67). More particularly, Tolkien and Lewis understand tales of Faërie and fantasy as signposts that simultaneously mediate and point to transcendence. Of Faërie, Tolkien ([1964] 1966) writes:
The definition of a fairy-story—what it is, or what it should be—does not, then, depend on any definition or historical account of elf or fairy, but upon the nature of Faërie: the Perilous Realm itself, and the air that blows in that country. I will not attempt to define that, nor to describe it directly. It cannot be done. Faërie cannot be caught in a net of words; for it is one of its qualities to be indescribable, though not imperceptible. It has many ingredients, but analysis will not necessarily discover the secret of the whole.
(pp. 38–39)
Similarly, Lewis ([1956] 1982) writes:
[F]airy land arouses a longing for he knows not what. It stirs and troubles him (to his life-long enrichment) with the dim sense of something beyond his reach and, far from dulling or emptying the actual world, gives it a new dimension of depth.
(p. 38)
Both writers affirm a shared conviction that the function of eucatasrophe—“the joy of the happy ending” (Tolkien, ([1964] 1966), pp. 85–86)—signifies a greater reality: a “sudden glimpse” or “far-off gleam or echo” of transcendence in this present world (p. 88). To Tolkien and Lewis, the mythic realms of Middle-Earth and Narnia invite their readers to enter them wholly, even though that longing must remain somewhat unfulfilled. Thus, Lewis remarks, “Our best havings are wantings” (as cited in Martindale and Root, 1989, p. 359).
Citing Burke, Krzywinska (2009) thoughtfully notes that the notion of the sublime corresponds to the notion of terror (p. 278). Lovecraft’s work in dark fantasy and supernatural horror illustrates this point. His protagonists inevitably suspect the presence of a cosmic threat to humankind, temporarily hidden from view. As they gradually uncover that threat, madness and death pursue them until the bitter end. Mendlesohn (2008) describes Lovecraftian fiction in terms of “intrusion fantasy,” a kind of fantasy in which the anticipation of intrusive transcendence makes a greater mark upon the reader than its ultimate appearance at the end of each tale (p. 135). Mendlesohn suggests that intrusion fantasy accomplishes its goal, in part, “by moving the descriptive element from sense of wonder to sense of fear” (p. 136). In this vein, Lovecraft memorably pens: “The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents” ([1926] 2005, p. 167). Mendelsohn also argues that the transcendent dimension of intrusion fantasy moves in two directions at once: “that of the intrusion breaking through” and that of “the protagonist moving into this secret world” (p. 137). Lovecraftian tales hinge upon the transgressive link of horror and transcendence.
Video games variously reflect not only the beauty of transcendence but also the terrifying intrusion of transcendence. Hayse (2011) argues that The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (Nintendo EAD, 2002) mediates the longing for transcendent beauty in its art, music, narrative, and procedural structure. The game’s brightly tinted palette and cel-shaded animation evokes a Pixar-like quality of wonder, once restricted to the silver screen. The music teases its hearers with a rolling sense of anticipation that rarely resolves into the tonic. The narrative mediates the monomythic Hero’s Journey of separation, initiation, and return (Campbell, 1962). A serialized structure regulates this hope-filled quest at a pace that the player cannot accelerate, insistently pointing toward the revelatory horizon of eucatastrophe but delaying its dawning. Likewise, the procedural structure incrementally reveals layer upon layer of unfolding mystery, tantalizing the player with actions and artifacts that prove sufficient for the present moment while hinting at greater vistas that remain unexplored for the time being. In contrast, games such as Alone in the Dark (Infogrames, 1992), Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem (Silicon Knights, 2002), and Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth (Bethesda, 2005) taunt the player with the horrifying threat of transcendent intrusion. The formal elements of games such as these mediate the “staging of fear” (Roux-Girard, 2009, p. 146). Acoustic sounds induce fear by creating anticipation (p. 152), just as the use of silence builds up suspense (p. 153). Alone in the Dark’s refusal (and technical inability) to center the player in game space effectively mediates a sense of dread (pp. 151–152). Dramatic and unsettling shifts in point-of-view rupture the player’s confidence to control the events of Dark Corners of the Earth (Krzywinska, 2009, pp. 273–274). In both Eternal Darkness and Dark Corners of the Earth, the protagonist’s sanity steadily erodes, encroaching not only upon the player’s point-of-view but also upon the player’s ability to control the game (pp. 282–283; Weise, 2009, p. 262). These formal elements suggest the dreadful threat of transcendence, threatening to overwhelm the player.
The study of transcendence in video games rests at the crossroads of technology, psychology, education, literature—and religion. While these former disciplines already inform much video game scholarship, the latter remains underutilized. The academic inquiry into religion promises new insight for video game studies, both unique and profound. To that end, this discussion proposes a research agenda for the consideration of transcendence in video games, each element proceeding from the occasion of “climbing beyond”:
• the playful, even mystical transition from the ordinary into the extraordinary or virtual;
• the often hard-to-describe pleasures or fears that accompany fascination;
• the transformative encounter with Otherness;
• the longing—and the quest—to grasp that which is mysterious, wondrous, elusive, or hidden;
• the epiphanic shift in perception or perspective;
• the imaginative encounter with myth, archetype, or symbol—whether sublime or profane.
Beyond the limits of this discussion, additional disciplines also shed further light upon the study of transcendence, such as:
• anthropological inquiry into the liminal and liminoid (Turner, [1982] 2001);
• neuroscientific research concerning the nature of religious experience (Beauregard and O’Leary, 2007; Hagerty, 2009; McNamara, 2009);
• educational investigation into transformative learning (Mezirow and Associates, 2000);
• theological reflection upon aesthetics (Viladesau, 1999, Thiessen, 2004);
• comparative study of the world’s wisdom traditions (Smith, 1991, 2001).
In the final analysis, the study of transcendence promises insight both unique and profound for video game studies, potentially opening the door to greater enjoyment in gameplay and greater depth in game design.
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