What is religion?

Here’s a fascinating piece in Wired Magazine about a game design challenge that was picked up by a self-professed atheist who chose to create a game that could only be played by one person at a time, and that would be handed on from one person to the next. Each time the game was played, players could add their own elements to it, and once you died in the game it was over and you had to hand it on. The dynamics that ensued were fascinating, mystifying, and as the author of the Wired article wrote:

The rules that Rohrer encoded in Chain World were so clever that “even something that appears to be a perversion of the designer’s intent only serves to reinforce the metaphor,” Gamasutra’s Alexander says. To put it another way: Rohrer made a game about how religion is really these stories you tell about the past. Now people weren’t just creating unpredictable stories within the game, they were building new myths around this game. “It almost took on its own form,” videogame theorist Ian Bogost says. “It’s both horrifying and beautiful.”

(Hat tip to Eric)