Religion in Games: Should Anything be Taboo?

Leading up to Christmas, the Daily Reaction duo of Seb and Dan take the latest addition to the Twelve Days of Christmas song and write about it. Today, it’s “two turtle doves”, so we’ll discuss religion in games and whether anything should be off limits.
- PSLS

[Foolsjoker]

Glad to see someone is willing to talk about the subject at least.

[Obnoxious_Informer]

I don't think anything should be off limits. "it's either all ok, or none of it is"

[knifefight]

I learned this from South Park.
...Where I learn most of my life lessons.

[dbjj12088]

If it weren't for South Park I wouldn't be able to withstand the monstrosity of the Internet.

[ftwrthtx]

Video games, as an art form, should have no limits.

[dbjj12088]

This. +Well Said for you sir.

[TrendyGamers]

I still need to play El Shaddai. I've heard a lot of great things about it.

[spicelicka]

Well i don't think there's much that hasn't been used already. In fact, religious alien zealots declaring genocide on humanity is getting a little cliche. I find that a lot of games, as wells as movies, take the route of making the enemy a crazed religious race so they don't have to come up with something more creative to explain to the audience why the enemy is evil.

[Somebody]

I've played Black and White in front a pretty pious Christian friend years ago and then explained to him the game's premise. I could just see the stern disapproval in his facial expression. (I later discovered a lot of the people there doesn't particularly like the theory evolution)

Several years later while playing Command and Conquer Generals, I have to keep a straight face when I had to launch an orbital attack on some terrorist encampment. Since I have Muslim friends around and EA decided to model a lot of the buildings looking to similar to mosques.

Strangely enough when a Muslim friend played Age of Empires and sent camels to raze churches...I wasn't too disturbed by that.

[kalkano]

You can't censor anything like that. We all have the right to simply not play something that offends us. It's one (of many) reasons why I didn't get that into the Xenosaga series (I was rolling my eyes constantly, during episode 3), and probably won't try Xenogears (even though it's widely considered to be one of the greatest RPGs of all time. That's not going to stop someone else from playing it. And, that's the way it should be.

[NYC_Gamer]

I think video games should be able to tackle the same subject matters as other forms of entertainment

[Hicken]

Just what I came to say.

There's nothing that's "taboo" in any other art form or form of media; as long as it's approached in an appropriate fashion- or not, as there are parodies of ALL sacred things everywhere- why should it be untouchable?