But just as important is to develop more than just cursory listening.ĭespite their name, i video games use sounds just as much as visuals to create their worlds. We encourage children to read, watch and observe. Of the different senses, it's easy to overlook the importance of hearing. Proteus | Joust | Uncharted 3 | Alan Wake | This War of Mine | Journey | Limbo | Spaceteam | A Dark Room | Altos Adventure | A Year Walk | Bioshock Infinite | The Last of Us | Disney Infinity | Everybody's Gone to the Rapture | That Dragon Cancer | Spec Ops The Line | Papo and Yo This is one way to interpret them which of course invites further and possibly counter interpretations from other perspectives.įirewatch | Everything | Bury Me My Love | Abzu | Wilmot's Warehouse I aim to make connections with faith, the bible and the experience of these video games. These are two publications for Christian audiences, that have invited me to shed light on what a range of video games might mean for those communities.
Firstly, from 2013-2015 for ThirdWay magazine, and more recently for Youth and Children's Work (YCW) magazine.
The games in this list have been the subject of a series of articles I have written about video games and faith. They offer a chance for response and emotion to grow. They invite us to reconsider how we see the outsider and the marginalised. They include themes of hope, loss and love. Games offer a unique way to encounter what is beyond us: other people, the world and possibly even the divine.
However, many games offer experiences that invite you to explore buildings, worlds, cities and the countryside full of potential for spiritual reflection. Video games aren't high on the list of most people's spiritual spaces. Finally, a few of the games like The First Tree and Sunlight invite you to make a connection to other players, once you have come to terms with a journey on your own. Then there are games we included like Shadow of the Colossus that let you get lost in the vastness of its landscape. Other games in the list, like Thomas Was Alone and Bird Alone offer you the chance to reflect on friendship and the need to nurture relationships. Some of the games, like Never Alone, Journey and The Long Dark place you in a harsh environment that emphasises your diminutive size when faced with the expanse of nature. These games offer us insight into the benefits of appreciating time alone, such as opportunities for self-reflection, self-discovery, and the chance to curate enriching experiences or environments for ourselves.
The other games offer their own lens on loneliness and solitary seasons of life. In it, you spend 400 elapsed days waiting for the King to wake up and living at a slow pace. This list was inspired by the experience of playing the unusually solitary (and long) game The Longing and the Twitter thread that followed. “With mindfulness, there are even more benefits to gain from intentional consumption of media,” she says, “games can be tools we use to recover or grow, psychologically, and our time with them isn't wasted if they provide us insights or rest we need.” Garcia’s Screen Therapy project employs Positive Media Psychology research to highlight and interpret meaningful experiences with games and movies. We teamed up with Courtney Garcia’s Screen Therapy channel to curate a list of games that give us a chance to experience being alone in different ways. In a culture that often assumes that the route to happiness is with another person, it can benefit us to acknowledge that being alone is not always a bad thing.