One of the inherent drawbacks to using the phrase “spiritual gaming” is the presumption that when we use the phrase we are talking about the same thing that others would be talking about if they used the phrase “spiritual gaming.”
When we hit the road about a decade ago to visit activists in the gaming industry on the topic of “spiritual gaming” we scheduled ourselves into every major (and many minor) gaming conferences within a thousand mile radius. Our plan was to attend the gaming conferences as press rather than guests, fans, vendors, or speakers. We felt this would give us the best opportunity to speak with folks and observe reactions to the basic notion with minimal Heisenbergian interference.
To our surprise there was almost universal acceptance of the idea once people understood that we were not talking about religious gaming. The fact that so many folks jumped to the conclusion that spiritual equated with religious was news to us — and a disappointment. Believe me, if we could think of a different phrase that would communicate effectively the notion of incorporating other worldly aspects of development without also implying something religious we would switch to that phrase in a heart beat.
But, every alternative implies something else equally anti-simpatico with our true intentions. So we figure might as well stick to the original branding and keep on trucking.
Anticipating the next obvious question “What is spiritual gaming in this context if you don’t mean religious?”
Depending upon who you ask you might get answers such as:
- games designed to help you get into heaven.
- games for enlightenment.
- games that will help you pass on when it is time to pass on to the next higher level.
- games designed to help you chill out, calm down from ordinary life, meditate.
- games intended to help you sort out your life problems
- games to help you get in touch with your past lives
- games developed to help you contact your selves in other dimensions or your higher self
These are not our orientation.
Our intention when developing a spiritual game is to give you a game which opens possibilities that you would not normally explore, places to look you would not normally look, places to go you would not normally go, and give you practical application/ideas of how to transverse those spaces, how to get through them in elegant ways. That can open a lot of doors but it doesn’t necessarily.
As you can see this is more about broadening possibilities and providing opportunities.