ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that a deeper understanding of the connection between video games and religion can be made possible by adopting an experiential understanding of both phenomena. Mikhail Fiadotau’s primary interest lies not in discussing institutional religion or religiosity as a sociological concept, but in addressing religion as an “aesthetic sensibility” underlying our daily experiences—often without us noticing. Building on Karhulahti’s idea of double hermeneutics of games as a fusion of the “aesthetic-textual” and the “ludo-performative,” Fiadotau suggests using a phenomenological hermeneutic approach to examine the ludo-narrative interplay in games and connect it to the phenomenological dimension of religion. In the second part of the chapter, Fiadotau adopts the method to link the Japanese genre of the visual novel to Japan’s religio-aesthetic concept of ma.
