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...Challenge organizer Zimmerman decided that this year’s theme would be Bigger Than Jesus: games as religion. (“My first thought was, oh my God, it couldn’t have been a more inappropriate topic for me to tackle,” Rohrer says. “I’m an atheist.”) It was timely, since much of the liveliest territory in gaming these days involves the ways that games can influence our real-world behavior. Massively popular social games like FarmVille and its clones permeate everyday life in a way that is both low-key and ubiquitous. The broader idea that game mechanics should permeate life is known as gamification. There are commercial uses of gamification (getting consumers to engage more deeply with a brand or service) and political/philanthropic uses (getting people to use less gas, say), but either way, gamification advocates—like religious figures—seek to superimpose an invisible reward system on top of the world. Many gamers find this ethos patronizing, as if games were simply Skinner boxes for manipulating people into buying burgers or donating to Darfur charities. And if the detractors have a champion, it’s Jason Rohrer. More than any other game designer, Rohrer embodies the idea that games can be ends in themselves, expressions of the ineffable. His most famous title, Passage, simulates an entire human lifespan in five minutes. Inside a Star-Filled Sky is a shooter that explores the idea of infinity. “All his ideas fit together pragmatically in a way that seems very spiritually serendipitous, but that’s really just him being a smart designer,” says Leigh Alexander, a journalist who covered this year’s challenge for the industry news site Gamasutra...
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