God & Gaming: The Quest for the Holy Grail

“The world stands on the edge of collapse. Societies, once united, are becoming increasingly polarized. Some see the chaotic flux of social change threatening to erode the hard-won values of religion, statehood, law, order, and civility.”

Thus reads the intro to the dramatic setting for Grant Testut’s unique God and Gaming class which he affectionately refers to as a semester-long game titled, “The Quest for the Holy Grail.”

“All the normal terms that are expected in any class are changed to fit the design of the game better,” Pamela Bartes, a Gaming and Animation major taking the class, said. “Such as calling homework ‘quests,’ and extra credit ‘side quests,’ which earn you advantages, or ‘power-ups,’ to defeat the ‘dungeons’ later, which are the exams. The intention to make the class seem like a game is what keeps me excited and looking forward to the next steps in the class.”

On this journey, the adventurers (also known as his students) take on quests in preparation to brave perilous dungeons as a team (referred to as the ‘guild’). Completing extra credit allows players to earn items like fireballs and potions that provide bonuses during a dungeon.

“I have intentionally made it a game,” Testut said.  “If you want to look at it according to the classic model, yeah, it’s a course. I still assign grades based on student performance, and it goes on your transcript, but for those that want to play along, it can truly be seen as a semester-long game where the incentive is hopefully not merely to get the grade, but to enjoy the process.”

Students are presented with the option to take tests together as a guild or confront them alone. If they choose to participate as a group, Testut transports them to the dungeon via colorful storytelling and pictures as he describes a scene and the monsters within.

His students appreciate the group tests and have built a sense of camaraderie in their guild.

“I love the group participation,” Lauren Gabbard, a Fine Arts and Digital Arts major in the class, said. “Everyone is super respectful and I like hearing what each classmate has to say.”

This is not the first time that Testut taught a class in a gamified format.

“It came about gradually as a brainchild out of earlier attempts to gamify classes,”  Testut said, “I think my first real gamified class was one that I taught years ago with my colleague Chris Rosser. We co-taught an Honors course called the Bible and Classical Lit.”

In fact, this is not the only time he has taught the same God and Gaming course. His first class received it well, buying into the game and playing along.

“People fully embraced the idea of the class as a game and created a whole sense of partnership-community within the class so that by the end, they really felt they were a guild taking on these dungeons together,” he said, referring to his initial group. “They would yell, ‘Huzzah!’ whenever they had a victory.”

Testut created the class as a way to relate to students and interest them in theology and the arts. As a gamer himself, he remains in his element when teaching.

“I love the sense of shared joy that I get with my fellow gamers in this class,” he said. “I also love that it’s a way to communicate to you guys as students that just as I am passionate about video games (I play as often as I can make time), I am also passionate about my faith. I geek out about all of it.”

The class’s unique subject matter is what drew Bartres to the class after hearing about it from the professor.

“I was very intrigued and was wondering how he could connect video games and games in general to the Bible and theology,” she said. “So far in the class, he’s made connections between the two that I would never have thought of, and I’m very interested in learning more.”

He seeks to shake off cultural assumptions and convince students video games are art worthy of examination and reflection.

“There are these stigmas, and I like to be able to craft this course and recognize videogames as a medium that has the potential to be legitimate art no less than movies and fine works of literature.”