Panel: RELIGIONS AND INEQUALITIES: PLURIDISCIPLINARY PERSPECTIVES SOCIOLOGICAL AND GEOGRAPHIC APPROACHES



126.4 - SACRED GEOGRAPHIES IN VIDEO GAMES SET IN ITALY. VALORISATION, LIMINAL SPACE, AND REGIMES OF VISIBILITY

AUTHORS:
Conti G. (University of Modena and Reggio Emilia ~ Reggio Emilia ~ Italy)
Text:
This presentation examines how video games set in Italy mobilise religious heritage as a spatial and semiotic infrastructure, and how this valorisation of the sacred reconfigures visibility, access, and recognition. Building on cultural geography's understanding of space as socially produced and contested (Lefebvre, 1991), and on liminality as a threshold condition where identities and hierarchies can be renegotiated, we analyse the ways sacred sites (basilicas, cathedrals, shrines), devotional atmospheres, and ritualised routes are transformed into playable systems: landmarks that organise navigation, gated interiors, vertical vantage points, moralised zones, and narrative engines. We argue that game design does not merely represent the sacred; it operationalises it through mechanics that distribute attention and movement unequally, producing regimes of inclusion/exclusion and centre/periphery within the gameworld. Empirically, the study adopts a comparative approach across three types of Italian sacred-setting games: (1) large-scale historical reconstruction (Assassin's Creed), where churches become nodal points of traversal and control; (2) fantasy refunctionalisation of Italian religious iconography and architecture, where sacred landmarks are re-coded as arenas of conflict; and (3) institutional heritage gamification (ITALY. Land of Wonders), where the sacred is curated within an educational-patrimonial frame. Methodologically, we use a socio-semiotic close reading with a lightweight mapping protocol that codes sacred nodes (site type, visibility, access conditions, mobility functions, reward/punishment) and liminal passages (thresholds, margins, interstices). The contribution is twofold: it specifies design patterns through which sacred geographies become playable, and it clarifies how such patterns can reproduce or rework cultural and territorial inequalities via selective visibility, differential access, and the patrimonialisation of religious space.