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chozzle
Guest
Is playing World of Warcraft a sin? What about other video games?
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Farley4334
Guest
Of course not. By itself at least. Now if you let it get you to the point where its all you do and you neglect other relationships or become slothenly then maybe. But playing a video game by itself is morally neutral. Other video games? It would depend on the game. Super Mario Brothers, no, Grand Theft Auto, probably.
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RobinK
Guest
Actually, I’ve recently been to a seminar where a Father Hampsch (I think you can google him) Stated that games such as dungeons and dragons should be avoided because of the association with witchcraft and magic (casting spells etc.) he also says that even if you had no intention of letting evil in (as an example I played with a ouija board when I was a kid, I obviously had no idea how serious it was and thought it was all just made up) you can still cause spirits to attach themsleves to you and that you need to confess it. I’ve never seen WoW but I assume that it falls along the same lines as dungeons and dragons and everquest. Just a thought.
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Farley4334
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Dungeons and Dragons I think is a bit more interactive, more than just a ‘game’ so to speak. So I could maybe see how that could open you up the same way a Ouija board does, but I think this type of video game is different. I think playing WoW opens you up to spirits about as much as reading Harry Potter does.
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Melissa
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No, Dungeons and Dragons does NOT “open” anyone up to the occult … there is NO witchcraft or “real spellcasting” involved. (This bit annoys me, I’m rather tired of dealing with the same old falsehoods about the game.) Real example of spellcasting in D&D:
Group of people are sitting around a big table (dining room type). They come into a combat situation, and the magic user’s player says “I cast magic missile at the kobold wearing the crown.” Magic user’s player rolls dice (a 4-sided) and gets a 3 (magic missile does 1d4+1 per missile), and hits the opponent for 4 hp of damage. Or the cleric’s player says “I cast ‘hold person’ centered on the werewolf. The werewolf is my only target.” DM rolls dice for the werewolf’s attempt to save vs. spell. If the werewolf saves, nothing happens; if it fails, the werewolf is utterly immobile for a period of time.
WoW and other video games are morally neutral, in and of themselves. The sin that may be involved would be in allowing these games to cause one to neglect one’s spiritual or other duties (to job, family, etc.). Games which encourage the player to play on “the wrong side” (Grand Theft Auto, for example)* may* be near occasions of sin (note, I’m not saying they are but that they easily could be), and probably should be avoided for that reason.
Group of people are sitting around a big table (dining room type). They come into a combat situation, and the magic user’s player says “I cast magic missile at the kobold wearing the crown.” Magic user’s player rolls dice (a 4-sided) and gets a 3 (magic missile does 1d4+1 per missile), and hits the opponent for 4 hp of damage. Or the cleric’s player says “I cast ‘hold person’ centered on the werewolf. The werewolf is my only target.” DM rolls dice for the werewolf’s attempt to save vs. spell. If the werewolf saves, nothing happens; if it fails, the werewolf is utterly immobile for a period of time.
WoW and other video games are morally neutral, in and of themselves. The sin that may be involved would be in allowing these games to cause one to neglect one’s spiritual or other duties (to job, family, etc.). Games which encourage the player to play on “the wrong side” (Grand Theft Auto, for example)* may* be near occasions of sin (note, I’m not saying they are but that they easily could be), and probably should be avoided for that reason.
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ohyah007
Guest
i believe the only aspect of this game that could be sinful would be it becoming an idol (which is true for all worldly things) or maybe being a priest class (lol jk)
haha you should also check this out =P
landoverbaptist.org/news0105/wow.html
haha you should also check this out =P
landoverbaptist.org/news0105/wow.html
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Highwayhound
Guest
Could you tell me how much time you spend playing World of Warcraft and other video games?
My next question would be to ask how much time you spend in prayer, practicing corporal works of mercy, etc.?
Then I would suggest you compare the two answers. Is their an imbalance where video games exceed time directed to your faith? :compcoff: vs
Also, after finishing a game, after that last climatic battle what happens? Absolutely nothing well except you load in the next game and the battle rages on. :manvspc:
Did your life improve? Did you improve the life of someone else? Did you earn any grace in your life by playing World of Warcraft?
These questions come from a guy who was the best Donkey Kong player in the area growing up.
God bless
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The_Otaku
Guest
I can personally attest to this. I used to play a game called Warhammer. It’s a table-top strategy game which uses miniature models of troops to simulate a battle. You buy the boxsets, you put the troops together, and you can paint them if you want. If you’re good at sculpting, which I was, you can even make your own models from scratch, or by doing what we call a conversion, where you use existing pieces (like arms or swords, guns, etc.) and swap them onto a different figure to give it a unique variety and what not.
Anyways, aside from this hobby being very expensive, it also has many demonic elements in the backstories of particular armies and in the artwork, special abilities the army has, etc (you can collect different armies to play as). The evil armies, such as Chaos, which l played as, had things like beast men, daemons (demons), sorcerers, and other evil creatures. The models themselves look demonic and you’re encouraged to put a theme behind your army. There are deities in this game, many of which seem satanic, and the artwork for the game is often graphic and realistic, sometimes showing nudity and talking about demon summonings, undead, necromancy, etc.
Well, to get to the point, after a while of having collected, put together, painted, and played these games, my mother began to feel an evil presence in our home and said it was coming from the models. I didn’t feel it at first and didn’t want to believe her. One day, I was reaching for one of the models I had made personally, it was a giant snake actually, and when I reached for it, I began to feel light headed, and I noticed that every time after that I would grab it to take it with me to the store to play, I would get lightheaded. I remember my mother also saying she smelled a stench in the room whenever she would pass by the case I held the models in.
Through visionaries and prayer, I came to learn that indeed there were attaching spirits in my models, and that they needed to be thrown away to remove the spirits. When I finally was able to muster the desire to get rid of the models, despite the effort I made into making them and all the fun times I had playing with them against other players, we noticed almost immediately that when I destroyed the models and broke them into pieces, there was a sense, on my part, of liberation and I felt lighter, like a weight had been lifted. I cannot really explain it better than that. My mother couldn’t smell the odor anymore and as the days and months past, the difference with and without the models in the house was clear. I definitely believe they were possessed or had attaching spirits, and that if I had not destroyed them when I did, things could have gotten worse.
The fact the figures themselves were evil in theme and appearance was a huge part of the problem. I often ask myself that if I had collected a “good guy” army would this have happened and would I have had to get rid of the models? I would still say yes, because attaching spirits can attach to anything that you covet, glorify, use, fawn over, role-play through, etc. In the case of this game, you build the models yourself, put loads of effort into painting, etc, so that type of energy draws demonic activity to you, because of the possession the material objects can have over you and the value you put into them. It can become a form of idolatry.
The question of WoW being sinful simply because it has demonic and evil themes in it is questionable. The fact it’s a video game makes it difficult to say. I would say that if an attaching spirit could do anything to a person who plays WoW, it would be that they would influence the person to spend unhealthy amounts of time on the computer, and the computer is the tool the spirits would use. In my situation, it was the models, because they were tangible, not virtual like WoW is.
The question of whether or not the medium matters is also a good one to consider. Can a demon possess a computer and reside there waiting for when the user logs on so as to get them going on whatever their addiction is? Excessive gaming, pornography, gambling etc. I would think so based on my experiences.
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YipYupYep
Guest
Well said.
When is the last time you heard a homily on demons attaching themselves to you on a Sunday in Church? More than likely, never. Why?
That type of “game” may very well create an invitation by forming a hook for the demon to attach to. When there is one, more are sure to be on there way. A Ouija Board; forget about it! Your going to have a problem. Mormonism, Freemasonry, gay weddings or ceremony, new age dabbling are all invitations for harassment and worse.
The Sacrament of Reconciliation is the first step, however, the demon will not, Poof… just vanish and be gone forever.
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YipYupYep
Guest
Great post.
In your example of the garbage being pornography or gambling.
As you work, with help, on the wound. The demon will weaken. As the victim makes progress the demon diminishes in strength, then it can be cast out in the name of the King of Kings. Jesus Christ, the Cross, and The Precious Blood.
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chris_molter
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Why risk it? Play a decent MMO like City of Heroes 
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RobinK
Guest
I actually went to a healing of the family tree. We wrote down all the things that we knew members of our families had done (abortion, murder, adultry, addictions to anything, PLAYING DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS etc. There is a huge list that they gave us to work from.) It says in the Bible that for four generations your family members will feel the residual effects of your sin (I’ll have to look up the exact passage) meaning, they don’t pay for your sins but as an example the priest said to look for illnesses and family traits. Lets say perhaps that your great grandmother had an abortion and your grnadmother had a miscarriage, your mother had one and so did you. It could be a residual effect. But of course not all hereditary illnesses are caused by sin. It’s hard to tell. We wrote down all the sins we knew and asked God to fill in the blanks, (anything we didn’t know) We then had a healing Mass and offered all the sins of our ancestors to God to wipe clean the slate of our family tree. Having played with a ouija board and having my tarot cards read (both seemingly innocent fun at the time) I was sort of relieved after…But something still wasn’t sitting right. As soon as I went to confession there came the relief that I was searching for. I left the confessional smiling like a mad woman
In my opinion, if I even thought that playing a game might be at odds with Jesus, you better believe that I would chuck it. And those of you who are vehemently defending those RPGs maybe you should examine your playing habits, after all it’s just a game, you should be able to walk away from it, no problem!
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Laborer
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Massively-Multiplayer-Online-RPGs are extremely dangerous to real life relationships and your faith. They should be avoided. I know from experience.
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chris_molter
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They can be. So can any immersive hobby or game. Hell, so can drinking, but the Church is ok with that, right?
It’s a matter of prudence and personal judgement.
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Non_sum_dignus
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Yeah, I’m on old school tabletop RPG geek, and I can tell you that Dungeons & Dragons has about as much to do with the occult as it does with electrical engineering. The game is basically a ruleset for interactive storytelling. D&D is designed for storytelling in a fantasy setting, so you have magic. The magic is represented statistically. There are also other RPG’s (role-playing games) that deal with other genres, like pirate or espionage stories.
That said, a parent should closely monitor a child’s involvement in RPG’s. The game itself may be neutral–it’s a language for storytelling–but I’ve met some players whose idea of storytelling may be horrific. Fantasy includes everything from Tolkien and C.S. Lewis to Robert E. Howard (Conan the Barbarian). Worse yet, misconceptions about the game have driven Christians away from it, so our potentially valuable influence on the game has been minimized.
Any role-playing games my kids play will almost certainly be run by me as the narrator. That way, I know that the story will highlight virtures instead of nihilistic destruction. I may not see the game as a problem, but the players are often a dicey bunch.
As for WoW, it couldn’t be more addictive if a team of psychologists had designed it. It is extremely time-consumptive, and it is built around violence (of a very cartoony sort, by the way). It is very easy to throw way too much time at the game. There are casual players that keep the game manageable, and there are dedicated players who build their lives around it.
You don’t want to be one of those dedicated players.
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chris_molter
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What he said
Video games and RPGs are a fantasy and storytelling vehicle just like films or songs or comic books or novels. It’s playing “let’s pretend” on a more sophisticated (usually) scale. It can be used for good or ill.
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Non_sum_dignus
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Thanks for the support. Now, if you will excuse me, I have to go level my ret pally for 14 hours.What he said
Video games and RPGs are a fantasy and storytelling vehicle just like films or songs or comic books or novels. It’s playing “let’s pretend” on a more sophisticated (usually) scale. It can be used for good or ill.
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thunderballs75
Guest
Call me liberal, but I honestly don’t think playing an online video game is going to cause demons to attach themselves to me.
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The_Otaku
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IS being the key word. No one is saying they will definitely, or always, since speaking in that way is to speak in absolutes ie- it WILL happen if you play online games. It’s important for the sake of argument to say it could or may happen. The way I see it, the likelihood of it happening is proportionate to how much time, effort, life, energy, and ego/personality one puts into these types of games and whether the content of the game lends itself to the infernal because the game itself plays to its reality and being. An attaching spirit would be even more attracted to this person if the content is infernal than if it wasn’t. Regardless, the deeper you get in, the higher the risk of demonic influence. Demons who see a person who is well disciplined in his/her video gaming is less likely to attack them that way but still has basic access to the person. If the discipline is not kept up and diminishes over time (which usually happens with deeply involving games like RPGs since they progress further and require more to get to the next thing) the more opportunities that attaching spirit has to work with.
If prayer and sacramental devotions are not a regular part of the person’s life they’re at risk even more so, since they’re not calling on the power that would protect them from this sort of thing to begin with.
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Exalt
Guest
Wow! It looks like your imagination (which is probably the reason why you liked table-top games) was extremely powerful! May I ask: what did you mean when you said that you consulted “visionaries,” which helped you discover that your intimate toys were possessed by demons? Did you actually consult some kind of oracle which relayed this information to you? Or did you mean that you had the vision yourself?
To me, though, this story seems really sad. Obviously, you don’t play Warhammer by yourself, after all. You play it with others. It is something of a social hobby. Yet, your over-active imagination, combined with the condemnation of your mother, plus your religious beliefs led you to actually believe that there were actually evil spirits inside your toys. So you destroyed your hobby to get rid of the evil imaginary demons and felt better. But what about the friends you had playing Warhammer? I suppose you won’t be able to go over and play the game with them anymore, and will have to spend time with them in other ways. It’s a shame, really, that you allowed your imagination to
destroy a harmless hobby and a genuine social connection with other people. A pity.
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