If he were alive today, what might Heidegger say about Halo, the popular video game franchise? What would Augustine think about Assassin's Creed ? What could Maimonides teach us about Nintendo's eponymous hero, Mario? While some critics might dismiss such inquiries outright, protesting that these great thinkers would never concern themselves with a medium so crude and mindless as video games, it is impor­tant to recognize that games like these are, in fact, becoming the defining medium of our time. We spend more time and money on video games than on books, television, or film, and any serious thinker of our age should be concerned with these games, what they are saying about us, and what we are learning from them. Yet video games still remain relatively unexplored by both scholars and pundits alike. Few have advanced beyond out­moded and futile attempts to tie gameplay to violent behavior. With this canard now thoroughly and repeatedly disproven, it is time to delve deeper. Just as the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan recently acquired fourteen games as part of its permanent collection, so too must we seek to add a serious consideration of virtual worlds to the pantheon of philoso-phical inquiry. In God in the Machine, author Liel Leibovitz leads a fas­cinating tour of the emerging virtual landscape and its many dazzling vistas from which we are offered new vantage points on age-old theological and philosophical questions. Free will vs. determinism, the importance of ritual, transcendence through mastery, notions of the self, justice and sin, life, death, and resurrection--these all come into play in the video games that some critics so easily write off as mind-numbing wastes of time. When one looks closely at how these games are designed, at their inherent logic, and at the cognitive effects they have on players, it becomes clear that playing these games creates a state of awareness vastly different from that which occurs when we watch television or read a book. Indeed, gameplay is a far more engaged process--one that draws on various faculties of mind and body to evoke sensa­tions that might more commonly be associated with religious experience. Getting swept away in an engrossing game can be a profoundly spiritual activity. It is not to think, but rather simply to be, a logic that sustained our ancestors for millennia as they looked heavenward for answers. Today, as more and more of us look screenward, it is important to investigate these games for their vast potential as fine instruments of moral training. Anyone seeking a concise and well-reasoned introduction to the subject would do well to start with God in the Machine. By illuminating both where video game storytelling is now and where it currently butts up against certain inherent limitations, Liebovitz intriguingly implies how the field and, in turn, our experiences might continue to evolve and advance in the coming years.

About the Author: Liel Leibovitz is a visiting assistant professor at NYU Steinhardt focusing primarily on video game and interactive media research and theory. Having received his PhD from Columbia University in 2007, Leibovitz continues to study the ontology of electronic game play, exploring such diverse issues as human-machine interaction, gaming and the con­struction of player subjectivity, and representations of death and violence in video games. He is a member of the advisory board of the New York chapter of the Digital Games Research Association, a founding member of the NYU Faculty Council on Games, and a member of the academic advisory board of the American Jewish Historical Society. He is also the author or co-author of several books, including, most recently, The Chosen Peoples: America, Israel, and the Ordeals of Divine Election, co-written with Todd Gitlin, as well as contributor to newspapers and magazines such as the Los Angeles Times, the Atlantic, Dissent, and Tablet.