A programming language and a programming paradigm can shape how we engineer a worldAs with our natural languages perhaps there is a cognitive dimension, but without having to even reach that far it is safe to say that engineering practices establish approaches to problem-solving that bias solutionsThese practices are hard to ignore in especially high-stakes, risk-adverse software development environments. 

Many MMOGs have within them some nod toward religion, some degree of religious trappings at leastPriestly characters are common, as are holy warriors (paladins).  To say nothing of demons and angels based loosely on Christian archetypes, the former of which make regular appearances in online games. 

And yet, actual religion and theology are pretty much absent or at best non-operative in most MMOsIn fantasy games the priest is typically a "healer" but otherwise the character is a façade.  Thus our first biq question, can game software development as it is now conducted scale in the face of advances in hardware, appetite for content, and capped costs?

Our story now migrates to *objects*If you have a hurry using of WOW Gold, you may come here and Buy Warhammer GoldThe importance you will acknowledge when you have no Cheap WOW GoldIf Code is the Law in our realm, then the modern conceptualization of code (see Footnote [1]) often aspires to be object-basedThe craft of software objects is then Object Oriented Programming, even if it is only sometimes realizedBy and large, software object-oriented design has been a cultural touchstone for nearly a generation of software developers and designers - objects provide a convenient and intuitive means of partitioning/ decomposing problems and mapping them onto code building blocksChallenges emerge, however, when one scales interactions from small numbers of objects to large sets of objectsThrow in parallel threads of computation and all hell breaks looseWhy the concern with large numbers of objects? Well, that is arguably where gameplay simulation is heading.

This is where Tim's slides enters our stageThey worry a particularly difficult and central problem: how to have large numbers of objects interacting across many threads of computationIn modern or science fiction games, religion is conspicuously almost entirely absent. 

I've been wondering for some time about enabling the presence of both real-world and made-up religions in MMOs as thematically appropriateIs this a good way to flesh out a world, to create gameplay surrounding a moral code and shared identity, and to bring a significantly missing piece of human community to the game, or would it just be a way to invite controversy -- in effect, to draw aggro from both religious and non-religious players and cause a heap o' customer service trouble?  

The companion to this question is a bit more introspective: to what degree does the answer to the question of operative religions in MMOs vary with our own degree of spirituality/religiosity? Is the perceived agnosticism of the game development community keeping religion out of MMOs?