door.donau-uni.ac.at o:5815 DOI 10.48341/bbpc-f874 Proliferation of cults in post-apocalyptic videogames Organizations resonating with the popular image of cults are so widespread in games belonging to the post-apocalyptic genre that we must question the reason for this popularity, how exactly this changes the popular understanding of religion in general, small religious movements in particular, or secularity as something derived from it. This article attempts to answer those questions by analyzing the representation of cults in one particular game rife with cultic imagery—Metro: Exodus by studio 4A. We apply the concept of religious dimensions proposed by religious scholar Ninian Smart, intended to organize different aspects of religious tradition, to establish which parts of them serve as more fundamental elements of the cults presented in this game. This allows us to notice that, despite their numerous stylistic and ethical outward differences, all three cults in the game function, first and foremost, as forms of social engineering. This, in turn, serves as a way to implicitly create an opposition between “normal” modernity, exemplified by player characters, and any alternatives encoded as fundamentally connected with the conscious and dishonest actions of cultic leaders. eng Metro: Exodus cults resonance disenchantment 2025-11-27T08:30:25.856Z LOMv1.0 Author BEGIN:VCARD VERSION:3.0 N:Moyzhes;Leonid; FN:Leonid Moyzhes X-ORCID:https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0763-7525 END:VCARD https://w3id.org/kim/hcrt/scheme https://w3id.org/kim/hcrt/text Textdokument Text LOMv1.0 yes https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0 application/pdf 319130 https://door.donau-uni.ac.at/o:5815 https://door.donau-uni.ac.at/api/object/o:5815/thumbnail LOMv1.0 discipline