This article is a critical review of studies on gaming communities. In particular, it analyses the use of subcultural, post-subcultural and postmodern subcultural theorists in relation to video games players. Academic use of sociological concepts to study gaming communities, such as neo-tribe, subculture, lifestyle, and scene, is not always explained and almost all sociological instruments show limits in engaging the complex and changing phenomena of video gaming cultures. The article focuses on the misleading use of the term subculture and, therefore, analyses effective applications of post-subcultural and post-modern subcultural approaches to specific case studies. Eventually, the relation between gamers and video games cultures is analysed. In this sense, I argue that the complexity of gaming communities is difficult to be framed and I suggest the use of the Bourdieusian concept of champ.

中文翻译：

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超越亚文化：游戏社区和社会学分析的文献综述


本文是对游戏社区研究的批判性回顾。特别是，它分析了亚文化、后亚文化和后现代亚文化理论家对视频游戏玩家的使用。学术界使用社会学概念来研究游戏社区，例如新部落、亚文化、生活方式和场景，并不总是能得到解释，而且几乎所有社会学工具在处理视频游戏文化复杂且不断变化的现象方面都表现出局限性。本文重点关注亚文化一词的误导性使用，因此分析了后亚文化和后现代亚文化方法在具体案例研究中的有效应用。最后，分析了游戏玩家和视频游戏文化之间的关系。从这个意义上说，我认为游戏社区的复杂性很难被框定，我建议使用布迪厄斯的冠军概念。