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The leisure activity of digital gaming has seen an explosive increase in players worldwide, to the point that some scholars speak of a ludic society or a ludic century. Despite this, the sociological mechanisms regulating the gameplay preferences and practices of ludic citizens remain understudied. The aim of this study, thus, is to explore, understand and explain how the social reproduction of players of digital games occurs – by focusing on the individual biographies of players and identifying the differences in self-understanding of players within the game of gaming. Returning to Bourdieu’s original concepts of doxa, illusio and of capital as a transmutable resource functioning on a symbolic market, the article provides empirical examples of how differing capital volumes shape different gaming outcomes. Based on in-depth interviews with 36 Swedish players, and structured through an ideal-type analysis, the article presents an index of how different forms of capital function in determining the positions and dispositions of different players. The results suggest that players more invested in gaming are more materialistically inclined and, likewise, more socially active in their leisure activity, whereas players less invested in gaming are less prone to play with other players, but more invested in achieving self-fulfilment out-of-gaming.
Tim Timvig (Tue,) studied this question.