Situating Play Cultures: A Survey of Videogame Players and Practices in France

The study of gamers and their actual practices still remains marginalised in the Game Studies academic literature. At an international level, studies and surveys have tended to spotlight the most spectacular and committed practices. As a result, large segments of gaming practices have long been neglected, introducing strong biases at the expense of less fashionable but far more standard, prevalent and everyday practices. Consequently, we advocate refocusing videogame studies on the players and moving from the fetishism of online gaming and spectacular play to the inclusion of all types of videogames and all forms of commitment and practices, without a priori expectations, in order to collect the full spectrum of practices and audiences. With this perspective, this chapter explores the preliminary results of a quantitative survey conducted in 2012, which is representative of the French population over 11 years of age (n = 2, 542). The results highlight the diversity of playing practices in space and time, as well as the divergence between social practices and their articulation to ‘play cultures.' Similarly, the results allow us qualifying the feminisation of the public, challenging the image of executives playing at work or clarifying the differences between rural and urban practices when it comes to videogames.