Computer Games and Cultural Consumption of Citizens

Abstract

Current research tends to focus on the gaming experience of adult citizens as one of the practices of cultural leisure. Computer games are a cultural industry product, offering its users various ways of engaging –– from the "five-minute" browser puzzle game to the immersion into the world of a conceptual game-art project that functions as transmedia infosphere. The authors answered the following questions: 1) modern computer games –– do they leave time for other cultural activities for those who practice them? 2) what is the stratification of the gamers, if the criterion for the distinction is the sum of game experience and reading, museum- and cinema/theatre activity? The authors' ideas are based on the sociology of cultural tastes. The hypotheses of empirical study (telephone survey, n = 1000, 2017, St. Petersburg) were formulated according to P. Bourdieu and R. Peterson. One third of respondents play computer games on any of the devices. Depending on the intensity of gaming practices and the characteristics of involvement in traditional cultural consumption, citizens are divided into three groups: those who have a higher interest in artistic culture; those who are interested in all areas of leisure, but a little; those who have no interest in cultural leisure issues. The authors discuss the dynamics of gamers' cultural preferences in the perspective of the cultural omnivorousness (R. Peterson).