Golden Age of Tabletop Gaming: Creation of the Social Capital and Rise of Third Spaces for Tabletop Gaming in the 21st Century

• Authors: Piotr Konieczny
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

This paper re-examines two turn-of-the-century observations of Putnam and Oldenburg about the decline of social capital-generating activities, and disappearance of certain social venues. Based on a decade of multisite observations on three continents I show that a particular type of an activity that Putnam claimed was disappearing-face-to-face, tabletop gaming-is thriving, and often doing so in third-place-like venues that Oldenburg described as endangered-local cafés and clubs. I present data on the proliferation of related leisure activities, including an estimate of their longitudinal and geographical spread and popularity. I also illustrate how social capital is created in physical gaming venues, and propose a six-type classification of those venues.

Keywords

EN

social capital; leisure; gaming; third places

• Publisher: Polskie Towarzystwo Socjologiczne
• Journal: Polish Sociological Review
• Year: 2019
• Volume: 206
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 199-216

Dates

published

2019-06-19

Contributors

author

Piotr Konieczny

• Hanyang University

Identifiers

DOI

10.26412/psr206.05