Video Games - The Video Game Industry: Formation, Present State, and Future - page 21

market while exploring new types of social/casual gaming with a two-
pronged strategy (Merel 2011)?
This chapter will argue that most of these questions can be answered by
a fairly straightforward claim: regardless of declarations otherwise (pre-
dominantly by industry professionals), the video game industry is a subcul-
tural industry that produces subcultural content for a subcultural audience
with a subcultural industry logic. An analysis will examine what type of
business and content-related strategies and industry mechanisms that gen-
erate a subcultural industry. A number of demanding questions will be put
forth (with ambivalent answers) concerning the challenges that the game
industry is facing when trying to shed its subcultural past and ushering in
a transformation into a mass-cultural medium.
THE SUBCULTURAL
There are numerous ways of defi ning the notion of subculture . They all
depend on perspective, discipline, context, application and fi nally on the
theorist. On a general level the concept of a subculture implies a minor-
ity culture that is of subordinated and secondary nature in relation to a
dominant majority culture (Yinger 1960). The term is used in a wide range
of cultural phenomena based on such diverse cultural objects as music,
sexuality, sports, urban districts through fashion, politics to ethnicity,
brand communities and consumer habits, to mention a few. Hebdige (1979)
argues that the subculture as such is a subversion of normalcy and taking a
stance regarding particular elements within the majority culture.
The concept can often, although not always, be associated with a subver-
sive and deviant culture who opposes the perceived majority culture. The
alternative term of counterculture (Roszak 1968), or contraculture (Yinger
1960), attempts to capture this more culturally confrontational meaning
in the original meaning of the word. Here the member of counterculture
has decided to actively oppose aspects of majority culture and this act of
resistance creates a separate community whose culture is based around the
opposition. Frequently, although not always, this resistance is based on feel-
ings among the minority of oppression by the majority. Consequently, the
counter/contraculture in this case is actually defi ned by the majority, but
the minority is not content with the defi nition and particularly the actions
by the majority towards the minority as a consequence of this defi nition.
A typical example is constituted by the Marxist-based critical theory per-
spective (Held 1980; Sim, Appignanesi and Loon 2001) of working class or
ethnicity (Delgado and Stefanic 2000a, 2000b), whose status as minority
cultures are defi ned by the oppressive actions of the majority culture, but
is further reinforced when the minority culture becomes aware of its status
and attempts to redefi ne and emancipate itself from the majority defi nition.
Which brings us to the infi nitely more complex analysis of the Deleuzian