Many researchers have investigated learning through playing games. However, after playing games, players often go online to establish and participate in the online community where they enrich their game experiences, discuss game-related issues, and create fan-fictions, screenshots, or scenarios. Although these emerging activities are an essential part of gaming culture, they have not attracted much attention from researchers and only a few empirical studies have been done on learning through beyond-game culture. Language learning in particular has not been extensively researched despite the proliferation of game players who speak English as a foreign language within this community. To address how non-native English speaking (NNE) game players participate in language learning through game play and beyond-game culture, three generations of activity theories and a multiple-case study design were employed in this study. The asynchronous computer-mediated discourses were repeatedly reviewed, and email interviews with participants were conducted over three stages. The discourse analysis of interaction data and interview scripts showed how participants were engaged in language learning through gaming culture. First, words or phrases used in game play could be learned while playing games. Second, sentences or discourses could be practiced through interaction with native or more fluent peers in the online community after playing games. Third, these two types of engagement in gaming culture were closely related to influencing language learning through repeated practices and collaborative interactions. In conclusion, language learning through gaming is appropriately understood when ecological perspectives are adopted to look at both sides of gaming culture.

With the help of digital media and networking technologies, today's learners are increasingly participating in the consuming, producing, and disseminating of new meanings in various modes such as text, image, sound, video, or all together—particularly in online communities—forming new identities as knowledge producers. By using online ethnography coupled with qualitative data collection instruments including participant observation and e-mail interview, the study explored (a) how game players participated in learning how to make mods a fan-programmed game feature and (b) why they created and shared mods with others. Findings revealed that game players participated in learning through collaboration, appreciation and validation, and mentoring. Moreover, affiliation, offline interests, and increased enjoyment motivated them to participate in making and sharing mods with their peers. The findings also unveiled that gaming culture has been overlooked or neglected as a form of possible applications for informal online learning, which can provide many rewarding benefits—especially to teachers, researchers, and school reformers—with a new understanding toward today's learners' multiple identity formation.

A great deal of formal and informal language learning and teaching is taking place in cyberspace. A number of theoretically motivated affordances for online language learning point to why this is the case. In the last decade, these affordances have been identified and empirically examined in a number of studies. This entry synthesizes the extant research on these online language education activities and the state of current understanding regarding the potential of teaching and learning languages in cyberspace.