Spectatorship in video games
Video game spectators has been defined as “people who follow the in-game experience, but are not direct participants in the game”:.[1]. Scholarly efforts have been made to identify the motivation and appeal behind what encourages people to become spectators[1][2]. Alongside this, different types of spectators have been identified that can sometimes challenge the boundaries between player and spectator[3]. Investigations into spectator motivation have sometimes transcended into spectator behavior, such as in how a Twitch chat interacts with a streamer, which can shape expectations and subcultural norms for the people who engage with it.
Background
In the 1970s and ’80s, film theorists developed ‘‘spectator theory.’’ Scholars have found complex structures that underlie the moviegoing experience and claimed that these structures were manipulated by filmmakers to promote ideological purposes with or without full awareness.[4]
In the 1980s, the prevalence of sport spectatorship in Western society attracted scholars' discussion on the motives of indirect sports spectatorship[5]. It is found that audiences watch broadcasted sports because of the need for catharsis[6], social contacts[7], entertainment[8], and other factors. Spectators have become the subject of composing spectator sports and are considered constructors of sports watching experiences[9] [10]. The features of sports spectatorship can also be applied in the context of e-sport spectatorship[5]
In the 1980s, standing alongside and watching others play arcade games formed a key part of the playing experience[11]. Spectators of arcade games assist in enhancing and expanding gameplay, turning play into public performance[12]
Video game Spectatorship
Starting from the age of arcade games, spectatorship has always been considered central to digital gaming[13]. Video game spectating has become a popular activity boosted by the rise of online video games and esports. Instead of watching a player’s computer screen over the shoulder, there are various software and tools available for spectating games [3]. For example, YouTube Games and Twitch. Scholarly efforts have been made to figure out features of video game spectatorship, in order to improve gameplay and game watching experiences.
Persona of video game spectators
Cheng and Huang (2011) recognized nine characters of video game spectators[3] which have been widely applied by scholars in further research[14][15]
- The Bystander: who watch video games from an outsider’s point of view, are considered the least engaged spectators.
- The Curious: who focuses on the knowledge gap of the game. Engage only when there is more to learn
- The Inspired: who eager to play the game himself/herself after spectating
- The Pupil: who watch others play to improve his/her own skills
- The Unsatisfied: who sees the act of spectating as a weaker substitute for the activity he or she would rather do.
- The Entertained: who consider video game spectating as a form of entertainment
- The Assistant: that acts as an advisor to the player and to help the player focus on the game.
- The Commentator: who helps shape the viewing experience of other spectators by providing comments.
- The Crowd: who cares more about the communal aspect of spectating and the pleasure in watching a game as a group (like traditional spectator sports)
Motivation of video game spectatorship
Scholars have found that video game spectators enjoy watching others playing games because of:[1][15][14]
- attachment to certain game players
- the need for learning gameplay skills and game related information
- the demand of entertainment and relaxation
- the lack of time, skills, equipment, or other resources for gameplay
- the dislike of “toxic” game culture
- vicarious achievement provided by game players
- the demand of social and affective interactions.
Interactive spectatorship (‘twitch play’, stream points/donations, raids)
Interactive spectatorship is the involvement of spectators shaping the gameplay that is being observed directly through their actions[16]. This can occur in a variety of ways across multiple platforms such as through the chat functions of Twitch and YouTube. Stream chats have been compared to a saloon performance in which the streamer performs for a “collection of viewers [who are] predominantly engrossed in their own conversations and only tentatively paying attention to the performance” [17]. What behaviors are considered acceptable and become norms among a streamer’s subculture are defined by the streamers and their moderation team, which normally result in “supportive” and “pleasant” chat engagement with the streamers [17].
However, spectatorship can also open opportunities for “toxic” people. A crossover between KFC & PUBG in which emotes of a KFC bucket were available to Twitch chat users became a tool for harassment by racists to spam in African American chats along with emotes of African American streamers [16].
In contrast, interactions have been used to create important and charitable interactions between streamers and viewers, such as during GDQ streams. GDQ provides the opportunity for different speedrunners/streamers to showcase their game and skills to a broad audience[18]. GDQ events are done as an open opportunity for people to donate money towards causes such as Doctors without Borders [18]. A key interactive feature of these streams is the ability for donations to go towards specific goals, such as “Battle Steven” in Pokemon Emerald [14]. The way these goals function is once the money from donations reaches a certain threshold during a run, the goal is achieved and the streamer performing the run now has to work towards the new goal as well as finishing the game as normal [18][19]. Another interactive option GDQ promotes is goals that act as a poll for the chat such as “Save the animals” v “Kill the animals”’ in Super Metroid, and even provide chat donors the option to name characters in certain games such as the “Nidoran’s name” goal in Pokemon Blue[19]. These charitable donations have a clear positive effect on charitable donations, but also allow for parasocial and ‘saloon’ time engagements among chat and the streamer [17][18][19].
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Orme, S. (2021). “Just watching”: A qualitative analysis of non-players’ motivations for video game spectatorship. New Media & Society. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444821989350
- ↑ Borowy, M, Jin, DY (2013) Pioneering e-sport: the experience economy and the marketing of early 1980s arcade gaming contests. International Journal of Communication 7: 2254–2274
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Cheung, G., & Huang, J. (2011). Starcraft from the stands: understanding the game spectator. Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 763–772. ACM.
- ↑ Tratner, M. 2008. Crowd Scenes Movies and Mass Politics (1st ed.). New York: Fordham University Press. https://doi.org/10.26530/oapen_626974
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 Guttmann, Allen. (1986). Sport Spectators. New York: Columbia University Press.
- ↑ Goldstein, J., & Arms, R. (1971). "Effects of Observing Athletic Contests on Hostility." Sociometry 34:83-90.
- ↑ Wenner, L., & Gantz, W. (1989). "The Audience Experience with Sports on Television." In Media, Sports, & Society, ed. Lawrence Wenner. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications.
- ↑ Wann, D. L. (1997). Sport psychology. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
- ↑ Szablewicz, M. (2016). “A Realm of Mere Representation? “Live” E-Sports Spectacles and the Crafting of China’s Digital Gaming Image.” Games and Culture 11 (3): 256–274.
- ↑ Fairley, S., Tyler, D, B. (2012). “Bringing Baseball to the Big Screen: Building Sense of Community Outside of the Ballpark.” Journal of Sport Management 26 (3): 258–270.
- ↑ Taylor, T. L. (2012). Raising the Stakes: E-sports and the Professionalization of Computer Gaming. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
- ↑ Holin Lin, & Sun, C.-T. (2011). The Role of Onlookers in Arcade Gaming: Frame Analysis of Public Behaviours. Convergence (London, England), 17(2), 125–137
- ↑ Golob, U., Kraševec, M., & Oblak Črnič, T. (2021). Video gaming spectatorship: What drives gameplay watching on YouTube? Medijske Studije, 12(23), 40–56. https://doi.org/10.20901/ms.12.23.3
- ↑ 14.0 14.1 14.2 Sjöblom, & Hamari, J. (2017). Why do people watch others play video games? An empirical study on the motivations of Twitch users. Computers in Human Behavior, 75, 985–996.
- ↑ 15.0 15.1 Rodrigues, & Filgueiras, E. (2020). eSports: How Do Video Game Aspects Define Competitive Gaming Streams and Spectatorship. In Design, User Experience, and Usability. Design for Contemporary Interactive Environments (pp. 506–516). Springer International Publishing.
- ↑ 16.0 16.1 Carter, Marcus & Egliston, Ben (2021) The work of watching Twitch: Audience labour in livestreaming and esports. Journal of Gaming and Virtual Worlds, 13(1), pp. 3-20.
- ↑ 17.0 17.1 17.2 Lybrand, E. (2019). Community in the Crowd: Motivations for Commenting on TWITCH.TV Live Streams. ProQuest Dissertations Publishing
- ↑ 18.0 18.1 18.2 18.3 Stephen Tsung-Han Sher and Norman Makoto Su. 2019. Speedrunning for Charity: How Donations Gather Around a Live Streamed Couch. Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 3, CSCW, Article 48 (November 2019), 26 pages. DOI:https://doi-org.ezproxy.library.sydney.edu.au/10.1145/3359150
- ↑ 19.0 19.1 19.2 Scully-Blaker, Rainforest (2016) Re-curating the Accident: Speedrunning as Community and Practice. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
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