ILPC 2027

The popularity of “streaming” - the practice of broadcasting live gameplay across the internet to an audience - is a rapidly growing phenomenon. The most popular platform is Twitch, which in the space of five years has become the fourth-highest website in peak Internet traffic in the USA. Last year there were an average of 1.7 million broadcasters streaming each month, creating a total of 459,366 years of content. The highest number of concurrent viewers was over 2 million with an estimated 27 million unique viewers for an “eSports” (professional gaming competition) tournament that was live-streamed. The Twitch platform has facilitated the creation of new online celebrities, offers the possibility of new careers paths, has popularised previously-obscure video games like Rocket League, and has the potential to transform the entertainment and advertising industry. This potential was clearly recognised by Amazon, resulting in the purchase of the Twitch platform for almost $1 billion.

The astronomic growth of Twitch, now supported as a subsidiary of Amazon, is set to continue. The individual streams attract viewership through the performative labour of the broadcasters, which involves creating a live dialogue with the viewers while playing a game. Communication is two-way as the game footage is streamed along with webcam footage, while viewers respond by text chat. This has resulted in new ways to engage users and players by encouraging a form of co-production in which players and spectators of the game form new communities around their game activities. These new communities, numbering in the millions, are comprised of gamer-spectators, including gamers, game broadcasters, viewers, and various combinations of these.

This paper presents the results of an ongoing research project with Twitch. The larger project focuses on the role of videogames in the digital economy; the process of co-creating digital content; and understanding the popularity of streaming as a new social and cultural phenomenon. In this particular paper, we present the analysis of forty in-depth interviews with “partnered” streamers. These streamers have entered into a partnership with the company after being recognised as having high regular viewership along with other factors. The analysis focuses on the labour process(es) involved in live-streaming online and the emerging career paths. An increasing number of streamers on Twitch are making a profit from the activity or even make a living through donations and monthly subscriptions. This interaction between players and viewers through money, commentary, and community is highly distinctive, yet speaks to a range of established questions over the role of the internet in contemporary life, work and play, online interaction, and the social impact of interactive broadcast media. This novel empirical research provides the opportunity to further examine this new form of digital labour and contribute to wider debates on the topic.