An Exploratory Study of Live-Streamed Programming

Abstract

Fig. 1: In live-streamed programming, a developer working on a programming activity shares a live video of their work with other developers, who may interact through chat to ask questions, suggest alternatives, and help find defects.Abstract-In live-streamed programming, developers broadcast their development work on open source projects using streaming media such as YouTube or Twitch. Sessions are first announced by a developer acting as the streamer, inviting other developers to join and interact as watchers using chat. To better understand the characteristics, motivations, and challenges in live-streamed programming, we analyzed 20 hours of live-streamed programming videos and surveyed 7 streamers about their experiences. The results reveal that live-streamed programming shares some of the characteristics and benefits of pair programming, but differs in the nature of the relationship between the streamer and watchers. We also found that streamers are motivated by knowledge sharing, socializing, and building an online identity, but face challenges with tool limitations and maintaining engagement with watchers. We discuss the implications of these findings, identify limitations with current tools, and propose design recommendations for new forms of tools to better supporting live-streamed programming.

Exploring the Emerging Domain of Research on Video Game Live Streaming in Web of Science: State of the Art, Changes and Trends

“…Regarding the discipline and the methodology, Table 2 presents for each of the identified research subdomains the main approaches applied and the research areas in which the WoS indexes these documents. In the subdomain focused on the streamer, it can be seen that qualitative methods predominate, especially exploratory studies, interviews, or ethnographic methods [ 6 , 10 , 56 , 57 , 58 , 82 , 83 , 84 ], with samples ranging from 20 [ 6 ] to 100 interviews [ 57 , 58 , 82 ] and observational data from 20 to 70 hours of live streaming [ 56 , 85 ]. This may be partly due to the difficulty of obtaining a broad database with enough streamers to carry out the type of quantitative analysis that represents the traditional methodological approach in the predominant research area (communication).…”

“…This cluster includes studies focused on the different motivations that drive the audience [ 7 , 17 , 64 ] and content developers or streamers [ 53 , 54 , 85 ]. It also covers the characteristics, motivations for, and challenges of live-stream programming [ 85 ], new forms of paid work [ 6 , 10 , 55 , 56 , 57 , 58 , 83 ], user motivation [ 7 , 17 ], and identification between audience groups and streamers [ 65 ]. The relationships between the genre played, content streamed and viewer gratification [ 59 ], the motivations for spending money [ 104 ], and the relationships between the size of the channel and user motivation [ 61 ] are also explored.…”

“…The second cluster lies close to the first and mainly deals with the behavior of users and streamers. The link with the first cluster is established through the different motivations that give rise to widely differing behavior [ 85 ]. The topic is extremely complex as it relates to behaviors, for example, the intention to purchase and the sending of virtual gifts [ 100 ], the identification of paying viewers [ 107 ], subscription [ 68 ] and impulse buying [ 66 ], or wishful identification and emotional engagement as a predictor of many of these behaviors [ 70 ].…”

Towards Supporting Programming Education at Scale via Live Streaming

“…The number of live viewers per session ranges from 5 to 500 people on average. Note that the two closest related prior works that focused on programming streams [4,15] had all male participants.…”

“…Alaboudi et al conducted a similar preliminary study that compared live streaming programming to pair programming by watching 20-hour stream archive videos and surveying five streamers [4]. They found that streamers struggled to balance between engaging with viewers and streaming the content, and viewers who joined the stream in the middle found it difficult to understand the stream content.…”