Content structure is king: An empirical study on gratifications, game genres and content type on Twitch

Abstract

While video games have been widely investigated from the perspective of play, an emerging online media phenomenon is the spectating of video game play, captivating millions of users daily. This study investigates the relationship of video game genres, content type and viewer gratification in the context of live gaming. To study this phenomenon, we employ an online questionnaire study (N=1097) to investigate six categories of gratifications: affective, information seeking, learning to play, personal integrative, social integrative & tension release motivations and their relationship with game genres and stream types. The results of this study demonstrate that "the medium is the message", highlight the importance of archetypal structure (i.e. the type of streamed content) over content topic (i.e. the genre of games being streamed), and help to build a better understanding of user generated content and the democratization of media.

Computer Science & Information Technology

“…It is clear that all UG needs contribute in some way to the way users watch streams, and that these UG needs also affect users' choice of stream (Sjoblom & Hamari, 2016;Sjoblom et al, 2017). Beyond how stream type and content (such as genre) affect the UG needs for Twitch, there is the effect of stream size and possibly other factors playing into users' stream choices.…”

“…The claim is that this ranking comes from the technical difficulty of games, Casual being the easiest to understand and Competitive being the most difficult and technically intensive (Churchill & Xu, 2016). However, Sjoblom et al (2017) tudy that when factoring game genre and stream/culture type together, Competitive stream types offer more, and more significant UG need satisfaction than Speed running stream types, indicating that perhaps the Competitive community should be larger ations with "social interaction, learning and entertainment" as "important aspects of spectatorship" (Sjoblom & Hamari, 2016). Twitch UG satisfaction was further investigated by Sjoblom et al (2017) where the unique characteristics m type were related to UG needs, revealing that the unique characteristics of game genres and stream types watched were correlated with different motivations.…”

“…The interest of games appears to be the initial draw, as respondents to a 2014 survey most frequently cited their desire "to learn something about a particular game" as the reason they started watching streams (Hamilton et al, 2014 To delve deeper into the reasons for using Twitch, researchers have commonly turned toward the 'Uses and Gratification" (UG) theory. UG is a prominent theory when dealing with personal motivations behind using media ranging from passive television watching to participatory social media use, making UG an appropriate measurement tool for Twitch as well (Sjoblom, Torhonen, Hamari, & Macey, 2017). In UG theory, users are considered to be a conscious 'fulfillment seeker'.…”

“…That is, users knowingly and self-reflectively seek out media that will satisfy their personal motivations according to certain guidelines as demonstrated in Table 1 Overall, Twitch displays the ability to satisfy UG motiv and entertainment" as "important aspects of spectatorship" (Sjoblom & Hamari, 2016 Overall, Twitch displays the ability to satisfy UG motivations with "social interaction, learning and entertainment" as "important aspects of spectatorship" (Sjoblom & Hamari, 2016). Twitch UG satisfaction was further investigated by Sjoblom et al (2017) where the unique characteristics m type were related to UG needs, revealing that the unique characteristics of game genres and stream types watched were correlated with different motivations. Even more significant was the fact that stream type had more impact on affecting user gratificati game genre (Sjoblom et al, 2017).…”

“…Twitch UG satisfaction was further investigated by Sjoblom et al (2017) where the unique characteristics m type were related to UG needs, revealing that the unique characteristics of game genres and stream types watched were correlated with different motivations. Even more significant was the fact that stream type had more impact on affecting user gratificati game genre (Sjoblom et al, 2017). This reinforces the notion of Twitch being a 'Third Place', allowing users to informally seek use gratification by dividing themselves into groups/streams based on interest in not just game genre, but also in the stream type or 'atmosphere' that has been developed by the streamer (Hamilton et al, 2014).…”