Live Streams and Revenue Streams: Twitch as a Hybrid Gaming Culture

Velez, John A.; Gotlieb, Melissa R.; Graybeal, Geoffrey; Abitbol, Alan; Villarreal, Jonathan A.

doi:10.4324/9781351235266-12

Cited by 4 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 1 publication

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Still the largest live streaming service around ( Stephen, 2020 ), gamers can use Twitch to watch and learn how professional esports stars play (e.g., Burroughs and Rama, 2015 ; Johnson and Woodcock, 2017 ; Brown et al, 2018 ), join an entertaining community of like-minded people (e.g., Diwanji et al, 2020 ), indulge in nostalgia (e.g., Gandolfi, 2016 ), or even direct their favorite personality in crowdsourced live streams (e.g., Zhang and Liu, 2015 ). For some lucky few, live streaming platforms such as Twitch can even be a primary source of income ( Carras et al, 2018 ; Velez et al, 2018 ).…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Exploration of Mental Health Discussions in Live Streaming Gaming Communities

et al. 2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Live streaming is a unique form of media that creates a direct line of interaction between streamers and viewers. While previous research has explored the social motivations of those who stream and watch streams in the gaming community, there is a lack of research that investigates intimate self-disclosure in this context, such as discussing sensitive topics like mental health on platforms such as Twitch.tv. This study aims to explore discussions about mental health in gaming live streams to better understand how people perceive discussions of mental health in this new media context. The context of live streaming is particularly interesting as it facilitates social interactions that are masspersonal in nature: the streamer broadcasts to a larger, mostly unknown audience, but can also interact in a personal way with viewers. In this study, we interviewed Twitch viewers about the streamers they view, how and to what extent they discuss mental health on their channels in relation to gaming, how other viewers reacted to these discussions, and what they think about live streams, gaming-focused or otherwise, as a medium for mental health discussions. Through these interviews, our team was able to establish a baseline of user perception of mental health in gaming communities on Twitch that extends our understanding of how social media and live streaming can be used for mental health conversations. Our first research question unraveled that mental health discussions happen in a variety of ways on Twitch, including during gaming streams, Just Chatting talks, and through the stream chat. Our second research question showed that streamers handle mental health conversations on their channels in a variety of ways. These depend on how they have built their channel, which subsequently impacts how viewers perceive mental health. Lastly, we learned that viewers’ reactions to mental health discussions depend on their motivations for watching the stream such as learning about the game, being entertained, and more. We found that more discussions about mental health on Twitch led to some viewers being more cautious when talking about mental health to show understanding.

show abstract

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Exploration of Mental Health Discussions in Live Streaming Gaming Communities

et al. 2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The studies published in recent years on the nature of Twitch as a digital meeting point and an example of 'participatory culture' (Velez et al 2018) coincide in pointing out that the possibility of communicating with the streamer and with others, and of discussing the content of the stream, are the principal source of interest attracting the audience's participation on this platform. As noted by Hamilton et al (2014), we can also view Twitch under the concept of 'virtual third places,' to use the terminology proposed by Oldenburg (1997), that is to say, informal public spaces where people engage in sociability to form and maintain communities, which we might call, in the culture of streaming, 'stream communities.'…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Jelou pipol

García

2022

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This study explores the characteristics of the language used in Twitch, one of the most popular streaming platforms worldwide, as an example of computer-mediated communication (CMC). Some of the most salient traits used to describe CMC are found in Twitch chat messages, as the paper will show, confirming that the communicative interaction that takes place among users of this platform matches the features of CMC described in the academic literature. Additionally, the synchronous and multimodal nature of this platform, as well as the pragmatic implications of the use of subscriber-exclusive emotes are peculiarities that must be considered for a comprehensive description of the language that takes place on Twitch. Lastly, in the case of the videogame chats in Spanish studied, the paper introduces as a key factor in the description of this language the characteristics of the lexicon: its foreign origin, its neological nature and its high level of terminological specialisation.

show abstract

“…Indeed, each stream incorporates a chat that allows synchronous interaction between viewers and with the streamers themselves. It is mostly through this feature that streamers are able to engage in para-social interactions 18 , build their communities 19 , and nudge them toward the monetization features provided by the platform 20 .…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Monetization in online streaming platforms: an exploration of inequalities in Twitch.tv

Houssard

Pilati

Tartari

et al. 2023

Sci Rep

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The live streaming platform Twitch underwent in recent years an impressive growth in terms of viewership and content diversity. The platform has been the object of several studies showcasing how streamers monetize their content via a peculiar system centered around para-sociality and community dynamics. Nonetheless, due to scarcity of data, lots is still unknown about the platform-wide relevance of this explanation as well as its effect on inequalities across streamers. In this paper, thanks to the recent availability of data showcasing the top 10,000 streamers revenue between 2019 and 2021, as well as viewership data from different sources, we characterized the popularity and audience monetization dynamics of the platform. Using methods from social physics and econometrics, we analyzed audience building and retention dynamics and linked them to observed inequalities. We found a high level of inequality across the platform, as well as an ability of top streamers to diversify their revenue sources, through audience renewal and diversification in monetization systems. Our results demonstrate that, even if the platform design and affordance favor monetization for smaller creators catering to specific niches, its non-algorithmic design still leaves room for classical choice biases allowing a few streamers to emerge, retain and renew a massive audience.

show abstract

Live Streams and Revenue Streams: Twitch as a Hybrid Gaming Culture

Cited by 4 publications

References 1 publication

An Exploration of Mental Health Discussions in Live Streaming Gaming Communities

An Exploration of Mental Health Discussions in Live Streaming Gaming Communities

Jelou pipol

Monetization in online streaming platforms: an exploration of inequalities in Twitch.tv

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About