Twitching Laborious Play or: How Game-Streaming Changes Modes of Playing

Abstract

During the last five years, we were able to witness the rise from amateur 'casual' gamers to superstar-entertainers with crowds of ten thousands of fans cheering to their gaming achievements and performances. This success can be directly linked to the popularity of twitch -a streaming service that has become "the dominant Western games livestreaming platform" (Witkowski 2017, p. 417) during the recent years. Although twitch was already launched in mid-2011, the true hype started with the rise and success of Battle Royale games, which became popular after the release of PUBG in 2017. 1 The theme of the 'last man standing', however, is a discourse that has been reworked in other popular media before, such as the 'Royal Rumble' in professional Wrestling, in literature, B. Ochsner ( )