Behind the Streams: The Off-Camera Labour of Game Live Streaming
Abstract
The live streaming of digital and analogue gaming has emerged as a major new topic in games research. One element involves understanding the labour of streaming: studies to date have focused on examining the ‘on-camera’ labour of streamers, but what has yet to be examined is their ‘off-camera’ labour. This includes developing stream aesthetics, networking with other streamers and viewers, building communities on other platforms and management and maintenance activities. These forms of labour are undertaken by those who broadcast for leisure purposes and those who aspire to a part-time or even full-time job in game streaming. Drawing on extensive interview data with professional and semi-professional live streamers, this article explores off-stream labour and the demands it makes on game broadcasters. The article sheds new light on the behind-the-scenes labours and lives of aspirational gaming live streamers, who are collectively becoming increasingly influential in global gaming communities.
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ORCID iD
Mark R. Johnson https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4622-650X
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Biographies
Mark R. Johnson is a Lecturer in Digital Cultures in the Department of Media and Communications at the University of Sydney. His research focuses on live streaming and Twitch.tv, esports, game consumption and production, and gamification and gamblification. He has published in journals including Information, Communication and Society, New Media and Society, Games and Culture, The Sociological Review, Convergence, Media, Culture and Society and the Journal of Virtual Worlds Research. His first monograph ‘The Unpredictability of Gameplay’, a critical Deleuzean examination of luck, chance and randomness in game design and their impacts on video game cultures, was recently published by Bloomsbury Academic. Outside academia, he is also an independent game designer, a regular games blogger and podcaster and a former professional poker player.
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Article first published online: March 31, 2021
Issue published: December 2021
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Published online: March 31, 2021
Issue published: December 2021
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