The Authenticity Engine:
Livestreaming on Twitch
Mia Consalvo
Concordia University
Department of Communication Studies
Montreal, Canada
[email protected]
Marc Lajeunesse Andrei Zanescu
Concordia University Concordia University
Dept. of Communication Studies Dept. of Communication Studies
Montreal, Canada Montreal, Canada
[email protected], [email protected]
Keywords
Live streaming, authenticity, liveness, variety streamers, Twitch
INTRODUCTION
An Australian streamer breaks down in tears while talking with her viewers, overcome
because she hasn’t been paid for promotional work she did some time ago, and fears
she won’t be able to pay her bills. An American streamer starts a game of Dark Souls,
pauses it while a small child appears to tell him about a sibling having an issue, puts up
a ‘break’ screen to investigate the problem, and returns after a few minutes to resume
play without comment. A British woman stops playing Cuphead after dying repeatedly,
apologizes to her community for not providing adequate entertainment, and switches
to another game. Meanwhile behind a fourth streamer a toddler appears holding a slice
of pizza aloft that bobs up and down as he walks through the camera’s frame.
Such instances were not scripted nor likely anticipated by the streamers involved. If
each streamer was making a Let’s Play video of their gameplay, those elements would
have been edited out, never to appear for public consumption. Yet due to Twitch’s
liveness, they were all broadcast, and the streamers themselves coped with the issues
in different ways – if they were even aware of them. This liveness is one of the
celebrated features of Twitch and similar live streaming services (Mixer, Caffeine.tv)
and presumably one of the draws for the audiences that flock to them. We argue that
this liveness - in tandem with the particularities of Twitch itself - generates authenticity.
This presentation details how micro-streamers perform authenticity via intentional and
unintentional practices.
LITERATURE
Work examining live streaming has mainly focused on those who stream to thousands
or millions of viewers (Taylor 2018; Johnson and Woodcock 2017). Past work
identified three categories of game streamers: esports players, speedrunners, and Let’s
Play/variety streamers (Hamilton, Garretson, and Kerne 2014). Such spaces are known
to be toxic (Consalvo 2018), although streamers rely heavily on moderators (mods) to
counteract this (Wohn 2019). Live streaming services are also now featuring a wider
Proceedings of DiGRA 2020
© 2020 Authors & Digital Games Research Association DiGRA. Personal and educational classroom
use of this paper is allowed, commercial use requires specific permission from the author.
variety of creative activities (Consalvo and Phelps 2019) as well as the banalities of
everyday life (Zhang and Hjorth 2017).
However, only a small proportion of those who livestream gameplay make money from
doing so, and most stream to small (or even nonexistent) audiences. This research
investigates these ‘micro-streamers’ (mostly streamers with fewer than 100 concurrent
views). The guiding questions were (1) how do individuals engage in live streaming
and (2) how does live streaming change the act of gameplay – if at all.
METHODS
This study engaged in multiple methods. We initially identified >100 channels across
Twitch, featuring variety streamers that were diverse in terms of their gender,
race/ethnicity, sexuality, age and ability. We observed channels over three years,
accumulating hundreds of hours of viewtime to observe live streaming practices, taking
fieldnotes and screenshots. We conducted 44 in-depth semi-structured qualitative
interviews with self-identified “smaller streamers” which lasted between 45-200
minutes in length. Finally, we invited interviewees to participate in a follow-up survey
a year later to determine who was still streaming, reasons for quitting, and their biggest
challenges. Data included hundreds of pages of transcripts and fieldnotes, and hundreds
of screenshots and videos of livestreaming.
PERFORMING AUTHENTICITY
The large majority of those who stream gameplay on Twitch are neither partnered nor
affiliates (i.e. compensated), and it is not their full-time job. For most of those we
interviewed it is a leisure activity performed in addition to paid work. While some
streamers may have greater aspirations, many are happy with the current state of their
channels, viewers and practices, and are not striving to ‘make it big on Twitch.’
The vast majority were either students or had jobs (or partners) that paid the majority
of their expenses. A few streamed to single-digit audiences, with the rest trending
upward into a few hundred or occasionally more viewers. Smaller streamers sometimes
expressed casual or aspirational interest in making Twitch a full-time job, but most
believed that doing Twitch for a living would never be practical – either because of its
format for streamers as independent contractors with no benefits or support structures,
or because they knew they didn’t want to dedicate the time needed (and gamble on
having the luck) to succeed long term. Even though most viewed their streaming as a
hobby or leisure activity, they took it seriously and no one had plans to stop streaming.
All streamers took care to create a channel that was representative of them in some
way, via their streaming personality, channel aesthetics, game choices, and other
elements. Almost to a person, they reiterated the mantra that to be successful (however
they defined the term) they should have a schedule and stick to it. For most, this
comprised streaming several days a week, for at least a few hours at a time. This norm
of the Twitch community translated into multiple sessions of constant gameplay, and
via that ‘always on’ liveness, scripted and unscripted elements of authenticity could
take shape.
Marwick, writing about individuals who work in technology fields, highlights the
importance of how such workers ‘self-brand’ themselves to be employable, in
particular through displays of authenticity. She makes the point that “the idea of a single
‘authentic’ self … is a social construction, one at odds with actual social practice”
(Marwick 2013, 235). But in terms of actual practices, Marwick highlights authenticity
as arising from “displays of a hidden inner life” (p. 120) as well as “honesty without
pretense” (p. 120) in ways that are consistent. So how do Twitch micro-streamers
perform authenticity via their streaming?
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Intentional performances include sharing details of one’s personal life, having a regular
schedule, and interacting with one’s community both on and off-stream. Unintentional
performances of authenticity were equally important to live streaming, however, and
include being overcome by emotion, gameplay failure, breaking of the fourth wall,
technical difficulties, and dealing with abuse and harassment. Performing authenticity
is something that most streamers grapple with, whether they think of it in those terms
or not and is explored in more depth in the presentation.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This research was funded by the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research
Council.
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