Badges, Bits, and Bots: Exploring the effect of chat badges on Twitch interactions

Badges, Bits, and Bots

Exploring the effect of chat badges on Twitch interactions

Valerija Denaityte Dr Jörgen Skågeby Stockholm University Department of Media Studies

MA Thesis: 30 credits

11 June 2020

Abstract

This study aims to observe and understand what effect influence-earned and appointed badges have during Twitch streams and their interactions. Twitch is the most popular live streaming platform online and draws in a large number of content creators, with its primary draw being video game live streams. During video game live streams,

streamers play a game and interact with viewers, of which there are different types depending on monetary contribution and status given by the broadcaster. Using ethnographic observation, two weeks’ worth of streams on a medium sized channel were viewed and later analysed with thematic structure, focusing on streamer- audience, viewer-subscriber, and the place of moderators and VIPs. The results show that while badges can delineate who is a regular viewer and who is not, beyond this they show little significance towards the positions of different audience members.

Moderators and VIPs are shown to have more sense of regularity and more power over or exemption from chat limits. Additionally, those contributing monetarily are shown to get extra appreciation via on-screen alerts and triggered audio segments, making the streamer aware of their contribution. In chat, this earns them an additional badge, showing their level of contribution to the stream. This did, beyond recognition on stream, not show a longitudinal affect towards people who contributed monetarily.

Overall, badges thus did not hold significant power, but observations raised more questions that inspire future research.

Keywords: Twitch, badges, participatory communities, subscribers, moderators

Table of contents

ABSTRACT ... 2

TABLE OF CONTENTS ... 3

1. INTRODUCTION... 5

2. BACKGROUND ... 9

3. LITERATURE REVIEW ... 12

3.1 Before Twitch ... 12

3.2 On Twitch ... 14

3.2.1 Streamers ... 15

3.2.2 Audiences... 16

3.2.3 Moderating ... 18

3.2.4 Communities ... 20

4 METHODOLOGY ... 23

4.1 Method ... 23

4.2 Material ... 24

5 RESULTS AND ANALYSIS ... 27

5.1 Regulars ... 27

5.2 Monetary Support ... 29

5.3 Niches ... 30

5.4 Streamer and Friend ... 32

5.5 Proximate Communities ... 33

6 CONCLUSION... 35

REFERENCES ... 38

APPENDICES ... 41

Appendix A: Excerpt of Field Notes... 41

1. Introduction

An increasing number of media users are choosing to spend their time on Twitch, a live streaming platform focused primarily on gameplay, but ranging into music broadcasts, art, and real-life chatting. During a Twitch stream, a video feed is combined with a live chat, where audiences interact and connect with one another and the streamer

themselves.

Twitch sits at the intersection of live television consumption and live chat interaction, creating a new playground where the conventions of traditional media viewing are challenged. Not only are people actively participating in and interacting with the content they are consuming, they are challenging the notion of “watching” as an isolated activity where you must actively seek out others’ company to not be alone.

Twitch has grown to host 15 million unique daily visitors, and its monthly viewership numbers can rival larger TV networks, especially in the United States (Sjöblom et al., 2018).

Though Twitch is primarily knowing as a service aimed at video games – meaning people stream themselves as they play a game – its origins lie in “lifecasting”

and cam culture. The site’s predecessor Justin.tv was aimed at just that, allowing for people to share the excitement and mundanity of everyday life. As time progressed, it became apparent that the video game channels on the site were not only increasingly popular; they were also an exciting phenomenon. Twitch CEO Emmett Shear explained that as a gamer himself, this live streaming felt as an extension of the traditional vision of gaming that many are familiar with: a gamer in their own space, with the lights off, very much alone. However, the gaming channels reflected also the vision of gaming that many gamers have experienced in their lives: the idea of sharing gameplay even though only one person, at a time, can be in control of the controller. The people building Justin.tv and supporting its consequent development into Twitch relied on their own experiences of spectating play, using it as a motivator (Taylor, 2018).

This turns live streams into more than a moment of spectatorship. Audience members oftentimes actively participate in chatting with the streamer and one another, which is particularly appealing on Twitch as feedback in chat is often instant; the

streamer can respond and interact with what is happening in chat as it happens.

Additionally, the chat has both the power to react what is happening on stream and

influence what a streamer does next in a game, if that is something that is applicable for

the game in question. Streamers stand closer to the audience, and many viewers

appreciate when a streamer responds to their message in chat via the video feed. These viewers may choose to stay, become regulars, and that is how many stream

communities come to exist. They exist not within the context of the game, but rather become an entity of their own in which the game brings them together at certain times.

In line with Hamilton, Garretson and Kerne's (2014) discussion of Twitch channels and third places, these participatory communities consist of willing participants with shared history and identity drawn from the content – still, they oftentimes come to function and exist on their own outside of streams via the use of popular social networks such as Twitter and Instagram, and via community servers on Discord, a free cross-platform Voice-over IP application (Jiang et al., 2019).

The specific aim of this study is to observe and understand communication in Twitch chats pertaining specifically to the effect of “badges” – special status indicators that take the shape of little icons beside a viewer’s username. These badges broadly signify that the user has special privileges or abilities in the chat, acquired either through monetary support or appointment by the streamer. How these badges are acquired and what they grant will be outlined in further chapters.

The underlying assumption is that there are differences between how different users communicate and are communicated towards. Previous studies have indicated, for example, that moderators are required to communicate in a way that is desired of them based on the community they are a part of. Sometimes this is presented as moderating tasks – e.g. informing users of channel rules, warning those who break the rules, etc. – while other times moderators set the tone and encourage others to

participate in the community in the existing and determined tone (Hamilton, Garretson and Kerne, 2014; Taylor, 2018). This shows that moderators not only communicate in a specific way towards people in chat, but that they most likely are viewed and perhaps even addressed differently by audience members.

There is a gap here in existing scholarship on Twitch and live streams in general.

Previous research has drawn attention toward motivations of both streamers and

audiences to engage with Twitch, readability of the chat in correlation with audience

size, and the monetisation of Twitch. No previous research has been done on the

interactions between the streamer and the audience. This study does not attempt to

tackle that broad interest, but instead focuses on a specific aspect of Twitch in hopes of uncovering whether or not it plays a role in communication.

The main research question is formulated as follows: How do badges influence interactions during live streams on Twitch? As this is a relatively broad research question, it is broken down in a number of sub-questions that break the specific interactions of interest into groupings, making it easier to distinguish between them.

The first sub-question focuses on the role of subscribers and is as follows: What kind of interaction can be identified in chat between regular viewers and subscribers?

Subscribers are audience members, often regulars of the stream, who have chosen to support the streamer they enjoy watching financially. They are distinguished in chat with a channel-specific badge beside their username. This is creates a dynamic between audience members who show dedication in a monetary way, and those who either cannot do this or choose not to do it.

The second sub-question deals with streamer-appointed roles in chat and is formulated as follows: What kind of attitudes can be identified towards VIPs and moderators from all audience member types? Though two distinct roles, VIPs and

moderators are both appointed by the streamer, indicating some kind of regular status.

They are designated in chat by badges that are the same across all Twitch channels and thus can be recognized easily by new and regular viewers alike. Their badges indicate a close tie to the streamer and can thus make them appear a certain way to audience members who are either new or not so loyal or regular.

The third and final sub-question refers more globally to interactions between the streamer and audience members, and is as follows: What kind of different interactions can be identified between contributors and the streamer, as well as regular viewers and the streamer? In case of this study, “contributors” is the chosen umbrella term for those audience members choosing to support the streamer in monetary ways available on the platform – this can be in the form of traditional donations, gifted subscriptions, own subscriptions, and donations using Twitch’s own integrated system called “bits.”

Using these questions, the study will attempt to understand how badges affect

interactions in Twitch chats, both between audience members and surrounding the

streamer. The research does not intend to explain or even understand why people

invest their money into streamers, nor does it want to study moderator motivation and

styles – research that is available on these topics can only serve to amplify and help

understand the outcomes of this thesis better. Twitch, being a relatively new platform, has not been researched to its fullest extent, and no work has been done focused on some of the channel tools available to streamers. Badges are a part of this toolset;

studying them offers insight into the part they play on Twitch channels and within Twitch communities.

The thesis is structured as follows. Following this introduction, there will be a background chapter explaining what Twitch is, as well as its culture and affordances.

This chapter will also explain what specific terms entail and how they will be used throughout the rest of the study. The literature review will cover the variety of research done on Twitch, while also dipping its toes in Twitch’s technological roots, such as television and cam culture. Next, the methodology chapter will outline the proceedings of the ethnographic study and the materials used for it. Following, I will discuss and analyse the results of my digital ethnographic observations. Finally, in the conclusion and discussion section, the findings will be summarised and evaluated. Additionally, the chapter will offer theoretical and practical implications, address limitations, and

propose ideas for future research on this topic.

2. Background

Twitch is an online platform for live streaming, founded in 2011 as Justin.tv, focused primarily on video game live streaming. In a live stream, live audio and video media are combined with text-based chat channels – formatted as an Internet Relay Chat whereby chat occurs instantaneously and alongside a video feed. On Twitch, you can primarily find two types of users: streamers who create the content, and audiences who watch the content.

Figure 1: Twitch Stream Layout

Though Twitch is known for being a video game live streaming platform, it offers much more than that. There are arts and crafts channels, as well as music channels, that appeal to not only an audience other than gamers, but also to an audience of gamers that have wide ranging interests. This makes Twitch not only the prime live streaming platform for video games, but across the board. For the sake of this study, the focus is solely on games.

Video game live streams follow a relatively similar format. On Twitch specifically (though this again can differ based on varying factors) there is a video feed, over which video from a webcam feed is layered. Throughout the live stream, the streamer

comments on the game as they play, with commentary ranging from jokes to heartfelt

discussion, sometimes with space for audience feedback and participation. As shown in

the image above, this video feed is placed alongside a chat box on Twitch, where users with accounts who are viewing the live stream can chat. Altogether, the live stream belonging to a streamer is called a channel on Twitch.

If an audience member enjoys a streamer’s content, they may choose to support in a variety of ways. A number of those ways are free, such as following and hosting.

Following means that a viewer will receive notifications of when the streamer goes live and will see them in their list of followed channels. Followers may then choose to subscribe to a channel for a price, currently set at $5 USD a month – part of this money will go to the streamer. Other forms of support include gifting subscriptions to others or donating money via Twitch’s own currency called “bits”. All these monetary actions benefit the streamer, as they receive a small cut of the money. Other streams of income are from ad revenue and sponsorship deals.

Figure 2: Twitch User Badges

Within chat, audience members can have a number of badges depending on what they were awarded by either Twitch’s system or the streamer. Twitch distinguishes between so-called user badges and chat badges. User badges can best be described as user roles that mean the same on every channel and always serve a similar function.

Badges of this type can be seen in Figure 2 and include Twitch Staff and Admins (Twitch employees who enforce the terms of service on all channels); Broadcasters (the owner of the channel one is currently watching); Verified users (streamers chosen for the Twitch Partnership Programme); and finally, Moderators and VIPs. Moderators do what the name suggests; they maintain order and moderate chat on behalf of the streamer who appointed them. On a technical level, their main privileges include being able to time-out and ban people, and the ability to turn on slow and subscriber-only mode in chat. VIPs are oftentimes loyal viewers of the channel and this status grants them immunity to chat and channel moderation settings – this often means they will not get flagged for cursing, for example. Still, VIPs can be moderated by individual channel moderators if they break the channel rules.

Channel-specific badges are ones awarded for actions within that channel. Many streamers will have custom-designed badges for subscribers that signify something important for their channel; these badges are often part of the channel’s culture.

Additionally, audience members get badges for gifting a number of subscriptions to others or cheering bits. These “reward” badges are optional and do not have to be displayed. You can display up to three badges concurrently, some of which cannot be hidden, such as the Moderator and VIP badge, as well as subscription badges, or sub badges.

Finally, a large part of Twitch culture is emoticons, or “emotes” as they are more commonly referred to. The same way as emojis are used, emotes live a life of their own on Twitch and all have their own distinctive meanings. Many of the public ones were crowdsourced in the early days of Twitch, when the platform was comparably smaller.

Additionally, every channel has the option to design their own emotes for subscribers

once the option to monetise the channel is made accessible.

3. Literature Review 3.1 Before Twitch

Compared to other online platforms aimed at sharing video and similar content, such as YouTube and Instagram, Twitch is a newer player in the field. Live streaming was not invented by Twitch, nor is it the first platform to extend beyond the screens and into the living rooms and social lives of audiences. Hence, before we delve into the specifics of Twitch and prior research on the platform, I aim to establish what came before Twitch that played into its form and success.

Previous work illustrates how the history of video games has always been, more or less, public and engaging for spectators. In the era of arcades, people played games publicly and high score screens created engagement beyond the space that the machine were in, as players beating high scores made headlines on the news (Lin et al., 2019).

When consoles became a more common living room appliance, friends and family would gather around to watch one person play, each of them taking turns once the other faced a game-over screen (Taylor, 2018). Before and after the turn of the millennium, when the internet was at a rise, multiplayer connections became more common, and they were the eventual steppingstone for the rise of e-sports, or competitive video gaming.

All these spaces, be they physical or digital, are places where people familiarise themselves with foreign concepts. They are often considered leisure atmospheres, where one can come and unwind after a long day of being out in the real world, and they are incredibly valuable as such. Their importance does not end there, however. Video games and enjoyment of them, be it as a player or spectator, are not simply a fun activity cordoned off from the real world. As a researcher, it is especially important to acknowledge that in virtual spaces such as Twitch, important meaning-making

processes occur and “media and leisure practices take place across multiple platforms and communities; they intersect and inform each other.” (Taylor, 2018, p. 13).

Outside of video games, Spilker, Ask and Hansen (2018) studied Twitch in comparison to a different kind of living room spectatorship: television. Using concepts of television viewing, they tried to investigate viewing practices on Twitch, finding that there were similarities, but that Twitch has moved beyond traditional television

viewing. The platform relies on a system of liveness, setting it apart from television and

on-demand platforms such at YouTube. It creates some sort of immediacy, where viewers willingly set aside time from their schedule at a given time to not only watch, but also engage with, a stream. Though second screen was another concept utilised in the aforementioned study, it was deemed to have limited explanatory power – still, it is worth noting that this is because Twitch does not require the involvement of second screens as a way to engage or enjoy something. Streams are not secondary enjoyment to playing a video game, nor are viewers required to engage with something alongside the stream: chatting along is considered part of the experience, if you choose to participate.

Chatting is built into the platform in the form of an Internet Relay Chat (IRC).

Conversely, you can also choose to not engage with any of the screens: in a ‘no-screen’

scenario the stream simply plays in the background as the viewer goes on about their daily life (Spilker, Ask and Hansen, 2018, p. 9).

The experience of television has become increasingly more entangled with the digital, whereby people choose to pass up on having cable packages and instead make do with content they find online. This includes traditionally produced films and TV shows, but it also makes space for non-traditional production paths, such as webseries on YouTube and, indeed, Twitch, where you can find more than just video games:

people stream chess tournaments, concerts, and even Dungeons & Dragons campaigns with full cast and crew present for production (Sidhu and Carter, 2020). Twitch’s success, in part, is explained in that the threshold for participation is low; watching is and will always be free, and monetary involvement is optional and varied. Not only that, but participation is optional too; the platform does not demand continuous watching, nor does it require involvement. This way, it “caters the users’ unstable engagement and attention.” (Spilker, Ask and Hansen, 2018).

The format of live streams on Twitch takes after two predecessors: cam culture,

and user-generated content (UGC) on YouTube. Cam culture, as depicted in Taylor

(2018) describes the use of “low resolution black-and-white cameras” to share videos of

mundane, everyday life occurrences with others online. In turn, audiences felt a sense of

solidarity, a comfort being in one another’s presence, albeit online. This is where the

earliest notions of microcelebrities emerged: it is a style of online performance where

people create and amplify their popularity online rather than via traditional production

and distribution processes (Senft, 2008). These older video experiments are connected

to game live streaming efforts due to similarity: both exhibit the power of connecting

with others online, though televisually, where there is space for both communication and performance, and audiences are pulled in most often because they feel a sense of belonging and relatability towards the host.

YouTube has been the predecessor insofar it has established video game content online in video form, identifying many different kinds of playing games. There are speedrunners, who try to complete games in record time. There are e-sports

competitions, where big money and prizes are at stake. And there are, finally, Let’s Plays (LPs), which come closest to the style of content generated live on Twitch. LPs capture the gameplay of a video game whilst overlaying audio and/or a picture-in-picture frame of the creator playing the game. LPs differ from the two other categories mentioned because they have a stronger narrative focus, even if the game itself isn’t story driven – the main character in this narrative is the player, not the game’s protagonist. The player puts on a performance whilst playing, entertaining or perhaps educating the viewer, while also creating space for the game to be discussed and connected to other games or pieces of media (Glas, 2015; Kerttula, 2019).

UGC on YouTube has opened up the gates to those unconventional modes of production and given space for users to becoming producers – aptly coined “produsers”

by Bruns (2008). Around content creators on YouTube, there are entire culture where people create content of their own, artists make animated shorts and musicians make mashups, to name a few of the endless possibilities within these participatory

communities.

For this study, I am using the definition of produsers proposed by Bruns. Twitch streamers and audience members are often entangled and the same – meaning, many audience members stream, and many streamers are audiences for other streamers.

Producing can mean as much or as little as one desires; I argue that this places the streamer in a unique position to their audience. Namely, one that is closer than many conventional celebrities and influencers.

3.2 On Twitch

Having discussed foundations of Twitch outside of Twitch, this section will focus on

literature on all parts of Twitch: from streams, to streamers, to audience members, and

the communities they form together.

There is a human element to streaming on Twitch that there is less of with LPs and other streaming platforms, according to Anderson (2017). On Twitch, there is a strong presence of streamers and viewers interacting as the game is played – it is less about the game and more so about the experience of playing and spectating together, commenting on things happening in the game as they happen rather than after finishing it (Gandolfi, 2016; Consalvo, 2017). Streams oftentimes have audio and video of the streamer embedded, adding that touch of humanity to a medium normally considered

“inhuman, robotic, or purely digital.”

Hence, choosing a stream is a choice depending on more than interest in a certain game. More often than not, the defining feature of a stream is a streamer, which is especially the case in so-called “variety streamers.” As the name suggests, they play a variety of games, and thus cannot be confined to a single genre. This makes retaining viewership tough on beginning streamers, too, as people may not respond as well to changes in games if they are not yet familiar with the streamer’s performance. For a viewer to stay, many things have thus to line up: the game, the streamer, and their community all play a role in wanting to stay and join in on the fun in and outside of chat (Deng et al., 2016; Pellicone and Ahn, 2017).

3.2.1 Streamers

Streamers themselves have a variety of motivations to start streaming. Taylor (2018) outlined the following five: social connections, transforming the play experience, creativity and performance, professional aspirations and professional expectations. All of the aforementioned presuppose that the streamer already had a deep passion for gaming, in part because you should enjoy what you stream, but also because some game consoles have built-in streaming functions. This, along with easy-to-set-up computer software, is for many people the gateway to streaming.

From here on out, many streamers slowly build their setup. They add a

microphone and camera, if they didn’t utilise those yet, and slowly improve their

computer specs and general visual setup with lights, green screens and graphical

overlays in chat. Streaming is a labour-intensive practice in many cases, and it extends

beyond the social and emotional labour of putting oneself out there for others to see. It

means grasping other social media platforms and coordinating a cohesive presence

across all of them. It is true that a large part of the streaming population does not aspire for it to become a full-time career, but for those who do, it becomes “the work of play.”

(Taylor, 2018, p. 69). Various layers of production, such as set design, performance, sociality and material and digital infrastructure, intersect and impact one another.

Streaming has always been about more than just the game and centring the game as artefact in any study of streaming has apparent empirical and analytic limits. Streaming is not simply the study of gameplay; it is the study of play and how said play is

broadcast.

The inclusion of microphone and camera are a key tenet for sociability on the platform. Though they are not necessary, they allow for the performance to come into play. Here, the streamer becomes more than a player; they become the narrator (Sjöblom et al., 2018; Kerttula, 2019). This is specifically true for variety streamers; as established previously, they cannot rely on the steady audience that a certain game brings, because they do not want to play one game on their channel for the rest of their careers. It is here that the streamer as narrator becomes the centre. It is their ability to perform and play that captures an audience and keeps it, makes audience members into community members, and builds a brand of regulars and inside jokes that resist the jumps between game genres.

It is through building this brand and community that streamers can become Twitch Affiliates, and later perhaps Partners, and start earning profit from ad revenues, subscriptions, and bits. Once reaching Affiliate status, streamers can additionally invest in getting custom made subscription badges and emotes designed, which is a perk that subscribers get. There is a lot of behind-the-scenes work for streamers who aim to make it that oftentimes goes unnoticed, but the developments go hand-in-hand. Stream improvements grow audiences, growing audiences grow profits, growing profits make it possible for the stream to be improved further.

3.2.2 Audiences

Like streamers, audiences have their own motivations and practices when it comes to

watching streams on Twitch. Hamilton, Garretson and Kerne (2014) identified a

number of factors that influence viewers to join certain streams over others. One of

these factors is a viewer’s identification with the content, the streamer, and their

community. Streams come to develop an atmosphere that reflects who the streamer is,

which is where it interacts with the importance of regulars, who replicate and echo the tone and encourage participation. They do not necessarily need to be denoted as regulars for new viewers to notice who interacts in chat often and has an open and welcoming attitude towards newcomers. The presence of these regulars is vital, as they do important community work on behalf of the streamer – coming into chat, people like seeing familiar faces (or rather, usernames) and that is how community is formed.

Additionally, McLuhan’s definitions of hot and cool media can be used to explain the making of shared history; hot media are aimed at spectating, whereas cool media highlight participation (McLuhan and Gordon, 2003). Hot media in case of streaming are the video and game graphics, where the audiences observe unique experiences.

Meanwhile, the webcam and text chat act on the cool side as places where audiences experience things together and can react to one another. These two intersect and weave a web of shared jokes and experiences that are vital in keeping communities together.

They satisfy a need for sociability while creating a sense of belonging with people whom you have more in common with than just the initial interest in a video game.

Lin, Sun and Liao (2019) also identified four types of viewers who watch

streams: play-centred, fan-based, vicarious audience play, and background media usage.

These have similarities to other studies; users who multitask and put streams on in the background could be utilising Twitch in a “second screen” form, as outlined by Spilker, Ask and Hansen (2018). When serving as background noise, it offers social

companionship as well, and could serve as a pointer towards consumers’ desire to “fill in as much media usage as possible at any given time.” (Lin, Sun and Liao, 2019, p. 7).

The question of why people watch instead of playing themselves has puzzled researchers before, as it seems counterintuitive to consume an interactive medium in a seemingly passive way. However, watching Twitch streams is far from passive, and it may provide social gratifications that a player cannot get when playing a game

themselves (Sjöblom and Hamari, 2017). On top of that, with increasingly busy days and fractured leisure time, many enthusiastic players have no choice but to morph into

“passive” consumers of video games, so they seek more casual ways to fit games into their daily lives (Juul, 2010; Lin, Sun and Liao, 2019).

There are different kinds of audience, but regardless of how they engage in the material, they are likely to be doing active work. This “once invisible work of

spectatorship” (Jenkins, 2006) is receiving more attention now and acknowledges that

audiences are not passive, but indeed active. Live streaming audiences are, more often than not, actively engaging with what is happening during the stream, be it during the event or after the streamer has gone offline. Fandoms have done this for a long time, but streaming communities come together outside of Twitch too, producing fanart and forming their own groups in games (Taylor, 2018). Even so-called “lurkers” are choosing to quietly engage with the stream, enjoying their work in silence or taking inspiration even when their engagement is not obvious in chat. Twitch audiences are aware and collaborative, seemingly making conscious decisions to engage or not to engage.

Postigo's (2016) work on UGC on YouTube draws attention toward two

approaches to the work that audiences do. On one hand, Terranova (2000) published foundational work on the topic of consumer work, focusing on so-called “immaterial labour.” Herein, the product created is a social commodity, intangible yet valuable to businesses. It pulls into question the autonomy of consumers, making them part of a capitalist structure. Opposing this work, Henry Jenkins argues that UGC is not labour, but indeed an activity that is part of a greater participatory culture – users are not simply part of the machine but have the reigns over creativity (Jenkins, 2006). Both conceptualisations of what happens among users, and indeed audiences, try to fill in the gap in understanding who benefits in these spaces and what kind of gratification there is. There are many limitations in this area, pertaining in particular to the emotional investment of users – not everyone invests the same amount, making it difficult to make normative conclusions about UGC.

Twitch is a form of UGC, where both streamers and audiences create content and engage with the content being created. I am employing both immaterial labour and participatory culture in the discussion of the results, aiming to figure out which notions serves a live streaming platform such as Twitch best.

3.2.3 Moderating

Moderation is a keystone in streamers taking the next step to managing their streams.

On Twitch, a streamer can appoint their own moderators who uphold not the Twitch

rules, but the channel rules, specifically. Their tasks can include greeting new and old

audience members, warning their behaviour, or triggering bots to show specific

messages. Everything about moderation is highly dependent on the channel, from mod appointment to expectations to moderation styles.

A detailed study by Wohn (2019) describes three kinds of moderators, or mods.

The Token Mod would be appointed because of their relationship to the streamer and would not feel a strong sense of duty to be present all the time, though their presence could be helpful to a streamer if the channel is new or small. The Glorified Viewer – the most common trajectory to mod status – would earn their position by being a dedicated viewer, who oftentimes already reflected the values of the streamer and enforced them in chat. Finally, the Recruit would usually respond to the streamer’s search for mods;

this would occur if a small channel experienced an influx of viewers. These three categories are not mutually exclusive and can intersect, like when they are both a loyal friend and have been friends with the streamer prior to their streaming endeavour.

The same study by Wohn outlined three moderator roles, or rather approaches to moderating. As a Helping Hand, mods would want to help the streamer out of

admiration and appreciation. Justice Enforcers would enforce the rules strictly, whether they relished in the power or not. A Surveillance Unit type of mod would usually

observe chat and wait until it’s time to step in, feeling that their mod status would be overwhelming the chat if they used it frequently. This stands opposite to the

Conversationalists, who seek out conversations with audience members and love ensuring that everyone has a good time. Between these roles there is more distinction, though the question remains whether mods can be both strict and kindly engaged in chat simultaneously.

Because of the nature of moderating, many mods come into contact with things that may have an effect on their personal wellbeing. This is called “secondary trauma”:

exposure to someone else’s traumatic experience (Wohn, 2019). In Wohn’s particular study, this is especially applicable to small communities – channels centred around a single streamer or a small group, where chat conversations run at a slow enough pace for conversation to take place.

Seering, Kraut and Dabbish (2017) studied the effectiveness of different moderation styles, focusing in particular on the approach of encouraging and

discouraging specific behaviours. Their use of theories of imitation presumed that by choosing a proactive or reactive moderation style would set the tone in chat,

intersecting it with their position as moderators. Because moderators are denoted in

chat with a sword badge and are generally seen as more influential or as “regulars”, imitation of their behaviour or the behaviour they preferred is more likely to occur. An interesting part of this study is deterrence theory, which:

“distinguishes between general and specific deterrence, where specific

deterrence is defined as the impact of punitive actions on individuals upon which they are enforced, and general deterrence is the impact of the threat of such action on uninvolved observers.” (p. 113).

Moderation tools on Twitch make it visible when a user is banned, so it is obvious to other audience members what kinds of behaviours will result in a similar fate to them.

This study saw a large influence of users with authority (such as mods, but also Twitch admins) on most types of behaviour.

3.2.4 Communities

Whether online or offline, people band together around streamers and channels.

Hamilton, Garretson and Kerne (2014), a study referenced frequently in this paper, stated that Twitch streams can be seen as participatory communities. Participatory communities have a main characteristic of openness, in which members are encouraged to join in community activities. A valuable concept in the study of communities is the third place, a “public place that hosts the regular, voluntary, informal, and happily anticipated gatherings of individuals beyond the realms of home and work.” (Oldenburg and Brissett, 1982). This concept has since been adapted for virtual spaces, because m uch of what is done online on Twitch and in other participatory communities is

voluntary, and it’s for fun.

The main activity in those spaces is conversation, and conversation fosters sociability. Sociability, defined by Simmel and Hughes (1949) as a “playful experience of social association characteristic by the ‘sheer pleasure of being together’.” (Hamilton, Garretson and Kerne, 2014, p, 1315). Research on Reddit communities shows that these spaces are frequented for fun and allow for a sense of identity that is more flexible than in some other communities which may not be frequented for fun (Massanari, 2015).

Sense of community is built up out of membership, influence, fulfilment of needs,

and emotional connection. Membership requires personal investment and feeling a

sense of belonging; in streams, members may invest time, money, and skills. The coin of influence has two sides: streams where one is recognised and can participate in

activities are attractive. Fulfilment of needs is a self-explanatory concept – emotional and knowledge rewards must be reaped. Finally, emotional connections are forged between community members; this is where shared history plays, once again, an important role.

Throughout this chapter, I have introduced a number of concepts that I am leaning on in my study, particularly pertaining to the analysis. One of the main concepts used in this study is that of participatory communities; as established before, engagement in these groups and their activities and voluntary. This is important in understanding why audiences join communities, why they stay, and why they choose to engage in certain ways over other ways. Additionally, sociability is key to this – while some audience members choose to simply watch a stream, many make the conscious decision to interact with other audience members and contribute to the conversation and the stream. With the aim being to understand communication practices, sociability is valuable for highlighting similarities and differences between certain types of audience members and what they have to gain or lose from conversing in a certain way.

Additionally, this study intends to draw attention towards not just the work of streamers, but that of audiences, too. Audiences are a large part of said communities, and their efforts to chat to newcomers are vital in establishing culture and community around a channel. When a stream goes offline, it is this audience work that pushes new viewers to join the community Discord or play another game with new friends. It is vital to this study to understand that while audiences are there for themselves and to have fun, they may express their enjoyment by chatting to viewers in a way that makes the other feel welcome. As mentioned prior, I am using both the concepts of immaterial labour and participatory culture to attempt and place where audiences and streamers fit (Terranova, 2000; Jenkins, 2006; Postigo, 2016).

Finally, the concept of “produsers” serves to remind that audience members may create their own content, while streamers are oftentimes audiences in other channels.

The vast majority of streamers on Twitch draw in a community of likeminded people,

and these likeminded people are oftentimes keen to create content, too. The line

between audience and creator is not a distinct one on the streaming platform, especially in communities of a similar size to the one studied for this paper.

None of these concepts are operationalised in a particular manner, though they are the core assumptions behind the research questions and method. There is a

necessary understanding that audiences are there for fun, for example, and that this will

make their interactions with others of a certain tone. The social aspects of Twitch are a

conscious choice; audiences may decide they simply want to watch and not chat. Those

audience members that start chatting are thus seeking satisfaction in conversation, be it

in the form of game knowledge or simply the jokes that others make. Twitch is not

solely a space for gamers, though enjoying games is oftentimes a common theme. Many

people express that they join the platform to feel less lonely and to find likeminded

peers – games are just a common ground that bridges the gap between strangers and

friends.

4 Methodology

In this chapter, I am outlining the method used, accounting for its ethics, reliability and validity, and addressing the data found, and used.

4.1 Method

In order to answer the aforementioned research questions and gather insight on the nature of badge influence on interactions, I am employing the use of digital or online ethnography. In a traditional ethnographical study, the focus lays on contact with human agents, specifically in the context of their daily lives and cultures (O’Reilly, 2008). Best defined by Boellstorff, Nardi, Pearce, & Taylor (2012), “cultures, as shared systems of meaning and practice, shape our hopes and beliefs; our ideas about family, identity, and society; our deepest assumptions about being a person in this world.” (p.

1).

Digital ethnography takes the digital into account, and how these human agents are digitally engaged – thus, how they experience and enact culture in online spaces.

Some of the cornerstones of digital ethnography, as outlined by Pink et al. (2017), are incredibly valuable for this thesis and are the primary concepts that I am building on to understand the culture I am studying and the people involved in it. For one, there is a multiplicity in the method; people engage with the digital in more than one way, thus it is important to remember that what I may observe during a study is only one side of the story. Additionally, openness and reflexivity are important in all qualitative studies, but come into play here with the acknowledgement that a study is not a set-in-stone

moment in time, but rather a process I am continually engaged with over the course of both observing and reporting.

Digital ethnography is not a specific set of methods, though most methods used are qualitative, focusing on deeper reasons for behaviours or sentiments in a specific online community or with a specific piece of technology around which a community is formed (Skågeby, 2011). To study the topic of interest, I am employing the use of observation and taking field notes to keep track of observations and patterns.

Ethnographical research has been used before in research with regards to Twitch, for example by Hamilton et al. (2014) and Sjöblom et al. (2018). Harpstead, Rios, Seering, &

Hammer (2019) addressed a need for there to be a comprehensive list of approaches

when it comes to doing research on Twitch, and digital ethnography was one of the

preferred methods for the knowledge this study aims to generate: behavioural patterns that occur within a participatory community.

The question of ethics is a prominent one within digital ethnography. In a Twitch stream, it is virtually impossible to ask every participant to consent – audiences

fluctuate, and they come and go as they please. My research meant that I did not ask for permission to observe, because Twitch chats are open and accessible to all. Anything said in them is public – people can see it whether or not they have a Twitch account, though they will need one if they want to chat. As a consequence, I have fully

anonymised all field notes and results, not naming the streamer and only giving general details about their channel. I also have chosen not to name the moderators, as there is a smaller pool of them in any channel compared to other users. In this study, it is not about the individual interactions, but what they say about greater behavioural patterns among some Twitch users.

Digital ethnography faces some strong limitations as a method, outlined by the struggle to achieve reliability, validity, and, in case of an anonymised study,

transparency. Oddly, I am addressing the latter, first. In order to increase transparency in the study, I am sharing my field notes in the appendices. These field notes were primarily taken on paper during the streams and have been expanded slightly from their short. Adding field notes is one of many ways that can add to transparency, and thus increase reliability and validity, to an ethnographic study. It exposes the

researcher’s processes and inferences, too (Reyes, 2017).

In an ethnographic study, the focus is primarily on external validity, which deals with the generalisation of results. To increase this, I am sharing all details of the

sampling and data without exposing the streamer’s identity. External validity relies on subjectivity; in order to be able to replicate a study, sharing details is valid and can lead to conducting studies of a similar community to ensure similar results are yielded (Nurani, 2008). Addressing reliability, I am describing the method to its fullest, sharing both notes and thought processes in the appendices.

4.2 Material

For data, I have settled on watching one creator’s streams for two weeks, capturing as

much data across that time as possible. The creator had to meet a number of criteria.

First, they needed to be a variety creator – the way I defined this was that from their history of broadcasts, it needed to be visible that they had played more than one game across the span of a week. Variety creators have strong communities and viewers are more often going to be regulars who stick around regardless of what game is played.

They are there for both the streamer and the community. Second, the streams needed to occur during a time where I could feasibly watch them during the day. This is preferred because it allows for me to be able to contextualise how others would be streaming. If not possible, for some reason, I would resolve to watching the VOD, as they have chat visible alongside them. While this is a solid alternative, viewers watching the VOD can actually add to chat whilst watching it back, and preferably I wanted to focus on the people engaged in the conversation as it happened. Finally, the aim was to choose a community of medium size – small enough to be able to read chat, but big enough for there to be enough interactions to analyse.

Through random sampling, I have chosen a channel of medium size, averaging about 40 users during a stream. I began by entering a game category on Twitch in the afternoon, ensuring that those streamers were online at a suitable time. Sorting the live channels by size, I aimed for a medium size for readability purposes, and I considered a number of streamers based on the aforementioned criteria. What was helpful was that many streamers had schedules available on their profiles, making it more accessible to place them within my schedule. Using the channel’s broadcast history, I considered the VODs to find out what kind of games had been streamed recently, and made my decision based on the criteria mentioned above.

Streams occurred three times a week according to schedule, ranging between

three and six hours per stream. Across the two weeks, three different games were

played, those being Black Mirror III: Final Fear, A Fisherman’s Tale, and The Last of Us

Remastered. I watched four out of six streams live, at the other two occurred in the

morning when I was otherwise occupied, but I would watch them the same day when

time was more available. Throughout the process, I took field notes in my notebook, as

it was the easiest way to keep track whilst watching the stream. I made the conscious

decision to not engage in chat myself, a decision motivated by my desire to make the

study fairly anonymous, but I did create a secondary Twitch account to log on to make it

easy to watch back streams as VODs after they had occurred.

To understand observations and conduct a cohesive analysis, I am employing the use of thematic analysis. In thematic analysis, the data set is taken and systematically organised into patterns of meaning, or themes (Braun and Clarke, 2012). The themes remain relevant to the research question and topic at hand but allow for more

appropriate categorisation of the data that fits the actual findings. Especially in qualitative studies, there are commonalities to be found across a data set, indicating something of interest that is worth looking at in depth. Thematic analysis oftentimes includes coding, though this is difficult to be done when an ethnography study consists of observation. Instead, I am taking note of specific communication patterns in Twitch stream interactions and trying to understand how they fit with the concepts outlined in the literature review. The themes, then, represent in what ways the concepts are

present and what role they play; be it positive, negative, neutral, or not at all.

5 Results and analysis

The results chapter is structured by five themes that emerged prominently during observation: the role of regulars, the value of monetary support, the different moods in chat when streaming a niche game, the fine line between streamer and friend, and proximate communities. Within each theme, I will touch on concepts defined earlier:

participatory communities, immaterial labour, participatory culture, and produsers.

5.1 Regulars

Regulars are most likely to be subscribers, VIPs or mods. They are often contributing to chat in monetary ways, from gifting subscriptions to cheering bits. The VIPs and

moderators in the community, especially, have a strong bond with the streamer

reaching outside the peripheral of Twitch and onto places such as Discord. Additionally, one of the moderators is a personal friend of the streamer; whether they became a moderator before or after the friendship was established was not clarified. However, this does show that VIPs and moderators are a special kind of subscriber, not just dedicating personal time but also forming a bond with the streamer.

Subscribers are often invested in the stream enough to spend money on it, though they may not necessarily be close to the streamer outside of Twitch. Regardless of what the reason is, many subscribers are highly interactive and also regulars. Their regular status is often akin to VIPs, in that they greet new and old viewers, chat amongst themselves, and address the streamer in a more familiar way. This is understandable, as with time spent in a stream, more people become regulars and create a shared history that is vital to the culture of this specific stream.

In this channel, the streamer had set up a custom awards system that was rigorous and would award currency – called tokens – at a relatively slow rate.

Subscribers automatically gained twice as many tokens as viewers and gifting

subscription or cheering bits granted tokens not only to the person inciting it, but also

to those participating in stream. There were minigames, too, where tokens could be

won, and you reaped a relatively high reward for saving them up. A common use for

tokens was the triggering of sound alerts through StreamElements, a service offering in-

stream rewards and a built-in bot that could react to commands in chat. The tokens

could also be used to request a game for the streamer to play. At a high price of 3500

tokens, it incites people not only to join stream but also to gift subscriptions and partake in minigames, further building a group of regulars who all participate in the culture around these. Earning this high number of tokens would require a viewer to join main consecutive streams to boost their chances.

However, some viewers may not have the opportunity to engage in streams the same way that others do. For some, it may interfere with work or school. For others, the time zone means that they do not wish to come online for a stream at three in the

morning. There are also many viewers who simply do not have the funds to support in these ways. During one of the streams, there was some debate in chat about whether some viewers are better than others for how many hours they have watched of a stream, and the majority of viewers – regardless of badge – agreed that it was an arbitrary way to determine support. However, because of the nature of how tokens are gained, viewers who cannot join streams often and for long periods of time are at a disadvantage with earning the in-stream currency and miss out on both exposure in stream and on a certain level of interactivity.

Subscribers – be they viewers, VIPs or mods – gain these faster. All the incentives to join streams as often as possible come together here: becoming a regular means more than just chatting. It means supporting the streamer and gaining some sort of control and an element of interaction not present in every channel on Twitch. Thus, subscribers who are regulars have more communication with the streamer, whilst viewer regulars still get noticed, just to a lesser extent – this is also dependent on the next themes that must be discussed.

Regulars are the backbone of the communities and are necessary for continuous existence. This places them in a crucial role for the upkeep of participatory

communities, regardless of whether they are subscribers or not. As a key element of

participatory communities, they are the first to set the tone for newcomers: their badge

status is not as indicatory of their part in the community as their language and social

skills are. Some audience members joining for the first time may expect the streamer to

fulfil these duties of chatting with newcomers, but because their attention is divided

more so than that of the audience, the responsibility of upkeeping chat interaction falls

on regulars. Their presence is integral regardless of badge status – this indicates there

are deeper processes at play than those that assume chat status is awarded only

through badge.

5.2 Monetary Support

Money is not necessary to enjoy Twitch. With an account you can access all streams and use all the basic chat functions in all channels. Still, subscribing brings some alluring benefits. One of those is the customised subscriber badge, unique to the channel, but there are also the custom emotes and the possibility to earn tokens faster. So, while money may not be necessary, it changes interaction in chat significantly.

One of the major ways, outside of subscribing, is gifting subscriptions or cheering bits. This is not only a way to support the streamer but also to get their attention and be noticed by the entire audience. When someone supports the stream, be it through a subscription, gifting subscriptions to others or cheering a certain number of bits, this too triggers events during the stream. Subscribers and gifters will see a screen on stream with confetti, fireworks, and the streamer’s dogs. This screen is celebrating their contribution, thanking them, and it puts them at the forefront of the stream if only for a moment: here, the dynamic between streamer and viewer changes. There is gratitude on the part of the streamer, and “hype” on the part of the audience. An interesting element of streams is the collective thrill experienced when a viewer supports the stream in some capacity, and “hype” is a perfect term to describe that.

Monetary contributions lead directly to badges. When you subscribe, you get a

subscriber badge, obviously. But when you gift a subscription or cheer bits, you can get

more badges. For gifted subs, you can choose to display a badge with the total number

of subscriptions you have gifted. Additionally, there is a monthly ranking of who has

gifted the greatest number of subs in a calendar month. These are temporary and reset

on the 1

of every month. Same goes for cheers; there is an optional badge to display

your total number cheered, and a tiered badge that lasts only during the calendar

month. Whether or not people covet these badges, subscriptions are gifted and bits are

cheered in sequence very often. The aforementioned “hype” sentiment kicks in and

people are trying to one-up each other, all to support the streamer but also to play off

one another’s energy. When a “hype train” occurs, the interactions are playful and

excited, creating a fun atmosphere to anyone: from moderators and VIPs to subscribers

and viewers, new and old.

Mods and VIPs are most loyal and often contribute a lot in a token of support for the streamer, wanting them to grow and share the community they care about with others. Subscribers, as is relatively clear, also contribute monetarily, and as regulars they can get tangled up in the support hype, too. Many viewers become subscribers after they get gifted a subscription by someone else and decide thereafter if the

streamer is worth supporting. There is a privilege in this, as not everyone can afford a subscription, or to donate money in some capacity. So, while it is not required,

audiences can get tangled up in the excitement and contribute what they can. Twitch remains free; it is however set up to be much more fun if you’re willing and able to spend the money.

This monetary support calls into question whether or not Twitch as a platform is inherently exploitative towards audiences. Yes, there is no need to contribute

financially, but it does play mildly into the idea that monetary support is extremely valuable. Not only that, but the work done by audiences without financial contributions taken into account, can be seen as exploitative. In communities such as the one studied, it is perhaps not the question of exploitation that matters the most. Audience members consider their contributions valuable to a streamer who gives them something of value in return. Whether or not this is a balanced exchange is questionable, but that does not negate the fact that streamers acknowledge the support of the audience as vital, and that audiences consider their contribution valuable enough to make it. There is a

recognition, especially on the part of the audience, that their contributions matter. That, in and of itself, appeared to be a mostly conscious choice, not driven by peer pressure or even pressure to support content that is otherwise mostly free.

5.3 Niches

For the sake of this research, niches are defined as video game genres that are less

selected or played in on Twitch. On the Twitch home page, audiences can see what

games are most likely to appeal to them based on their viewing history and clicking on

that will reveal all the channels live at that moment playing that game. Additionally, the

name of the game is paired with the number of people currently watching that game

being streamed, spread out across a bunch of streams.

The channel that was researched played two games that were very small in audience numbers. Conversely, this plays into their advantage. Some users find new channels by browsing through channels streaming a smaller game that they like or are interested in. This was the case during the Black Mirror III streams on this channel; a handful of new viewers joined and explained they had become interested after seeing that someone was playing an old, relatively unknown game.

Dynamics shifted slightly depending on the game played. When playing Black Mirror III and A Fisherman’s Tale, the chat was a little bit more laid back. The audience was often still limited to regulars, and with new viewers being interested in the game, it was relatively easy for both newcomers and regulars to interact easily. The streamer also had more space to interact with the audience, with focus spread across viewers with different badges or no badge equally.

In larger game categories, the dynamics shifted significantly. Mods and VIPs especially spent more time ensuring people were welcomed and following the rules.

When playing The Last of Us Remastered there was an influx of new viewers that was much larger than most other games, and there was a noticeable shift in the

conversational tone. Regulars still chatted but were often interacting with new folks and talking more at length about the game than for the other two games of which streams were watched. Moderators, especially, had to be more vigilant about enforcing rules.

Playing a popular game can lead to trolling and people posting inappropriate or harmful stuff. While this did not happen, people did have to be banned for trying to spoil the sequel to The Last of Us, which has been a highly anticipated game for people for over seven years. Unfortunately, as the number of new viewers increased, mods had to be stricter in their work, to protect both the streamer and their audience.

The niche games played on stream came with a relatively large number of

viewers who developed into regulars over the two weeks of observing the channel. This

is not to say that there is no possibility of this happening when a larger, more popular

game is played – The Last of Us Remastered was played last during the two week period

so it is impossible to say whether this A-list title would indicate similar viewer to

regular patterns. The viewers who came from the niche games did stick around to

watch the A-list title, meaning there was something in the stream itself that drew them

in rather than just the desire to see a specific game played.

Regardless of the game streamed, there was no stark difference between how certain badge-holders were treated. However, the communication of regulars did adjust, in turn creating more work for them. In participatory communities, this is nothing new:

when a light is shone on a community and an influx of members occurs, more work needs to be done by existing members to keep up with the welcoming and initiation of newcomers. This, again, leans more towards the work of participatory communities – everyone contributes to making sure the space is a welcoming and friendly one. True, the streamer benefits greatly from this work in expanding their following. It is however important to acknowledge the benefits that audience members reap from participating:

gaining new knowledge, new connections, and a sense of belonging.

5.4 Streamer and Friend

In a small community, there is much more interaction with the streamer. This creates a different relationship than there would be with a large streamer who may have over a thousand people in their stream at a time. These large streamers can be seen as celebrities in the live streaming sphere, and thus most audiences will at most have a parasocial relationship with them. However, in the small community studied, this was not the case whatsoever.

Most of the interactions between the streamer and the audience – regardless of badge – were familiar, as if they were simply hanging out and playing games with their friends. New viewers can become part of the group more easily when there is that sense of familiarity, which was the case. Early on in the study, new people came in during Black Mirror III, and by the time I was doing the last of my observations, I had seen them come in and hang out frequently, even though that initial game had been completed.

Moderators and VIPs, as the regulars with oftentimes the strongest connection to the streamer, oftentimes spoke in inside jokes inherent to the stream, something that could be alienating to new viewers. The streamer would respond to those jokes in jest, and if a new viewer was confused, a regular would explain it to them or link a short clip from another stream from which the joke originated. It was a surprise to see the ease with which regulars wanted to include newcomers in the jokes, even if they were not always understandable. Usually, the streamer would also explain the joke, and

occasionally they would show the clip on stream so the whole community could enjoy it

together.

Regulars used more relaxed language around one another and more welcoming, less in-joke heavy language around new viewers, but the streamer addressed anyone in stream as never anything less than friends. Regardless of whether there is truly a friendship there or not, the intent is there to have authentic connections with new viewers rather than create a distanced bond. Little moments such as the ones

exemplified above show the desire to not just grow a community but to have genuine friends within said community.

Because of the casual nature of the relationship between streamer and audience, there is less notion of labour here, too, and I lean to align it with participatory

community and culture once more. Casual chat and informal roles lead to believe that there is little evidence of a hierarchical structure, and more one that is centred on friends and acquaintances enjoying something together. Part of this is due to channel size; a small community of about 20 active chatters and a maximum of 60 viewers is bound to have an informal culture that resembles friends hanging out. Larger streams, though not studied in this paper, are more often distanced, and there is a clearer distinction between the “work” done by moderators versus how audiences chat normally among themselves.

5.5 Proximate Communities

A major theme that emerged was that streams themselves rarely exist in isolation. The line between user and producer is blurred, meaning that many audience members create content themselves. In this stream, this, too, was the case. There were a number of viewers and especially regulars who frequently streamed on their own, too. Given that streaming audiences and streaming creators share a love of video gaming and live streams, the two are bound to overlap.

This was especially noticeable when raids happened. At the end of every stream,

a streamer will usually choose someone to raid over: they gather all their viewers and

raid into someone else’s stream to support them and join that stream. During the study,

the channel encountered between one and five raids a stream. Some of them were

simply by people playing the same game and wanting to spread the love to another

streamer doing the same thing, but the vast majority were by regulars of the stream

who happened to be streaming at a time that allowed them to raid over at the end.

Regulars in one stream may be streamers themselves, and thus have regulars of their own. Many times, these streams overlap, sort of like a Venn diagram of video game and live stream enthusiasts. The specific channel I watched had a set group of regulars, but also regulars who raided them and who they would raid at the end of the stream.

Formal Twitch teams exists, where streamers with similar values group together to uplift one another. Smaller channels have this in a more informal manner, supporting one another and being close friends in the process.

Not only does this illustrate that streams are indeed a social activity; streams within themselves live in a web of connectivity where friends are playing together, streaming together, and building networks together. Streamers who raid one another and form a community with a cross-over in members oftentimes seemed to have

specific elements in common. When I joined raids, I observed that the streamers all had in common their style of playing, the games they played, and the overall tone of chat.

It would thus be an overstatement that video game live streams are an isolated activity. Not only do communities exist on their own, they also exist together. Many concepts are at play here. Produsers, in particular, leads to believe that audience members are likely to start streaming on their own once part of a community, and can then build a community of their own of already established friends. Communities

overlap and form a greater community, in and of its own. Here, people who do not know each other have multiple jumping off points: the game, the stream, and their mutual friends. Additionally, this means that participatory culture means not simply

participating in one culture, but in multiple, and that these do not exist exclusively from

one another.