Twitch: It’s Hard Work Making It Look So Easy

Twitch is a live streaming video platform founded in 2011 by Justin Kan and Emmett Shear.  The platform was originally called Justin.tv, a startup company based in San Francisco which was dedicated to ‘lifestreaming’ someone’s personal life and being able to interact (Techcrunch, 2007). The company later rebranded itself to Twitch.tv and jumped onto the opportunity to expand into the growing community of e-sports. Within the last of couple years the platform has grown tremendously. According to Twitch, their platform has millions of visitors daily surpassing the viewership of many large cable TV networks in the US (Sjöblom et al, 2019). A turning point for Twitch was when Amazon bought the streaming service in August of 2014. Even though YouTube had already grasped this characteristic of viewership and user-generated content, what made Twitch so appealing to users was because of its focus on video gaming. 

On Twitch, streamers and audiences have the ability to interact with each other in real-time. It encourages audiences not to be passive and pushes users to go beyond watching gameplays and to join in on the fun. More and more we are seeing users leave traditional media for a more personified concept. The platform is entirely built on “social interaction, learning, and entertainment” (Dux, 2018:50). Twitch demonstrates the growing trend of participatory culture that we see in all social media platforms today. Participatory culture describes the phenomena of online platforms transforming connectivity into collectivity (Dijik, 2018). The platform has grasped our need for human connectedness by making gameplay a social activity (Anderson, 2017). The platform allows users to navigate their interaction through their preferences thus becoming the foundation of communities to be formed on. The platform allows for multiple forms of interactions as Twitch markets itself to have every type of game, genre, and streams for anyone to enjoy (Dux, 2018). Motives for joining Twitch vary for entertainment, as a teaching tool on how to play a certain game or to see if a game is worth purchasing (Dux, 2018). Twitch is most recognized for being a place where content creators can build their communities and raise brand awareness. This speaks to the concept of ‘prosumption’ as described by Computers in Human Behaviour, wherein digital media our consumptions practices and production activities are increasingly merging (Sjöblom et al, 2019). In a technologically-advanced society, it would be abnormal if someone was not constantly engaged and interacting with the digital (Crary, 2014). Content creators need to maintain their social connectivity and interaction as a high social blade is a measurement of success. The only way to do this is through for the streamer to give a piece of themselves to their audience. Authors Sjöblom et al call this the ‘hybrid worker’, where people have found a way to make their hobbies into a professional career through the affordances of digital technologies (2019). As the gameplay occurs in real-time, the level of engagement serves as a vessel for relationships to form and maintain audience loyalty. Twitch allows streamers to narrate their gameplay through video while simultaneously viewers can send messages in the chat room creating a space of digital intimacy (Sjöblom et al, 2019). 

Twitch captures what all social media platforms possess; the more relevant you are the more money you can generate. A channel can monetize itself in two ways, by becoming a Twitch affiliate or through their partnership program and lastly ads. Not just anybody can become a Twitch affiliate or partner. Twitch has set in place criteria you need to meet to be qualified.  A Twitch affiliate is considered a channel on the rise who wish to make streaming their career. To be an affiliate one must within 30 days stream for 8 hours, on 7 unique days, reach 3 average viewers and maintain at least 50 followers (‘Twitch Partner Program’, n.d). A partnership is a professional level where you have to stream for 25 hours in the last 30 days, for 12 unique days and reach 75 average viewers within that time frame (‘Twitch Partner Program’, n.d). By becoming a Twitch affiliate or partner you can get all the advantages of being verified; you can customize your channel, rebroadcast past content, get priority customer support, and even create your stream team (‘Twitch Achievements’, n.d). Furthermore, being qualified allows streamers to make a profit from their subscribers who pay either $4.99, $9.99, $24.99 or Twitch Prime subscription options (‘Twitch Achievements’, n.d). By signing up for a subscription, viewers give back by sending them ‘bits’, which is essentially virtual currency.  This allows subscribers “to encourage and show support for streamers, get attention in chat through animated emoticons, get recognition through badges, leaderboards, and acknowledgment from the streamer” (‘Guide to Cheering with Bits’, n.d). Once a streamer has built a large enough fan base then he or she can  generate sponsorships and advertisements (Woodcock et al, 2019). In the end, Twitch makes a percentage off of subscription revenue and through generated ads played on the streamers channel (‘Twitch Achievements’, n.d). 

At times, the pressure to constantly be streaming fuels capitalism possessed by digital technologies where if you want to be successful you need to be continuously engaged.  Some have questioned whether it is worth it for the individual to turn the private play into public entertainment (Taylor, 2018). Twitch follows a neoliberal framework where the streamer is responsible for their success and if they want it badly enough they have to put in the labour. Some streamers have admitted to going live for over 70 hours a week in addition to their regular 9 to 5 jobs (Johnson & Woodcock, 2017). As the risk of losing subscribers threatens a streamers’ financial security there is almost a necessity to constantly being online and engaged with little time to rest. In addition, the requirements to become an affiliate or partner pushes users to maintain an unsustainable pace that can eventually lead to burnout.  However, turning a passion into a career is something everybody strives for. A study in the Journal of Information, Communication & Society found that even though streaming on Twitch requires a lot of time and effort to be successful, streamers continue to do so because it is something that they love doing and cannot imagine anything else (Johnson & Woodcock, 2017). As we see, live-streaming brings forward a new form of spectatorship where gameplay is no longer about following the characters of a game. Now there are humans involved on the screen that are always being watched and interacted with. 

One of the platforms’ biggest criticisms is how issues of gender are left ignored. It is said that over 80 percent of Twitch users are male ranging primarily between ages 18 to 34 years old (Iqbal, 2019). For a long time, a women’s presence in gaming culture has been underrepresented or marginalized. This sentiment falls into the term “toxic gamer culture”. As the environment is male-dominated, female streamers are often subjected to harassment and sexual objectification leaving women discouraged from participating in the gaming community. When you search up the top female Twitch streamers on Google the second suggestion is which are the hottest provided in a ranked list. Gamers are often pictured to be an “isolated, pale-skinned teenage boys [sitting] hunched forward on a sofa in some dark basement space, obsessively mashing buttons.”(Paaben et al, 2017: 421). Despite there being rising numbers of female involvement in gaming culture, we assume that gamers are men because the most successful are (Paaben et al, 2017). A lot of the time women are not seen as skilled or hard-core to their male counterparts due to the perception of a ‘true gamer’ being a man (Paaben et al, 2017). Female streamers are left invisible because stereotypes conclude that they should not be in this space. The neoliberal structure of the platform disregards the barriers put in place on women. A female streamer is willing to put the time and effort into her channel, but the threat of harassment and objectification stops her from doing so.

Twitch has played a key role in the rise of gaming culture and the emergence of streaming technology making it one of the largest sites for video-game play (Dux, 2018). Concerns have been raised about the exploitation of labour involved in the marketing of the self and the treatment of women in gaming culture. Even though our communication practices bring forward a ton of freedom and provide the opportunity to turn your passion into a career, at risk is putting all your worth. With Twitch and live-streaming being a relatively new platform the future of it all remains a mystery. 

References

  1. N.A. (2007). Justin.TV Teams Up With On2 And Opens Network. Retrieved from https://techcrunch.com/2007/10/02/justintv-teams-up-with-on2-and-opens-network-finally/
  2. Anderson, S. L. R. (2017). Watching People Is Not a Game: Interactive Online Corporeality, Twitch.tv and Videogame Streams. The International Journal of Computer Game Research, 17(1). ISSN:1604-7982
  3. “Guide to Cheering with Bits”. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://help.twitch.tv/s/article/guide-to-cheering-with-bits?language=en_US
  4. Crary, J. (2014). “Chapter 1”. In 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep. London: Verso. Pp 1-28
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  9. Iqbal, M. (2019). Twitch Revenue and Usage Statistics. Retrieved from https://www.businessofapps.com/data/twitch-statistics/#1
  10. Paaben, B., Morgenroth, T., & Stratemeyer, M. (2017). What is a True Gamer? The Male Gamer Stereotype and the Marginalization of Women in Video Game Culture. Sex Roles, 76(7–8), 421–435.
  11. Sjöblom, M., Törhönen, M., Hamari, J., & Macey, J. (2019). The ingredients of Twitch streaming: Affordances of game streams. Computers in Human Behavior, 92, 20–28. doi: 10.1016/j.chb.2018.10.012
  12. Taylor, T. L. (2018). Twitch and the Work of Play. American Journal of Play, 11(1), 65–8
  13. “Twitch Achievements” (n.d)  Retrieved from https://help.twitch.tv/s/article/achievements?language=en_US#Partner
  14. “Twitch Partner Program”. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.twitch.tv/p/partners/
  15. “Woodcock, J., & Johnson, M. R. (2019). The Affective Labor and Performance of Live Streaming on Twitch.tv. Television & New Media, 20(8), 813–823. https://doi.org/10.1177/1527476419851077

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