The language used by chatters to address streamers is influenced by the culture that surrounds them and helps define them. In addition, their PAGE 14 14 language choices contribute to how they identify themselves in the community. Both the viewers and the streamers carefully maintain a certain face within the community. Erving for himself by the line others assume he has ta ken during a particular contact , p.
As will strictly positive, and intentionally so. Often, these personas deliberately go against what is socially acceptable. While the self image accrued by these character streamers is not a positive one, they are equally committed to maintaining it as Goffman says the everyday person is to their everyday persona. In everyday face work, people will generally build communication upon the line presented by someone.
The communication between streamer and viewer is much less personal, with most viewers not getting a response from the streamer, but there is stil l some similarities to this everyday relationship. Many of the viewers communicate in chat in accordance with the line presented by a streamer, but they may g o about this in different ways. Because this is in a computer mediated and mostly text exclusive e nvironment, there are some modifications to the types of clues that elucidate underlying meanings.
For this PAGE 15 15 text restricted medium, elements like intonation and speech rhythm are rep laced by features such as capitalization and emotes 1.
I chose streamers that were among the most popular of their type. About sixty to ninety minutes of each stream was watched, with time spent on different contexts e. Streamers can have Twitch save their past streams as videos on demand VODs. When watching a VOD, Twitch also has the chat from the stream recorded, so past streams can be watched with the chat experience in tact.
This system was used to access the streams sampled. Much of what I gathered from this data was strongly aided by my own insider knowledge of the community. My membership in this community allowed for a more intimate understand ing of the. In addition, I consulted with other members of the community to confirm my intuitions, particularly in regard to the nuance of v arious emotes. I looked at five male and four female streamers. The male stream group had one character streamer putting emphasis on an extreme pers ona , two game focused streamer s , and t wo others that existed somewhere on the spectrum between the two groups, although they tended more toward the game focused end.
The female group had two c haracter streamers and two game focused streamers. Samples are selected from the comments they received and analyzed to get an idea of the way in which Twitch chat interacts with streamers. There are also quotes from the streamers to give context and also show the relationship between the streamer and their viewers.
PAGE 17 17 In my research, I encountered two main categories of streamers: the character streamer and the game focused streamer. Character streamers have extreme personas which make up the core personality of their stream. For character streamers, their face is bound to their extreme persona s. The way they behave and the way they are treated by most members of the chat is a product of the type of character they play, genuine or not, on stream.
Game focused streamers have more mild personas. They are less likely to have extreme reactions or demonstrate bizarre behavior.
They have a primary focus on the game that they are playing. There are male and female streamers in both categories, and both categories have some variety in the skill level of the streamers. While it is easier to be a popular game focused streamer with a higher skill level, even skillful players may rely on an extreme persona to give them an edge over their competition. Below I will introduce the streamers whose chats I sampled from in this paper.
Kaceytron : Kaceytron is a female character streamer. Her persona is someone who thinks they are very good at the game League of Legends and generally talks herself up.
She claims that she has a Challenger account, but that she plays on a smurf while on stream the account she currently uses on stream is Bronze V, the lowest possible rank. She occasionally calls herself the first female p ro League player. She often wears low cut tops. Kaceytron has , followers on Twitch. She usually gets several thousand viewers. Miramisu : Miramisu is a female character streamer.
Her persona is someone who is all around strange. She often uses pop cu lture Satanic symbols and makes comments about hunting people down who annoy her often saying she is just kidding PAGE 18 18 and that she will get in trouble if she does that. While she sometimes uses very standard make up, she will occasionally appear in extreme m ake up. She usually wears low which leads some to suspect she had someone boost her account.
Miramisu has 83, followers on Twitch. Tyler1 : Tyler1 is a male character streamer. Tyler1 was a Master tier player although he was regularly leveling up new accounts to level 30, the level required to play ranked matches. As a result, he was often playing at lower ranks. This means he is a round the same rank of most popular male game focused streamers. However, the main focus of his stream was on his persona: the rager. He would often get mad at his teammates and flame insult and berate them.
Occasionally, he would also intentionally feed and had a list of players who, if he happened to be matched up with them on his team, he would always intentionally feed, effectively giving up the game.
Tyler1 advertised on his stream bio that he had been account banned over 18 times. Riot Games eventua lly banned Tyler1 as a player, which means any account found to belong to him will be banned on sight, regardless of his behavior on that account if he were to play anonymously, Riot would have little chance of identifying him. The main point of a ban lik e this is to stop him from ever being able to stream. Tyler1 has , followers on Twitch.
He sometimes gets as many as 10, viewers, but usually is in the range. Nyxeira : Nyxeira is a female game focused streamer. Her account is currently Platinum IV.
She has , followers on Twitch. She usually gets around plus PAGE 19 19 or minus a few hundred viewers, which is generally the highest amount female game focused streamers get. Behkuh : Behkuh is a female game focused streamer. She was, for a time, has a very high proportion of subscribers talking. While she has a good number of subscribers, they tend to dominate the chat more than other streamers with a sim ilar number of subscribers. Behkuh has , followers. She usually has around viewers.
Doublelift : Doublelift is a male game focused streamer, although he sometimes has elements of a character streamer. He is a current pro player who has been extre mely popular in the scene for several years, often considered one of the best players in the West. Doublelift is often very harsh on his mistakes and can also be quite critical of other players in his games. Doublelift has , followers. He usually get s around 10, viewers plus or minus a few hundred depending on who else is streaming.
Imaqtpie : More so than the other in between streamers I sampled, Imaqtpie is one of those streamers who exists on the border of character and game focused streamer. H e was a former pro player who found a huge amount of success in streaming and eventually stopped playing professionally to be a full time streamer. He is one of the top ranked streamers and is generally a very good player.
While he is primarily a game fo cused streamer, he does have a persona that exists to enough of a best of the best League of Legends players. He is regu larly one of the most viewed League of Legends streamers, usually getting well over 10, viewers although he streams at a time of day that not many other popular streamers are playing. Sneaky : Sneaky is a male game focused streamer. He is a current pro player. While he is game focused, he, like Doublelift, does have something of a character.
He makes many sexual comments about himself and his teammates who are all male. When people subscribed although he has since been asked to stop by some higher authority. Sneaky has , followers and generally gets around 5, 7, viewers, although he will sometimes get around 10, Pobelter : Pobelter is a male game focused streamer. Pobelter has very little in the way of an extreme on screen persona. If there is anything, it is that he sometimes jokingly acts very hard fans will sometimes call him The Notorious P.
Pobelter has , followers. He can get anywhere from a few hundred to several thousand viewers. The first section discusses relationship building.
It covers the methods used by streamers and viewers to establish some semblance of closeness. The second section covers teasing and insults. It will explore the variation in negative remarks received by differ ent types of streamers and possible causes for those differences. The third section will look into the type of criticism and commentary received by streamers. It will include criticism of the way streamers run their streams, as well as general commentary o n their gameplay and skill.
The fourth section will look into the ways viewers interact positively with the streamer. There I will discuss ways viewers encourage streamers, both on a general gameplay level and in relation to the personas streamers put on. Finally, the last section will discuss sexual comments streamers receive. Relationship Building the Illusion of Closeness Having a good relationship with your chat can be a huge boon to your streaming business. It encourages viewers to subscribe to feel more truly like a part of a money to the stream.
Often, the streamer will recognize the name of such a donator. The relationship between a streamer and their viewers is, usually, not the same as two people speaking face to face, or even two people speaking to each other electronically. Unless the streamer has very few people speaking in chat, they will PAGE 22 22 not be having a one on one conversation with viewers. Instead, they will pick and choose comments to respond to and generally try to respond to the general mood of the chat.
This creates unique challenges for streamers to simulate that one on one relationship. As a whole, the chat is much more focused on the streamer in character streams. The chat in general is constantly commenting on the streamer and their gameplay or behavior. Other streams sometimes have huge amounts of totally unrelated talk, usually with viewers having conversations among themselves. Generally, streams with fewer viewers and, more importantly, less active chats are more likely to have personal conversations occurring.
When the chat moves too quickly, it becomes too difficult to have unrelated conversations among just a few viewers, so that kind of conversation eventually gets crowded out. It is not uncommon for viewers to greet a streamer, especially at the beginning of the stream. When the chat is not too active, st ream ers will often say hello back.
When Kaceytron first turn s on her stream, she receive s a few hellos. PAGE 23 23 When streamers have very regular viewers, they will often form some sort of relationship with each other and with the streamer. A great example of this is Behkuh, who even calls some of her viewers by presumably their na mes rather than their usernames.
While playing the game, it can be hard to keep up with the conversation in remaining an active member of the conversation. In many ways, the discourse between Behkuh and her viewers most resembles a typical conversation among a group. It by and large follows the general social guidelines. Negative remarks toward Behkuh are exceptionally rare. Instead, there are comments that are more personal but from a context of a friendly relationship.
This aspect is certainly not exclusive to a player like Behkuh. Viewers often ask streamers questions w hen it comes to the higher r ated streamers too. However, viewers are more likely to ask questions about League of Legends with the higher rated streamers.
Clearly viewers expect these streamers to have more insightful knowledge on the game than lower rated streamers, even if the lower rated ones are also game - PAGE 24 24 focused. The following question talking about an in game item build. All streamers wi ll get questions but, rather than be ing based off of what type of stream they run, it is based on rank whether or not viewers are likely to ask a streamer for advice about League of Legends itself.
E ven very popular streamers will at least seem to have discussion with their viewers. Streamers will often answer questions during downtime. During one stream, Sneaky was discussing changes to the queue process for League of Legends after a viewer asked his opinion.
He said his thoughts and then asked his viewers, who are all lower rank than him and less affected by the changes in the queue process, if it was actually a problem for them. In this way, he also encourages the idea of a friendly relationship bet ween himself and his viewers , strengthening the feeling of a community and thus probably encouraging new people to subscribe and current subscribers to stay subscribers. These streamers get thousands of viewers, but by recognizing names and directly resp onding to questions, they can create a closeness with these viewers, which is something many of the viewers are looking for from a streamer.
Teasing and Insults Are they Unprovoked? Insults are not rare on Twitch , both for character streamers and game focused streamers. However, not all insults are created equally. There is variety both in the target of the insult and in the ap parent severity of it. Some insults are directed more at the streamer as a person than at their gaming ability. This type is extremely common for female character streamers. The following are comment s Kaceytron received from viewer s on her stream.
The insults Kaceytron receives run the gamut from light hearted to cutting, but regardless of their intensity, they are often insults by giving them attention. At one poin t, Kaceytron asks the chat to, m then that. Even some subscribers joined in. She is self aware enough to k now the insults her viewers will throw at her.
When a streamer receives a donation, they will often have a sound and picture appear on screen to announce it. Miramisu has a variety, but one sound picture pairing is a whale call accompanied by a picture of PAGE 26 26 insults she receives: fat and ugly. Her total lack of modesty paired with an equal lack of skill puts her far off the expected ritual pattern of interaction. However, she is not in wrong face or out of face, as Goffman puts it 8. Rather, these features are a part of her face, and her viewers expect it and interact predictably with the line that she has tak en.
The ritual of her stream is one characterized by her ignorance and ego. Her viewers respond generally in one of two ways. They can either respond with indignation, as might be expected from someone interacting so far off script in general society, or t hey can respond positively, enthusiastically going along with her character, which will be elaborated on below.
By simply asserting that she is one way, viewers who take the more negative approach have a clear path to tease and insult her for a ctually being the opposite way. There is rarely any subtlety to it, either. She can do the same with insults regar ding her gaming ability. Her persona already has a huge gap between her self perception as a player and her actual play on stream, but she can further encourage these comments. After being told to shut up in 9 above, she refuses, saying she likes to keep her stream educational and that she knows people want to learn from her commentary.
She suggests that if people want a streamer who does not talk as much, they should look elsewhere. Some commenters scoff at her assertion that people want to learn from he r. There are no popular game focused streamers who have a rank anywhere near as low as Kaceytron. It is clear to anyone gameplay. By suggesting otherwise, Kaceytron creates an avenue for comment by her viewers. As for the male end, Tyler1 generally receives far fewer insults, but he sti ll has a hand in the ones he does get.
Unlike Kaceytron and Miramisu, Tyler1 does not respond nearly as much to insults or negative comments.
They do still exist in his chat, but to a lesser degree. The insults he does receive, though, are generally relate d to his persona. Before his permanent ban, Tyler1 would often cla i m that he had reformed and was no longer a toxic player. Of course, he always returned to the flaming, raging character sooner or later. This opened him up to sarcastic remarks about the nature of his in opened her up to comment.
PAGE 29 29 called a whore, although he always wear s a tank top on st ream is a result of the gender The idea of creating an avenue for insults is not totally exclusive to character streamers. Even for game focused streamers, like Behkuh, the streamer can exert their control over their insults. Female game focused streamers tend to receive around viewers at the most. Whether because this al lows for more strict moderation, because there are fewer chatters to rile one another up, or another reason altogether, these streamers tend not to receive many insults.
When they do, other viewers are often the ones to chastise those comments. However, teasing can be an important part of building the community, so these streamers must allow some avenue for such comments.
In a sense, this is quite similar to what the female character streamers do. Rather than giving attention to a negative comment they receive, these game focused streamers will instead be the model comment themselves.
They will open up the floor by insulting themselves, thus giving an approved topic although for some streams, even this is not enough to drive the viewers to actually insulting the streamer. During one make sub optimal plays without throwing away the win.
Behkuh uses a teleport TP ability to try and kill an enemy character when there were more important objectives elsewhere on the map. However, the enemy evades her and ends up getting killed by one of her teammates, avoiding ever taking damage from Behkuh. There is a scale of how m uch power a streamer has over the insults they receive, and Behkuh is at the very controlling end.
Whether thanks to her persona, her moderation, or some other factor, aggressiv ely sexual comments are extremely rare. Behkuh gets some comments calling her pretty or beautiful, but rarely the type of explicit comments that some other character female streamers receive.
This sort of pattern is fairly common with the higher ranked f emale game focused streamers. There are some who are lower ranked, usually gaining their popularity due to some other medium. For many of these streamers, the viewers are even kinder although they are also usually fewer in number. The male game focused s treamers I looked at had more insulting comments than their female counterparts, but they also had more viewers.
The insults they received generally insulted solely their gameplay in some way or another. They could be quite mild, but there were some that w ere rather harsh. After poorly using the ability Flash while playing Jinx, Sneaky received this comment. Explicitly calling something the streamer did euphemism when she messes up badly.
Of course, all of these streamers are extremely high rank and many ar e professional players. It could be that viewers know that the s treamer will not think he is unskilled and that these comments can safely be made and expected to be understood as teasing.
It may also be a case of gender. Most of these commenters are likely male and they may be used to bantering with other males, but feel that it is inappropriate with femal e game focused streamers. This possible chivalry does not seem to extend to female character streamers. It could also be that the female game focused streamers have had more strict moderation or a chat culture that shuns insults. The reasoning behind these changes is hard to judge without being able to speak with the commenters themselves.
Criticizing and Commenting on Streamers Criticism is another instance where the biggest divide appears between female character streamers and everyone else. A huge part of the criticism female character 7 Jinx is the name of the character he was playing 8 An emote used to represent a derisive laugh 9 Refers to her ult imate ability, one of the abilities of her in game character PAGE 32 32 streamers receive is toward their stream conduct.
This can be nicely conceptualized in a comment Kaceytron received although Miramisu has received the exact same comment too. The viewers who paste this comment are expressing an opinion that these streamers are not interested in showing their gameplay. Instead, their goal is simply to show off cleavage. The juxtaposition of an ASCI I picture of a pair of breasts accompanied by the text 2 show that the words are sarcastic, but the comment as a whole is critical of the streamer.
Sometimes the comments are a bit more direct. At one point, he increased the size of his webcam to let viewers see his teammates sitting beside him. After entering the game, he did not stream does not usually have a large webcam ves is, most likely, tongue in cheek. The most obvious is the use of the Kappa emote.
This emote is generally used to indicate that an accompanying comment is sarcastic. Unlike the comment in 2 2 , which uses a discrepancy of picture and comment to convey a secondary, critical m eaning, the Kappa face is more light hearted. It is often used in negative comments that fall onto the side of teasing versus harsh insults. Sarcastic comments, or comments in general, that are meant to be more insulting and come across with a harsher nuan ce are more likely to appear with emotes such as EleGiggle, which appears in 15 or the less harsh 4Head, which appears in There is also the use of all capital letters.
Using a ll capital letters is generally meant to show excitement or yelling. In t webcam, the gameplay is not visible, which would make a genuine compliment of it unlikely. A less common but still present use of all capitals is to express boisterous, rather than dry, sarcasm. The excitement component of all capital letters is maintained. There are also times when streamers receive oddly specific appearance related criticism.
This is, again, most common for female character streamers. While it is not unheard of for the other groups of streamers to receive criticism related to how they run their stream, it is much rarer.
They are more likely to be 10 An em ote used to designate sarcasm. PAGE 34 34 criticized for their gameplay. Gameplay criticism takes two forms: simply criticizing an aspect of the gameplay or backseat gaming.
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I can go back to general discussion? I am dissapoint in this lack of community news update. On October 21 r. Blacks and whites only, no orientals. Although this rumor was very probably not true Riot decided to change the seeding up due to both this rumor and the fact that EG's Dan Dinh and TSM's Reginald were brothers. HotshotGG of CLG complained that the new seedings were unfair because while EG was the 7 seed they were probably the 3rd strongest team at the tournament and they didn't find it fair that they'd have to play such a strong team while TSM got an essentially "free ride without EG.
Important link to read from Chauster's point of view. The winner of that match would advance and be guaranteed a spot at IEM Cologne while the loser would be sent to the loser bracket and would have to battle it out for the spot.
During which time CLG claims they were rushed and mis-picked although jiji asked if they could use the pick they really meant but Xpecial was like, "nope, soz. Chaox still doesn't reconnect and they agree to just do the match the next day.
Afterwards one of the NESL admins says on his Twitter, "Also, ignorant fucks like Chauster need to realize that we're spread out thin and mistakes are inevitable. Should add archived drama. On October 21 taLbuk wrote: who gives a flying fuck. On October 21 overt wrote: Should add archived drama.
Locks and keys, man. Locks and keys. Best drama was that Riot employee Brent abusing his power and fired because of it. He used to do stuff in SC2 as well so it's kinda relevant to TL. I don't have the epic original thread but someone needs to post that shizz. Oh and stop hating on a single girl having fun and getting laid. It's like these nerds live in Victorian England and expect women to wear chastity belts or some shit.
On October 21 taLbuk wrote: who gives a flying fuck User was warned for this post. On October 21 Slow Motion wrote: Best drama was that Riot employee Brent abusing his power and fired because of it. This is somewhat relevant, from a couple weeks ago.
Chaox and Becca unranked drunk duo queue. She was flirting with him hardcore. I don't know who this Riot employee Brent is, but I hope he's miserable for abusing my internet sanctuary with his profanity and power. HotshotGG's statement about the qualifiers. If you're going to try and siphon off all the drama from general discussion, you might as well add lapaka quitting crs and then bming most of the team. On October 21 asianskill wrote: pics of said girl. What about Caller getting Psyonic Fired?
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