Interactive and on-demand entertainment: A first investigation

of video game live streams on twitch.tv

Clemens Grunewald
University of Twente - Social Networks Course
April 2015
ABSTRACT
Why would anyone want to watch another
person play a video game instead of playing it
himself? This report tries to find a first, nonrepresentative answer to this question by
examining the live streaming portal twitch.tv
and the motivation of its users. Also the
opinions and beliefs of non-users where
investigated before and after they have watched
a live streaming event.
The reasons of watching others play are widely
diversified and reach from getting help in a
certain game situation to the pure
entertainment as it is known from movies and
tv shows.
INTRODUCTION
People have always played games together, as a
community. And for as long as games exist there
where also people watching others play for
entertaining purposes. From chess to darts to
poker and monopoly. For a while now its been
video games. Although many think of video
games as an individual pursuit, they became a
spectator sport event on their own on the
internet.
The atmosphere of these events is similar to the
gaming behaviour of siblings. One of them takes
over the active playing role and the others
watch, give comments and experience the game
in another, no less exciting way.
The web service of Twitch.tv took this game
sharing experience to the web and allows
anyone anywhere to watch others play or even
broadcast themselves playing games. Some of
these live broadcasted in-home gaming sessions
reach hundreds, thousands and sometimes even
millions of viewers which are interested in the
gameplay itself, in certain strategies or in the
responses and comments the broadcaster makes
besides he plays.
The latter is the most common format and
called commented gameplay. The streamer

will narrate his experience as he plays a game.

The style of narration varies from humourdriven commentary right up to a simple stream
of consciousness remarks on topics unrelated to
the game itself. Sometimes the streamed
content is not even gameplay. Many streamers
spend significant time interacting with their
viewers. Every broadcast on Twitch has an
associated chat channel through which the
viewers can directly interact with the attendant
audience and the streamer to ask questions,
formulate wishes or just have friendly
conversations. The streamers will typically try
to answer all occurring questions and be part of
the whole communication process as they play.
Often streamers also embed a webcam video of
themselves playing on top of their streamed
content to facilitate richer engagement and a
more intense connection to their audience.

Figure1: Gameplay, webcam & chat

Similar to YouTube, viewers can follow/like

certain streamers if they like the way they play
to get e-mail notifications when the stream goes
live again. Additional they can subscribe to the
streamers channel for $5 per month to support
the streamers work and get access to special
chat emoticons. Besides the subscription
method it is often also possible to donate money
to the streamer via Paypal to thank him for his
entertaining gameplay or commenting style.
This paper tries to find answers for the question
why Twitch.tvs entertainment approach is so
successful and why it could replace traditional
media in the future.

METHOD
To learn about possible motivations why anyone
would want to watch another person play a
video game and whether web portals like
youtube or twitch.tv could revolutionize the
entertainment industry in the near future, a
study was conducted. Therefore three different
user groups where defined.

Variables are useful for grouping and evaluating

the given answers and allow a generalisation of
results if the test sample is big and outcomes
significant enough.
RESULTS

(1) people who are not aware of the

existence of interactive gameplay
streaming web services.
(2) people who are aware of the offer of live
gaming streams but do not watch them
regularly.
(3) people who already watch live broadcasts
on a regular basis.
Per user group, ten to fifteen subjects in the age
between 18 and 35 years were picked out of a
population of students of the University of
Twente and twitch.tv users.
To obtain subjects, two methods were used. The
first methods purpose was to obtain students of
the university by asking randomly passing by
students if the would like to participate in a
study about online video services and their
potential. The second method was an online
search for volunteers. In the IRC chat of
different twitch.tv channels people were asked
to participate. To guarantee their privacy, the
actual study was conducted during a private
chat.
The test subjects were carefully introduced to
the studies subject, background and goal and
subsequently asked to fill in a anonymized
survey. The survey consisted out of several
scaled (1-5) questions and an open question
which directly asked about the test persons
motivations, opinions and beliefs regarding the
use of web services like twitch and youtube in
the future.
For being able to measure the collected
outcomes of the survey better, variables were
defined. The dependent variable determines the
motivation a person has to watch live gaming
broadcasts for entertaining purposes. It
furthermore gives inside knowledge about
experiences or wishes of the users.
The independent variables are the gender, age
and occupation of the involved persons which
could have influence on their answers and
behaviour.

Figure 2: avg. time using tv and internet for

entertaining purposes.

Figure 3: Will on-demand media completely replace

traditional television in the next five years? (scala
from 1 unlikely to 5 very likely)

Figure 4: How interested are you in gaming?

CONCLUSION
The analysis of the questionnaires has showed
very interesting results.
The group who knew nothing about live gaming
broadcasts before they where invited to take
part in the study, spends in average relatively
little amount of time in front of screens. With
only avg. 20-60 minutes a day, they use their

free and work time to a great extend to do

something more active than watching TV or
browsing the internet for entertaining
themselves. A large part of the group (80%)
assumes, that most viewers are watching others
playing video games to get instructions and tips
about certain strategies to become better
themselves. Another possible reason named by
the first test group was that watching streamers
play certain competitive video games is similar
to watching huge sport events like the soccer
world cup.
The second group who was already aware of
the services of twitch.tv and using them at
times, were by more than half (~65%) gamers
themselves. They stated, that twitch helps them
to find new interesting video games to play
without spending money on every game that
comes new to the market. Furthermore they
also following big announcements events of
game developers to get insight into future
games and to check their thoughts about them.
The rest uses twitch.tv mainly for educational
purposes. They want the become better players
by trying or copying certain strategies from
other pro-gamers.
The last and most interesting test group for the
studies objective, the regular user of twitch,
have provided plenty different of motivations.
Some stated that modern video games are very
cinematic nowadays and that it is similar to
watching a movie with friends. Others described
it more in the way that watching their favourite
streamer is like watching their regular TV shows
with humorous remarks of the streamer which
can even make even the most boring game
hilarious and entertaining to watch. Still others
enjoy the strong company of the community in
the chat. But the most mentioned motivation to
follow a lifestream is the streamers personality
and voice and his way to describe the
happenings in the game. Many stated that
listening to the smooth voice of the streamer
can help them to fall asleep more easily.
FUTURE WORK
Due to the small size of and test sample of the
study, the results are far away from being
representative but they can give a first
impression of users motivations and interests. In
the future a large-scale study should be
conducted to obtain more precise and more

reliable results which then could probably be

conveyed to the generality.
REFERENCES
[1] http://blog.twitch.tv/wp-content/uploads/
2014/06/TheNewFaceofGamers.pdf
[2] http://ecologylab.net/research/
publications/streamingOnTwitch.pdf
[3] http://www.businessinsider.com/one-yearlater-after-twitchtv-2012-8?IR=T
[4] http://www.gameskinny.com/nmh08/
twitchtv-is-streaming-the-newest-form-of-bigentertainment