Game Live Streaming Research Articles

Analysis and Governance Strategies of Online Gambling Crimes under New Live Streaming: Taking Lottery Games as an Example

With the development of multimedia technology and the increasing popularity of online live streaming, new forms of online gambling crimes using online live streaming platforms for game live streaming have also emerged, and new operating modes and criminal methods have been used. This gambling method involves certain game anchors using their online popularity, as well as the trust of some fans and their viewers in their anchors during live broadcasts, to attract viewers to participate in gambling through various means and gimmicks. This new type of network under game live streaming involves various factors such as law, technology, and regulation. Live streaming platforms, hosts, and users who watch live broadcasts must strictly abide by laws and regulations. Government regulatory departments also need to strengthen their supervision of whether gambling is involved in the field of online live streaming, protect the legitimate rights and interests of the public, and maintain a healthy and orderly online environment.

User-Generated Content and Copyright Liability: Assessing the Role of User in Copyright Infringement Detection

User-generated content (UGC) exists in various formats on digital platforms, including images, audio, and videos. The capital market has turned UGC into profitable products, benefiting content creators and game companies. This reciprocal relationship presents opportunities in the digital market. However, due to current legislation and public sentiment, UGCs lack sufficient protection under intellectual property laws. This research aims to investigate the copyrightability of user-generated videos in the game industry. Specifically, it seeks to justify the copyright protection of user-generated game videos and propose potential solutions. Furthermore, this paper acknowledges live streaming recordings as a distinct type of game video. The entertainment industry's exponential growth, especially in video games, has sparked a surge in game live streams and videos among gamers. However, this has also led to copyright infringement issues, particularly with fair use defenses. The Copyright Act of 1976 grants exclusive rights, and game videos and live streams infringe on reproduction, display, public performance, and distribution rights. While recognizing the social value, the current statutory framework, like the DMCA, is ineffective. Implementing improvements like a new compulsory license would address copyright issues and foster creativity. A flexible legal standard allowing commercial and fair use would promote economic development, social harmony, and cultural enrichment, while failure to do so could hinder freedom of expression and innovation.

Recent Advances in Rate Control: From Optimization to Implementation and Beyond

Video coding is a video compression technique that compresses the original video sequence to produce a smaller archive file or reduce the transmission bandwidth under constraints on the visual quality loss. Rate control (RC) plays a critical role in video coding. It can achieve stable stream output in practical applications, especially real-time video applications such as video conferencing or game live streaming. Most RC algorithms either directly or indirectly characterise the relationship between the bit rate (R) and quantisation (Q) and then allocate bits to every coding unit so as to guarantee the global bit rate and video quality level. This paper comprehensively reviews the classic RC technologies used in international video standards of past generations, analyses the mathematical models and implementation mechanisms of various schemes, and compares the performance of recent state-of-the-art RC algorithms. Finally, we discuss future directions and new application areas for RC methods. We hope that this review can help support the development, implementation, and application of RC for new video coding standards.

Effects of negativity type and active involvement on the likelihood of responding to negativity in live stream chats

This study explores whether chat negativity and the degree to which live chat rule sets encourage active (vs. passive) involvement influence participants' willingness to react to negative behavior within video game live streams. Using the Social Identity Model of Deindividuation Effects (SIDE) and an experimental design, this study examines chat participants' likelihood of calling out and reporting negative behaviors. A 2x3 experimental design manipulated type of negativity (i.e., clear/ambiguous) and framing of community-specific rules of users' role in responding to norm violations (i.e., active involvement/passive involvement/control). Results suggest clear negativity was associated with a higher likelihood of calling out/reporting. Active involvement interacted with degree of negativity: when live chat rule sets encouraged active (vs. passive) involvement, participants were more likely to call out clear negativity and less likely to call out ambiguous negativity. Furthermore, there was support for the hypothesis that social identification moderated the relationship between type of negativity and likelihood of response, whereby participants with higher social identification were more likely to respond to clear negativity and less likely to respond to ambiguous negativity. Finally, participants’ perceptions of group norms in the hypothetical communities were affected by prior experience and chat activeness, but not by type of negativity or active (vs. passive) involvement.

Why do Chinese people consume video game live streaming on the platform? An exploratory study connecting affordance-based gratifications, user identification, and user engagement

Game live streaming has become a flourishing phenomenon worldwide, yet research has primarily focused on understanding user consumption behavior from a socio-psychological perspective, neglecting the role of technological affordances. This study addresses this gap by proposing a theoretical framework that integrates affordance-based gratifications, user identification, and user engagement. Drawing upon the uses and gratifications theory, social media engagement theory, and social identity theory, we conducted a survey with 565 participants in mainland China. The findings reveal that interactivity-based gratifications significantly influence both preliminary and further levels of engagement, while modality-based gratifications primarily impact preliminary engaging behaviors. Furthermore, user identification acts as a mediating factor in the relationship between affordance-based gratifications and engagement. These results offer valuable empirical evidence for scholars and practitioners to consider technological factors and streamers’ roles while examining user engagement on game live streaming platforms. The study suggests enhancing interactivity functions and emphasizing the role of live streamers to foster user engagement. By understanding the importance of technological affordances, this research contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of engagement in the game live streaming industry.

Inclusivity and diversity in ‘Actual Play’: Studying The Adventure Zone

‘Actual Play’ is a growing form of play spectatorship which involves the recording and broadcast of tabletop gaming sessions. It has spawned bestselling comics, live shows and television adaptations. Unlike ‘Let’s Play’ videos on YouTube or game livestreaming on platforms like Twitch, there has been little in the way of critical analysis of this new media form. This article therefore aims to understand its audience(s) through qualitative and quantitative content analysis of survey responses from the fan communities of one of the most popular Actual Play shows, The Adventure Zone. We focus on the relationship between Actual Play’s attempts at creating more accessible and inclusive media that welcome all types of people and the more exclusionary, highly gendered aspects of the broader gaming community. These enquiries also serve as a case study for Actual Play as a less-examined area of both play spectatorship and gaming content creation, and points towards potential future study in these areas. This article analyses Actual Play podcast The Adventure Zone to highlight the under-explored dynamics of fan audiences in this area of gaming content creation. Topics covered include audience reception of the creators, engagement with issues of diversity and Actual Play as a tabletop roleplaying game gateway.

Understanding factors influencing viewers’ intention to watch video game live streaming on Twitch: Combined use of PLS-SEM and NCA

This study aims to propose and test an integrated model of the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) and uses and gratifications theory (U&G) to understand viewers’ intention to watch video game live streaming on Twitch. Data are collected from 207 Twitch users and analysed using partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) and necessary condition analysis (NCA). Based on the PLS-SEM results, attitudes and subjective norm have a significant positive influence on intention. However, perceived behavioural control does not have a significant influence on intention. Furthermore, entertainment and information seeking have a significant positive influence on attitudes, but socialisation has no significant influence. According to the NCA results, attitudes and perceived behavioural control are the necessary conditions for intention. Moreover, entertainment and information seeking are identified to have necessary effects on attitudes. Subjective norm and socialisation are found to have no necessary effects on intention and attitudes, respectively. This study is the first to investigate the factors that influence viewers’ intention to watch video game live streaming on Twitch based on an integrated perspective of the TPB and U&G theory using the sufficiency (PLS-SEM) and necessary (NCA) logics.

Analysing younger online viewers’ motivation to watch video game live streaming through a positive perspective

<p><big>The paper focuses on younger online viewers’ motivation to watch video game live streaming on live streaming platforms. Unlike existing scholars, it analyses younger online viewers’ watching motivation through a positive perspective and draws on the Play-Others-Downtime theory (P-O-D theory) and the motivation theory to establish the research model. By analysing 397 samples based on the variance-based structural equation modelling and partial least squares path modelling (SEM-PLS), the results present that younger viewers’ entertainment, social and leisure purposes positively affect their watching motivation. Control variables (i.e., gender, education background, and income level) demonstrate insignificant effects across the model. Considering the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic, watching video game live streaming is essential entertainment and social activities for younger adults. Future studies should identify the positive impact of video game live streaming and guide younger viewers to participate appropriately in this activity.</big></p>

Streamer's Hell - Investigating Audience Influence in Live-Streams Beyond the Game

In the context of game live-streams, we focus on whether audience influence options can be extended beyond the game, e.g., to the streamers' environment (e.g., controlling their room lighting), the streamers themselves (e.g., activating vibration feedback on their forearms) and the streamers' hardware and peripheral devices (e.g., switching key bindings). An online study (n=81) showed that viewers have mixed feelings and that the context matters, as only a few game genres are assessed as suitable for such an experience. In a lab-study six streamers experienced the idea while playing a horror game. They saw appeal in extending the influence space, but also again highlighted that context matters and customization options are necessary. The studies hint that although this interactivity is from a technical perspective independent of the content streamed, in practice it is not, as the perception is moderated by e.g., the game and why the streamer is playing it.

Does game-irrelevant chatting stimulate high-value gifting in live streaming? A session-level perspective

Game live streaming has become increasingly popular and web streamer is widely recognized as a real career. A streamer is anticipated to entertain viewers, build relationships with them and solicit high-value gifts from viewers for profit. We explore game live streaming from a business aspect and find session-level factors of gifting with a data-driven approach. Previous studies extensively investigated the financial aspects of game live streaming and the social motivations behind this newly-emerged social media, but mostly from the individual level or as case studies. This study uses real live stream chatting and gifting data of over 1000 h and proposes metrics to proxy in-session behaviors for quantitative analysis of mass scale. We propose to use viewer chatting as a session-level measurement to better understand the motivations of high-value gifting. We find that the ratio of game-irrelevant chats (GIC) positively promotes high-value gifting, while small burst in game-irrelevant chats (spike) and frequent exchange of dominant topics (swap) negatively influence high-value gifting. Two sources of interactions, streamer and other viewers, elicit a framework to explain how in-session performance affects the high-value gifting. Specifically, parasocial relationship (PSR) with the streamer, and group identification (GI) with peer viewers are identified as mediators of the aforementioned three variables, and the two also positively influence high-value gifting. This research contributes to existing theories of gifting in live streaming context, and provides practical insights for live streaming platforms and streamers.

Understanding gift-giving in game live streaming on Douyu: An evaluation of PSR/social presence.

In China, live streaming has grown rapidly in recent years, with gift-giving, a unique business model in live streaming, driving the development of many industries. This article explores the association between gift-giving behavior in game live streaming and viewers' live streaming experience. Specifically, this study aims to explore the correlation between Para-social Relationships, Social Presence, and gift-giving in the context of China. Based on the survey and interview of the viewer on Douyu, a Chinese live streaming platform, this study found that there is only a weak to a medium correlation between para-social relationships and viewers' gift-giving behavior. The correlation between social presence and gift-giving was even weaker. Although the conclusion of this study may be affected by the sample size limitation, it can still provide a reference for the current research on gift-giving on Chinese live streaming platforms.

Humour and Comedy in Digital Game Live Streaming

This article considers the nature and functions of humour in digital game live streaming on Twitch. Most streamers and viewers seem uncomfortable with ‘serious’ in-game narrative content, resulting in weighty or emotional moments in games becoming sources of comedy and humour. Many also subvert the platform’s power dynamics by mocking community standards or the possibility of being banned, while some go even further and treat streamers themselves as fair game for mockery. This article thus examines how the humour of play, games and the Internet combine and evolve in an emerging and distinctive ‘stream-humour’, which can be sometimes playful and supportive yet sometimes shade into antagonism, rule-bending and hostility. Examining these dynamics on Twitch, in turn, provides a valuable window into how platform infrastructures and cultures generate norms and cultures of humour and amusement, and strengthens our understanding of online communities and platform power in this and similar contexts.

Live play, live sex: The parallel labors of video game live streaming and webcam modeling

This article looks at two forms of online self-broadcasting: webcam modeling and video game live streaming. Though these practices have much in common, the parallels between them have gone largely unacknowledged, in part because the discriminatory cultures surrounding video games have rendered connections between streaming and sex work unspeakable. Drawing from an analysis of “tips and tricks” YouTube videos created by women webcam models and men live streamers, this research maps the relationship between camming and streaming as forms of labor. It illustrates the many overlaps between the two practices, challenging notions that camming is inferior to or even separate from streaming.

Viewer types in game live streams: questionnaire development and validation

Producing and consuming live-streamed content is a growing trend attracting many people today. While the actual content that is streamed is diverse, one especially popular context is games. Streamers of gaming content broadcast how they play digital or analog games, attracting several thousand viewers at once. Previous scientific work has revealed that different motivations drive people to become viewers, which apparently impacts how they interact with the offered features and which streamers’ behaviors they appreciate. In this paper, we wanted to understand whether viewers’ motivations can be formulated as viewer types and systematically measured. We present an exploratory factor analysis (followed by a validation study) with which we developed a 25-item questionnaire assessing five different viewer types. In addition, we analyzed the predictive validity of the viewer types for existing and potential live stream features. We were able to show that a relationship between the assessed viewer type and preferences for streamers’ behaviors and features in a stream exists, which can guide fellow researchers and streamers to understand viewers better and potentially provide more suitable experiences.

“Never Battle Alone”: Egirls and the Gender(ed) War on Video Game Live Streaming as “Real” Work

From 2018 to 2021, the “egirl” witnessed a radical shift from her origins as a sexualized slur in online gaming. Through critical discourse analysis of news media of this period, this paper interprets this transformation within two primary phenomena: (1) the growth of women game influencers who reclaimed “egirl” slurs in their self-branding and (2) the launch of “Egirl.gg,” a platform for paid gaming companions. I argue that live streaming platform Twitch.tv, and the expansive ecosystems of labor its demand from streamers, were integral to this re-authorization of who can play as themselves in a patriarchal gaming culture. Here, I extend Ergin Bulut’s framework of “ludic authorship” to delineate how stakeholders in game streaming industries masculinize the cultural labor of “authenticity.” The ambivalent embrace of “egirling” via streaming cultural logics further complicates the work of women gamers who must work harder to realize careers in platformed entertainment.

Just on the Right Side of Wrong: (De)Legitimizing Feminism in Video Game Live Streaming

The participation of women in video games continues to be interrogated, especially the participation of women who are, or are perceived to be, feminists. A considerable portion of the discourse on the appropriateness of feminism in live streaming takes place on Twitch and gaming subreddits. This paper applies a qualitative analysis to several Reddit threads that address the subject of feminism in live streaming. The analysis of subreddit comments about feminism in streaming suggest that many Twitch users believe feminism is an ideology that is incompatible with video games and live streaming. Furthermore, many of these users believe that feminists actively harm live streaming communities. This paper presents an understanding of how and why the presence and legitimacy of feminism in games continues to be contested and demonstrates what is at stake for feminists who desire to participate in building a future for themselves in video game live streaming.

Twitch, Fish, Pokémon and Plumbers: Game live streaming by nonhuman actors

In this exploratory paper, we consider the phenomenon of gameplay live streaming by nonhumans. The live streaming of games, exemplified by the platform Twitch.tv, has emerged in recent years as a major and growing component of gaming culture. Although previous research has addressed some agential dimensions of streaming, scholarship has yet to examine the unusual phenomenon of watching streams lacking any kind of human agent. Ordinarily a human streamer operates gameplay and directs the flow of conversation, curating the content of the stream and mediating the agency of other participants. Removing the central figure of the human streamer thus creates what we call an ‘agency gap’ to be filled by other users. In this article, we explore different ways this occurs through four case studies involving the broadcast of gameplay by biological and digital nonhumans. These range from random number generators and automated controller inputs, to a live fish with a motion tracker observing its movements around its tank (with these movements then being used to attempt completion of a digital game). Through these case studies, we argue that the absence of a human streamer democratises video game play through ways of experiencing games which were not possible until the emergence of game live streaming. To this end we interrogate when and how nonhuman streamers can also be influenced by the agency of human spectators, and how the stakes of these streams are understood in relation to the game being played and spectator motivation. We further characteristic the distinction between human and nonhuman agencies in terms of affective intentionality. Game streaming allows for an unprecedented visibility of nonhuman play which merits close attention; this paper consequently problematises current understandings of nonhuman play in an era of gameplay streaming, and extends and challenges scholarship in both of these areas.

A text mining-based framework to discover the important factors in text reviews for predicting the views of live streaming

Live streaming has become one of the leisure activities of most people due to the rich and various contents. For young generation, to watch other people playing games on the live streaming platform is becoming very popular. Related researches mainly focused on predicting the number of viewers, finding popular streamer, studying the gift giving behaviors, and so on. Relatively few studies focused on how viewers’ comments affect users’ viewing behaviors, since the power of text comments in social media have been confirmed. In addition, published studies usually employed questionnaire survey methods which are prone to experimental effects. And online text comments will be more objective and less sampling bias than data collected by questionnaires. Consequently, this study focuses live streaming of games and uses viewers’ text comments for experimental analysis. A text mining-based framework which includes Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator (LASSO), Support Vector Machine-Recursive Feature Elimination (SVM-RFE), Chi-square test will be proposed to determine the important keywords of predicting the number of views in live streaming. Support Vector Machine (SVM) will be utilized to evaluate the performances of candidate feature subsets. Then, K-means and Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) using Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) have been used to organize the selected keywords into understandable concepts. Real cases of game live streaming cases will be collected from Twitch.tv for our experiments. Results can be used as a reference for live streaming platforms and live channels, and help them to increase the number of viewers for further income enhancement.

Virtual gifting and danmaku: What motivates people to interact in game live streaming?

Virtual gifting and danmaku are important interactive behaviors in the course of game live streaming. Viewers send both gifts and danmaku enthusiastically while watching a game live stream. This study aimed to explore why viewers send danmaku or virtual gifts in the course of game live streaming. Five possible motivations and two types of behavioral patterns were identified. An online survey of game live streaming viewers in China was used to verify whether these motivations had an impact on their interactive behaviors. The results from 352 respondents showed that there were differences in the factors affecting danmaku and gifting interactions. Both the motivations and behavioral patterns had impacts on interactive behaviors such as virtual gifting and danmaku, but the nature of the impact differed.

Exploring the Emerging Domain of Research on Video Game Live Streaming in Web of Science: State of the Art, Changes and Trends.

In recent years, interest in video game live streaming services has increased as a new communication instrument, social network, source of leisure, and entertainment platform for millions of users. The rise in this type of service has been accompanied by an increase in research on these platforms. As an emerging domain of research focused on this novel phenomenon takes shape, it is necessary to delve into its nature and antecedents. The main objective of this research is to provide a comprehensive reference that allows future analyses to be addressed with greater rigor and theoretical depth. In this work, we developed a meta-review of the literature supported by a bibliometric performance and network analysis (BPNA). We used the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis) protocol to obtain a representative sample of 111 published documents since 2012 and indexed in the Web of Science. Additionally, we exposed the main research topics developed to date, which allowed us to detect future research challenges and trends. The findings revealed four specializations or subdomains: studies focused on the transmitter or streamer; the receiver or the audience; the channel or platform; and the transmission process. These four specializations add to the accumulated knowledge through the development of six core themes that emerge: motivations, behaviors, monetization of activities, quality of experience, use of social networks and media, and gender issues.