Play performance: Digital consumption as performance in the game streaming platform Twitch

Abstract

In this paper, we will observe sociotechnical relations undertaken in Twitch — a digital platform that allows live streaming and the viewing of game sessions through Internet — from the comprehension of digital consumption as performance in online social practices. Since the concept of consumption covers the (re)affirmation of subject’s identity in reaction to material artifacts, our approach to account for sociotechnical relations involves Actor-Network Theory to discuss the acts of streaming and watching games on Twitch. We choose an Ethnographic Methodological approach, as we considered it as a pertinent method to accomplish the interpretation of users’ appropriation of this game streaming platform as digital consumption. The data from this research were gathered from the responses of an online survey answered by 177 Brazilian users, from participant observations, and from conducted interviews with three streamers. As a result, was perceived that the computerized coded structures of Twitch generate ambiguous relationships of digital consumption as performance because, despite the attempt of control through code, the manipulation performed by the users of the platform systems allows us to observe what we call “performance play”, a polysemic term that, in this investigation, refers to users entertaining, contesting and acting.

Keywords: Twitch, consumption as performance, ethnography.