The first stream I watched was by “Kobe” on Twitch who is a self-described “shoutcaster”. He has credentials as a champion of different League of Legends tournaments but mainly just commentates now. During the match I was watching, there were about 2,000 people watching the stream while Kobe boasts a subscriber base of 45,000 people.
Kobe is a 36-year-old male with a clean setup behind him and not much to see. It looks as though he streams from his bedroom as he has an unmade bed clearly visible over his left shoulder in the stream. He also uses a red light for part of his background. From watching streams it is difficult to tell what their technical specifications are but his stream was clean and flowed well with no interruptions.
As a person who has only infrequently played League of Legends (LOL) and played at a low level, this stream was difficult to watch as Kobe used a lot of LOL-specific jargon that was not explained and was foreign to me. His commentary was definitely aimed at experienced gamers as he did not spend any time explaining rules or how things work but merely what happened during the matches. Even then, he didn’t go into great detail as often his commentary would amount to “Wow, did you see that” or “Holy, that was nuts!” without actually explaining what we were supposed to have seen or what was nuts.
The games he was streaming appeared to be games between high-level and well-known players as the way many of the players in the game were mentioned, it was insinuated we should know who they are. Kobe and many of the viewers had some comments even before the match started about who should win and who was not very good, who played “like a douche” and other comments about the players involved as it was revealed who was in the match.
What does make it interesting when Kobe is not actually playing is that he is able to jump around the board a lot so when action ended in one place, he was able to quickly move to other spots to find where action was happening so there was rarely a point in the stream where not much was happening. Kobe was also consistently engaging with his viewers, often referring to them by gamer tag but in a way that makes you assume that many of these viewers are fairly regular and interact with him a lot. He seemed to mostly interact with people who were asking questions about the match or the strategy of it but a few times got into bantering or chirping at people who were “shit-talking” him.
From watching his stream, I think community and communication are really important parts of his streaming channel. He is fairly entertaining and humorous with self-deprecating humour being his go-to style. He spends a lot of time not actually playing matches but building his team, drafting players, buying and selling the players while on the stream.
During this time the interactions with his viewers is constant and sometimes about the game but often not. It truly seems to be a community where people show up just to relax and chat with him and I think his channel is really all about interaction. When the discussions are about the game, it is clear that he is viewed by his viewers as being an expert as they are constantly asking his advice on players, who they should get and how they should build their teams. He moderates the chat really well and multiple people were banned from his chat for swearing at him or for threatening violence, that sort of thing. If people suggest something he thinks is dumb, he’s not afraid of calling their ideas out as stupid but was quick to shut down personal attacks, whether directed at him or viewer to viewer. Even when playing the games his communication is about engagement with his fans and he really only comments on the game when important things happen or based on viewer questions.
His viewers are really his number one priority, even when playing matches. He will consistently thank people who spend any money and on a number of occasions would even ask people why they would spend so much money on him.
He seems to have at least somewhat of a working tech knowledge as unlike many streams, he appears over the game screen rather than as his own separate window and he uses that to his advantage as he will sometimes, as a reaction to either an event in the game, or a comment from a viewer, enlarge himself to cover the whole screen for a few seconds. He has also enabled viewers to gift him things by buying sounds that can be heard during the stream. He also uses his own gifs as ways to interact and respond, which will often appear on the screen.
TeawithMandy is marketed as a relaxed time to hang out and game. Her focus is currently on Hogwarts Legacy. She is a picture in picture set up and the background of her gaming room really matches her vibe as it is dark with glowing lights and items and blinking white Christmas lights, which almost gives off a somewhat stereotypically witchy vibe.
TeawithMandy is always interacting with her audience in a very straightforward, conversational tone. She rarely jokes but puts her viewers at ease. Her rules have banned any kind of adult language or content so she makes sure to keep a very low-key, easy going vibe. She also solicits ideas and suggestions from her characters a lot and she gives a lot of her choices over to the viewers on which actions to take, where to go and how to progress her character. Hogwarts Legacy is a fairly new game with I think she is aware of because she often narrates what she’s doing and how to do it so that viewers have a good sense of how the game works. She keeps the conversations focused and on-topic, rarely allowing side conversations to go too long although there was one conversation about how much one should spend on an engagement ring that she did engage with for a while.
I do remember when live-streaming games just got popular, people liked to “think-aloud” (Taylor, 2018, p.70) when playing so that the viewers can learn and follow along. These 3 I happened to watch are all more focused on interacting with the audience instead of purely wanting to show off their skills. And we can see they all use some proper lighting equipment to make sure their faces are clear in front of the audience. No direct advertisement or business was involved in the ones I watched other than the fans’ donation to Hectic TKS.
Again, like what Taylor mentioned in his Twitch and the Work of Play (2018) live-streaming is merely just playing games, it is a transformative work where the players get to show their level of technicity and characteristics. The medium of live-streaming offers a new way of how people in front of different screens interact with each other but somewhat connected and contribute to the same piece of work. It is quite amazing.
Reference:
Taylor, T. L. (2018). Twitch and the Work of Play. American Journal of Play, 11(1), 65-84.