The importance of digital communities in gaming (wk10)
Digital communities in gaming, create a public sphere of discussion, allowing players to interact with one another through social games. ‘Social games’ are defined as online multiplayer games that connect others through social channels such as social networks or social media. Platforms such as Facebook, Steam, Twitch COD, Animal crossing, Mario Cart, Clash of Clans, Minecraft and Among us are all examples of gaming communities.
Twitch holds a huge part of the online gaming conversation with live-streaming of games being their most popular feature. Twitch has enabled creators on the platform to become quite successful with over 2.2 million broadcasters on their platform per month as of 2017. (Taylor, 2018) Creators are earning a profit and “110,000 ‘creators’ in the Affiliates program - content producers that receive revenue from their streams.”(Taylor, 2018) There are over 10 million daily active users on Twitch connecting instantaneously with viewers through live streams.
Viewers connect with these creators and can donate money to them at any stage of the stream. However, the relationship between creators and their audiences is one-sided and can be considered a parasocial relationship.
Parasocial relationships “resemble those of face-to-face interaction” or in this case screen interactions but these interactions are consistently mediated and one-sided. (Oxford, 2022) Parasocial relationships are powerful due to the fact they hold so much power and control over their viewers without knowing their individual existence. This sort of relationship encourages many creators and the platform to utilise this strategy, by creating a false one-sided ‘friendship’ with their viewers, creating a ‘bond’ from the viewer’s point of view. This tactic also enables businesses and sponsors of certain games to easily promote their products through creators' live streams on Twitch, as a way to capitalise and make revenue.
Bibliography:
Oxford Reference. (2022). Parasocial Interaction. Oxford Reference. https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100305809
Taylor, TL 2018, ‘Broadcasting ourselves’ (chapter 1), in Watch Me Play: Twitch and the Rise of Game Live Streaming, Princeton University Press, pp.1-23












