“It Sucks for Me, and It Sucks for Them”: The Emotional Labor of Women Twitch Streamers

Increasing and sustaining women’s participation in gaming spheres is a persistent problem DiGRA audiences are familiar with. This paper looks at the barriers to increasing and sustaining women’s participation on Twitch through examining the experiences of women streamers. Emotional labor (Hochschild 1983) is used as a framework for interpreting how these women’s individual experiences resonate within larger societal contexts of work and play more broadly. The paper relies on data from 8 in-depth interviews with international, English-speaking women who receive a primary or secondary income source from Twitch streaming videogames. The results of this study show that participants performed emotional labor, on top of the mental and physical labor of playing videogames on a live stream, and this emotional labor has potential negative implications for the longevity of their streaming careers.

The role of practices and synchronicity in the production of commented gameplay videos. A qualitative interrogation of German gaming content creators

Monetization and Gamification in Twitch Game Live Streaming

The Authenticity Engine: Livestreaming on Twitch

Living on Twitch: An Ethnography of Fatigue

The Critical Role of Media Representations, Reduced Stigma and Increased Access in D&D’s Resurgence

Over the last five years Dungeons and Dragons [D&D] (Arneson & Gygax, 1974) has risen in prominence and popularity with a broadening of its player demographic. Though the game’s resurgence has been widely discussed in non-academic outlets, it has been neglected in academic literature. While there are many factors motivating renewed and engaged play of D&D, in this paper we draw on our 2019 study of contemporary D&D players to present key contextual factors of the game’s resurgence. Through discussion of our results, we argue that the influence of representations and trends in popular media, reduction of associated stigma, and impact of convergence culture (Jenkins, 2006) on increased game access, have led to the resurgence of D&D according to our participants and shed light on some key reasons for its success in recent years.

ROM Hacks, Randomizers, and Retro Games: Challenging Copyright and Remixing Zelda

The Unintended Consequences of Using Twitch as a University Professor

The Impacts of Live Streaming on the Video Game Industry

Audiencing on Twitch