The Twitch Experience: What Drives Our Enjoyment?

Hello friends,

Another interesting and enjoyable episode of Gaming Science is here—what a way to start the day, right? 🙂 Talking about joy, have you ever watched Twitch? If so (I'm sure you did), what do you enjoy about it and what features contribute to your enjoyment?

In this episode, we will discuss features of the biggest gaming-related platform Twitch, and how these features drive our enjoyment.

🪛 Social Engineering for Enjoyment.

Generally speaking, media companies want to understand what drives our enjoyment when interacting with them. For instance, how they can get us into or maintain our positive mood, or how they can generate feelings of pleasure for us.

"[One way to do that is] by helping us to escape into virtual worlds and narrations, building up relations to media personae, or stimulating arousal, for example, via excitation transfer [1]".

Twitch has a multimedia character and combines various media features on a single platform. However, it is unclear (to us) which media on the platform are related to the enjoyment of the users. This would help us to understand how Twitch (and other platforms) get and keep us hooked by maximizing our enjoyment. Therefore, the study we'll be looking at today:

• Identifies "important aspects of media enjoyment that may be related to the features of Twitch [1]", and
• Investigates whether the enjoyment of Twitch users is connected to these features (i.e., para-social relationship [the relationship with someone online], suspense, and interaction using the chat).

"[In short: the authors] analyzed how experiences that are related to specific Twitch features contribute to enjoyment [1]."

👀 Any Watchers?

Using a survey approach, 548 people participated in the study. The age ranged from 14 to 43, with a mean of 21.77 years, and 95.8% were male. The majority of the viewers were from Europe (51.6%) and North America (37.8%). In terms of content consumed by the viewers, 42.15% watched CS, 21.9% DotA 2, 21% Hearthstone, and 16.8% LoL.

🤩 What Drives the Viewers' Enjoyment?

"In line with... media and sportscasts in particular, suspense was associated with enjoyment [1]."

The authors suspect that Twitch viewers enjoy their livestream experience mostly because the outcome of a game is unpredictable. However, this relationship between suspense and enjoyment only exists when players also get to use the chat and have a para-social relationship with the streamer/community. Hence, suspense alone doesn't drive the viewers' enjoyment.

"From there, users will not experience enjoyment because of someone else’s competence but due to (a) empathy and (b) some sort of prestige of the community that is cheering for a victorious streamer [1]."

This is similar to traditional sports - your favorite sports player or team. Success and failure aren't determined by your personal feelings of competence and enjoyment but rather whether you like the player and/or the community (e.g., sports club).

Similarly, social capital may play a role in explaining suspense. For instance, the value of a streamer's community may rise and fall because of the streamer's success and failure. Let's say your favorite streamer is also a top 10 player in the game. When they win a tournament, the value of the community rises, making you feel more enjoyment. Again, this is identical to traditional sports. Your favorite team wins the championship? You feel great and enjoy watching their games more, right?

"Therefore, suspense and subsequent enjoyment when using Twitch might be explained by the sympathy and relationship to the streaming persona as well as the social dynamics within the channel’s community [1]."

Lastly, the para-social relationship viewers form with the streamer (e.g., chatting with them, subscribing and getting noticed) drives the enjoyment of viewers. This goes so far as people may feel like they're watching a close friend play. At the same time, Twitch viewers can learn from the (professional) player/streamer.

"Therefore, Twitch offers people the possibility to engage in unique relationships regarding both sympathy and profession [1]."

These unique relationships are fostered using the chat, where viewers bond with each other (community) and the streamer. This contributes to their perceived enjoyment when using Twitch. Furthermore, the chat is a tool that "offers gratifications for enjoyment [1]." For instance, people can troll and use channel-specific emojis. This furthermore helps to bond with the streamer and community.

"... Twitch is enjoyable because of multiple and predominantly social media facets and how these facets are combined: Besides PSRs [para-social relationships] with streamers... interaction with others, and engaging in a social community showed associations with enjoyment [1]."

🤔 What can We Learn from it?

There are multiple ways to take these results when it comes to learning from them. Firstly, they help you understand yourself and others better. Twitch’s features tap into our human psychology to enhance our felt enjoyment. This is also the reason why similar platforms, and media more broadly, use similar features.

Secondly, if your goal is to stay away from watching Twitch, you now know which features to avoid to make it easier for you. On the flip side, you can also increase your enjoyment during the time you spend on Twitch.

I hope you guys enjoyed this piece. Wish y'all a wonderful week,

Christian 😃

References

[1] Wulf et al., 2018