How Streaming Facilitates Affective Transformation: A Case Study of Horror Game Spectatorship

This paper examines how watching horror games through live streaming can transform fear into humour, using the platform horror game Little Nightmares (Tarsier Studios, 2017) as a case study. Its central argument is that stream spectatorship, particularly on the Chinese platform Bilibili with its real-time Danmaku comment overlay, reshapes the affective experience of a game's most frightening moments, shifting viewers away from the visceral, empathetic horror felt by players and toward amusement and schadenfreude. The paper frames this phenomenon through the concept of empathetic horror, which arises from a player's bond with a front-facing, side-scrolling avatar, and it asks what factors drive the shift from horror to humour and what role the Danmaku stream plays in producing it.

The methodology, which the author calls auto-microethology, combines Seth Giddings' microethological focus on brief, small-scale gameplay events with autoethnographic recording of the author's own play and viewing. Rather than capturing whole play sessions, the study concentrates on a single avatar death moment, comparing the author's fieldnotes from firsthand play with observations of a Bilibili playthrough stream. The analysis is grounded in assemblage theory, treating the moment as a network of game representations, gameplay mechanics, streamer performance, and viewer comments.

The findings identify three factors behind the affective transformation. First, the shift from a close, embodied perspective to a third-person observer stance diminishes the sense of horror and disrupts the empathetic connection with the avatar. Second, the introduction of new actors into the network changes the meanings of existing elements such as monsters and death. Third, the Danmaku stream itself acts as an active participant in producing humour. The paper emphasises the velocity, emergence, and uncontrollability of Bilibili's streaming environment, which together foster a humorous atmosphere by redirecting attention toward the performative spectacle of play.