Career, Hustle or Hobby? The Lives of Gaming Podcast Creators

This paper, presented at DiGRA Australia 2023, examines gaming podcasts as an emerging new media industry that has received little holistic scholarly attention, despite the existence of more than 24,000 shows in the Games and Video Games categories on Apple Podcasts. Its central aim is to map the motivations and strategies of gaming podcast creators, the challenges they face, and how their shows sit within the broader gaming content creation sphere. The work positions gaming podcasting as a field worthy of study in its own right, distinct from well-documented formats such as actual play shows.

The analysis is framed around a central tension: many creators view podcasting and gaming content creation as neoliberal meritocracies in which hard work is rewarded in proportion to labour, a perspective that the research contrasts with prior scholarly accounts. Drawing on ongoing interviews and qualitative research, the paper examines how creators reflect on their work and attempt to convert that labour into income, comparing these reflections with those documented among Twitch streamers, game designers, and cosplayers to show how a creator's background shapes their perspective. Particular attention is paid to creators' beliefs about how "success" is achieved, the lore surrounding its paths and tools, and how attainable those ideas are in practice.

The paper also highlights the range of supplementary activities creators use to sustain their work, including streaming, additional podcasts, and employment outside gaming. These practices are treated as important to understanding creators' outlook on the industry. The creator population is described as diverse across gender, race, sexuality, socio-economic background, and prior new media experience.

Methodologically, the findings are presented as preliminary, drawn from ongoing qualitative interviews, and the paper is situated within existing literature on podcasting and creator labour. The authors' stated contribution is to demonstrate both the similarities and differences in attitudes among gaming podcasters and to underscore the complexity of perspectives within the field.