Watching People Play: The Role of Spectatorship in Player Careers

This extended abstract, presented at DiGRA 2018, examines how spectatorship of games and game streams fits into the life histories of adult players. Its central argument challenges the assumption that games are an inherently interactive medium to be played rather than watched, showing instead that watching is a substantial and socially meaningful part of contemporary gaming culture. The author adopts a symbolic interactionist understanding of career, defining a player career as the succession of games and modes of play embedded within an individual's social, professional, and affective biography.

The empirical basis is an ongoing qualitative study of esports and streaming spectators. At the time of writing, ten semi-structured and biographical interviews had been conducted with regular spectators aged 20 to 40 from varied socio-economic backgrounds, with twenty more planned. Participants recounted their histories as players and then discussed their current stream viewing, with each episode linked to their age, occupation, and family situation. The author stresses that these findings are preliminary and subject to revision as the sample grows.

Three dimensions of spectatorship are identified. First, game stream viewing is intertwined with long-standing game watching, often beginning in childhood, and with broader shifts in video consumption from television to internet platforms such as YouTube. Second, viewers use streams to keep up with new releases, a motivation the author argues is underexplored in existing literature, with some players relying on streams as their primary or only source of information about games given limited time. Third, watching can act as a surrogate for playing, either compensating for lost time or, in some cases, being preferred outright, particularly for highly competitive titles with hostile communities that deter newcomers, including women.

The author concludes that game watching deserves serious scholarly attention as an integral component of gaming culture, and that it is best understood through the social contexts in which it occurs.