Playing is Performing – Video Games as Performance

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Twitching Laborious Play or : How Game-Streaming Changes Modes of Playing

The twitch gaming event is a multifaceted and multilayered participatory act, linking economic interests of platform owners, game industry and gamers with modes of playing games – a development that engenders gaming – especially twitch gaming – as a new form of ‘work’. In this paper, we will make an effort to develop a frame by which the interconnections between actors like media specific aspects of live-streaming, the aesthetic of performing – such as ‘self-portrayal’ and maintaining a ‘screen persona’ by the streamers –,mediatechnical equipment as well as social interactions with the audience and, last but not least, economic interests become entangled to produce what we call a ‘live-streamed gaming event (Giddings 2008)’ or, to put it simple, twitch.publishe