1 research outputs found
EXPLORING VIDEO-GAME PRODUCTION’S CONTINGENCY ON LIVE-STREAMING PLATFORMS: THE CASE OF TWITCH
This article studies the cultural contingency of video-game
production on Amazon’s live-streaming platform, Twitch. It looks at this phenomenon from a
political-economic perspective to unearth Twitch’s platformisation strategy to better
understand what it means for the video-game industry. Platformisation signifies the
infrastructural embeddedness of platforms, supported by a business strategy of expanding
beyond their services’ boundaries to standardise appropriation, processing and exploitation
of data, resulting in a dependency of content creators on digital platforms. Subsequently,
we wish to grasp what dependencies are created and how it is made possible. We argue that
Twitch is transforming into an integral part of the video-game production cycle by expanding
its services to every stage of a game’s life cycle. Consequently, game developers are
incentivised to apply these features in their game design, thus creating an economic
feedback loop that a) aspires to increase user acquisition, retention and revenue, b)
locks-in game developers and viewers alike, and c) “platformises” the gaming
experience