Kuuso on 14/3/2014 at 15:26

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Hello dudes and dudettes of TTLG. I am currently starting my bachelor's degree and I have decided it will be about video game streaming, more precisely horror games (due to their prevalence and influence in streaming). Background literature is of horror movies, horror as a genre and horror games (and their interlinked nature). I got my bases covered on that front, but I am still going to ask: have any of you bumped into any articles/anything that is about video game streaming in specific? It seems to be too fresh of a medium for any relevant studies. I am mainly interested in how the viewer acts and interprets a stream and how streaming (from the streamer's and the viewers) fits into the concept of "gaming", but I am interested in everything that could be useful (you can always discard useless stuff).

The closest I've got is micro-celebrities that have been studied some, since people started having good enough of an internet to run a webcam and share their lives (alongside sharing themselves as camgirls). Also found some studies about tutorial videos on youtube, the social nature of gaming (GTA, Rock Band) et cetera.

In short, my looming problem is that all my theoretical viewpoints will emerge from ludology or cinema and that might drag it towards genre studies: as in how horror works in streaming whereas I would like it to be more about how streaming situates itself into the horror genre (and how it differs from actually playing a horror game).

So if you have anything interesting you've read lately, give me a shout. You can also give me a shout about my subject, how bad it is or how remarkably intelligent I am.

nicked on 15/3/2014 at 06:48

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Can you define what you mean by "streaming"?

I know of two video-game-related definitions - one, streaming a game to a device, like how OnLive worked. And two, streaming in new level content without a loading screen, like how most (all?) open world games work. Neither of these seems to fit the rest of what you wrote...

Kuuso on 15/3/2014 at 13:15

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Aight, let me clarify:

1. I don't know how the international standards are with uni studies, but where I study Bachelor's is the first "proper" piece you write (this is my third year at Uni), but it still only 20 pages or so. It's meant to be narrow, because you simply can't fit a broad over-arching subject in such a small paper, so you're practically forced to be specific even if it ends up being too narrow to be any real use to anybody. Afterwards the stakes ramp up faster, everything being at least that size and to graduate you'll often write around 100 pages or so. (Finnish is a way more compact language btw, so in English you would probably add 5 pages to that 20). I have got the image that our bachelor's is basically more of a test that you can actually write an academic paper (which is a bit sad).

2. I'm approaching "streaming" from a cultural standpoint (think Stuart Hall etc.) more so than technical. What it boils down to material-wise is live streaming of video game content through sites like Twitch.tv (not Onlive, not streaming of data in a game itself). I know how I will define the terms I am going to use in my paper and "streaming" is the commonly accepted name for instant video content that isn't pre-downloaded per se, when speaking in the context of video game content. You could define the term in multitude of ways considering how you're looking at it, since technically streaming can be seen to pre-date even FM-radio (for example, factories streamed muzak to it's workers before radio was invented). There sure is a lot of problems you can face, when defining the term (for example, the differences of a live-stream, archived video of stream on youtube or a OnLive-style services where you actually play the game, which is streamed) and I am going to carefully explain it in my paper.

To dismiss the subject on the grounds that it is low-culture or idiotic is...well, idiotic. If you want to study media, you should be prepared to shift through hefty piles of shit, since that is what people watch (or you can do that Freudian-Lacanian study of Un Chien Andalou that people care even less about). The thing is that streaming, as defined above, is a growing and interesting mish-mash of media that reaches audiences usually considered hard to reach with advertisement. PS4 and Xbone adopting Twitch as an integrated element is one of the signs that streaming is becoming an integral element of the concept called "gaming". Yeah, I'm not looking forward to dipping into PewdewPie-territory, but it might be a necessity.

To boil my paper down to a question, it basically is as follows: In the context of horror video games, what is the motivation and the gain a viewer gets from watching a stream of the game compared to playing the game itself?

Additional questions would be: how does streaming fit into the concept of gaming and could it be a form of gaming as well? How does the interactivity of a stream affect playing?

PS. The cinema side of things is basically included, because horror games are quite heavily linked to cinema in specific. This link will hopefully end up serving me as a way to link theories made for cinema to my own context of gaming and streaming.

demagogue on 15/3/2014 at 14:51

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I had to write a dissertation for my undergrad degree (at UTexas). Not all of them require it; for us it depends on the program.

I think the topic is fine. I agree it should be narrowed, especially for just 20 pages which is pretty easy to kick out. But I don't know if slicing it by genre (horror) is the right way to narrow it. It depends on what's in the existing literature, what has coverage and where there's blank spots.

I usually narrow a project down after I've been swimming around in the literature for a while to get a feel for the lay of the land. I mean, if there's little literature on streaming generally, maybe you're better off on fundamentals before getting so deep into one genre, just because without a guide you're rowing in the dark. Whereas if there's a vast literature, then you can build off that into genres with it as a guide. You're going to need some basic theory to work with, and you let the literature lead you as much as you're pushing it in new directions. Well that's my advice anyway.

Edit: Well ... I understand your issue; you want to talk more about horror and how streaming fits into that world rather than the other way around, but since the medium is such a dominant starting point, it's tricky to know if the topic is going to work with you on that. I still think, if the literature is pushing you in certain directions, it usually means something & it's not bad to appreciate the currents. Another thing I've learned is that each project is really meant to add one little piece to the literature, and you don't need to overthink things, or you'll save yourself stress if you don't overthink it. Figure out the one contribution you want to make & research what you have to to make it, then just mechanically kick it out. And that's a fine paper. If there are other things you want to say, you'll have other papers to say them. Keep it up & that's academia in a nutshell.

Kuuso on 27/3/2014 at 11:12

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Due to serious rethinking and finding some nice sources, I've refocused my bachelor's by dropping the horror angle. I'm going purely after the question "how streaming and watching a stream relates to the concept of play", which is going to be a way more concise effort. I've kind of realised that play and playing in itself is a multi-faceted concept that is at the root of typical ludologic problems like narrative vs. gameplay etc. Of course that is something of a no-brainer, but I think that by refocusing on more of a ontological approach will make my bachelor's better.

Demagogue was spot on in his post.