STS Research Seminar - Dr Mark Johnson (UAlberta) - Weds 5th December

The STS Research Seminar series allows the department to exhibit some of the most interesting recent research in our field. We invite speakers both from UCL and the wider community to present their research to a varied and curious audience. On Wednesday 5th December, Dr Mark Johnson will visit the department to give his talk 'Why do people watch other people playing video games? The rise of the broadcasting and spectating of digital play'. The talk will begin at 4.30pm, with refreshments available from 4pm.

Abstract:

Ever since the earliest days of video games, many people have chosen to watch others playing these interactive technologies instead (or as well as) playing them themselves. Although this began with just looking over the shoulder of your friend in the arcade, nowadays over two million individuals from around the world regularly broadcast themselves playing video games over the internet, to viewing audiences of over one hundred million in total, with several thousand individuals able to make a full-time income, potentially in the six-figures, by monetising their broadcasts. Equally, the rise in the last decade of "eSports" - professionalised competitive video game play - has also highlighted this desire to watch others playing, with international competitions selling out arenas that can hold ten thousand spectators, and giving out tens of millions of dollars in prize money to the most skilled cyber-athletes that citizens tune in to view. Drawing on two years of (still ongoing) interview and ethnographic work, this talk will explore the interwoven phenomena of live streaming and eSports, and focus on three elements. Firstly: who is broadcasting/playing, and who is watching? What are the demographics, interests, backgrounds and motivations of those involved in both halves of these emerging ecosystems? Secondly: what are the lives of these highly-visible video game players like, specifically in terms of labour and the transformation of play into work; and how do viewers view, and how does this differ (or remain similar to) television or cinematic media consumption? Thirdly, what do the futures of these two domains look like in the next five-to-ten years? What is the impact these phenomena are having on the games industry specifically, and media consumption more generally? The talk will therefore seek to explore these major changes in the sociotechnical entanglements of the video game industry and video game consumption - significantly larger than the film and music industries combined - and to begin to think about why precisely people would sometimes rather watch others playing video games, instead of simply playing them themselves.