Full length article Content structure is king: An empirical study on gratifications, game genres and content type on Twitch Max Sj € oblom a, b, * , Maria T € orh € onen a , Juho Hamari a, c, d , Joseph Macey a a Game Research Lab, School of Information Sciences, University of Tampere, FIN-33014, Finland b Aalto University School of Science, Finland c Gamification Group, Laboratory of Pervasive Computing, UC Pori, Tampere University of Technology, Finland d Gamification Group, Digital Culture, UC Pori, University of Turku, Finland article info Article history: Received 5 December 2016 Received in revised form 15 March 2017 Accepted 17 March 2017 Keywords: Streaming New media Genres Uses and gratifications Video games Social media User-generated content abstract While video games have been widely investigated from the perspective of play, an emerging online media phenomenon is the spectating of video game play, captivating millions of users daily. This study investigates the relationship of video game genres, content type and viewer gratification in the context of live gaming. To study this phenomenon, we employ an online questionnaire study (N ¼ 1097) to investigate six categories of gratifications: affective, information seeking, learning to play, personal integrative, social integrative & tension release motivations and their relationship with game genres and stream types. The results of this study demonstrate that “the medium is the message”, highlight the importance of archetypal structure (i.e. the type of streamed content) over content topic (i.e. the genre of games being streamed), and help to build a better understanding of user generated content and the democratization of media. © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. The effects and gratifications from playing video games have been a widely investigated and debated topic within the last decade both in academic literature, e.g. in media psychology, game research and communication studies (Elson & Ferguson, 2014; Hamari & Keronen, 2017; M€ ayr€ a, Karvinen, & Ermi, 2016; Quandt et al., 2015), and in popular discourse. While this debate is still ongoing, a new yet uninvestigated form of game consumption has emerged: watching others play games via YouTube and live broadcasts on services such as Twitch. Today, millions of people watch others play games on the internet (Needleman, 2015; Twitch, 2016). Services such as YouTube have spearheaded a major shift in the media landscape, moving production of audiovisual media from large corporations and organizations towards smaller entities and individuals (Cha, Kwak, Rodriguez, Ahn, & Moon, 2007; Sj€ oblom & Hamari, 2017). The democratized process of content creation on video game streaming platforms such as Twitch allows for the existence of many types of content. In this context video game erelated video content such as “Let's plays” and eSports (Hamari & Sj€ oblom, 2017; Newzoo, 2016; Taylor, 2012; Twitch, 2016), have become especially popular. The participatory and interactive nature of this emerging form of media serves to bridge the divide between games and traditional media, such as television, via the conver- gence of interactive, communal and passive forms of media. This evolution of the media landscape towards user-generated content also brings into question the legitimacy of genre as the primary means of classifying media content. In the realm of video game streaming particularly, it becomes apparent that genre might not constitute the defining means of classification. As little is known about the gratifications obtained by watching these online video streams, this study aims not only to investigate the general gratifications that people derive from watching online streaming content, but also the differences in various streaming content. Not all game streaming content is similar; instead it is highly varied, ranging from very competitive endeavors to highly casual ones. This variation in content type affords an interesting angle of research, and can be compared to various types of pro- gramming produced for other broadcast media such as television. * Corresponding author. Game Research Lab, School of Information Sciences, University of Tampere, FIN-33014, Finland. E-mail addresses: max.sjoblom@uta.fi (M. Sj€ oblom), maria.torhonen@uta.fi (M. T€ orh€ onen), juho.hamari@uta.fi (J. Hamari), joseph.macey@uta.fi (J. Macey). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Computers in Human Behavior journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/comphumbeh http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2017.03.036 0747-5632/© 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Computers in Human Behavior 73 (2017) 161e171