Streaming on Twitch: Fostering Participatory Communities of Play within Live Mixed Media William A. Hamilton 1 , Oliver Garretson 2 , and Andruid Kerne 1 Interface Ecology Lab Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering 1 | Dept. of Sociology 2 Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas USA {bill, andruid}@ecologylab.net, olivergarretson@tamu.edu ABSTRACT Previously, video streaming sites were at the fringes of online social media. In the past two years, live streams of video games, on sites such as Twitch.tv, have become very popular. Live streams serve as meeting grounds for player communities. The Twitch streaming medium combines broadcast video with open IRC chat channels. In conjunction with gameplay, viewer participation and community building gain emphasis. Twitch streams range in size and nature, from intimate communities with fifty viewers, to massive broadcasts with tens of thou- sands. In this paper, we present an ethnographic investigation of the live streaming of video games on Twitch. We find that Twitch streams act as virtual third places, in which informal communities emerge, socialize, and participate. Over time, stream communities form around shared identities drawn from streams’ contents and participants’ shared experiences. We describe processes through which stream communities form, the motivations of members, and emergent issues in the medium. Finally, we draw from our findings to derive implications for design of live mixed-media environments to support participatory online communities. ACM Classification Keywords H.5.3 Group and Organization Interfaces: Synchronous Inter- action Author Keywords live streaming; Twitch; video games; online communities; third places; ethnography INTRODUCTION We investigate how the popular new medium of live video streaming, i.e., live streaming, fosters participation and com- munity. Live-streaming combines high-fidelity computer graphics and video with low-fidelity text-based communica- tion channels to create a unique social medium. Live streaming previously was at the fringes of social media, with a small pop- ulation producing and consuming content. Around 2009, live Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from permissions@acm.org. CHI 2014, April 26–May 1, 2014, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Copyright is held by the owner/author(s). Publication rights licensed to ACM. ACM 978-1-4503-2473-1/14/04..$15.00. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2556288.2557048 Figure 1. Twitch streams enable streamers to broadcast high-fidelity video of gameplay and real-life. Participants simultaneously communi- cate through streamed media and an associated chat channel (right). streams of people playing games began growing in popularity. Four years later, the video game live streaming scene has ex- ploded. Twitch.tv, or just Twitch, a website solely supporting video game streaming, has over 34 million unique monthly viewers and tens of thousands of streamers. We present an ethnographic investigation of the emergence of communities amidst live streaming on Twitch. Live streaming, in its current form, enables public broadcast of live audio and video streams alongside a shared chat channel (Figure 1). In video game live streaming on Twitch, streamers, those who broadcast streams, share live video content of their gameplay composited with a video feed of themselves in real life. Viewers of the stream communicate with the streamer and other viewers through chat. Meanwhile, streamers simul- taneously engage in game play and communicate via audio and video. Participation in streams is open. All that is required to chat is a free Twitch account. We found that people engage in live streaming for two rea- sons: they are drawn to the unique content of a particular stream, and they like being interacted with and participating in that stream’s community. Many Twitch streams are what we consider to be participatory communities, characterized by openness as well as the means for and encouragement of members to engage in shared activities. The primary activity stream participants engage in is sociability, defined by George Simmel as a playful experience of social association character- ized by the “sheer pleasure of being together” [23]. Sociability in streams takes the form of humorous banter and light-hearted conversation, alongside play. Core community members en-