5(2) 2019: Laborious Play and Playful Work I

Browsing 5(2) 2019: Laborious Play and Playful Work I by Subject "gender"

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  • Article
    Convergence of Rhetoric, Labour, and Play in the Construction of Inactive Discourses on Twitch
    Catá, Alexandra S. (2019) , S. 133-148
    Twitch is a complex space that involves both laborious play and “playbour” through the commodification of streamers time and the gamification of streamer interaction through emotes and bits. As a result, this creates a rhetorical space where celebrity, race, and gender are tension points that reflect disproportionate power structures on Twitch. Coupled with the fact that Twitch also functions as the main broadcast platform for esports tournaments, understanding how streamers rhetorically position themselves and interact with audiences as content creators, streamers, celebrities, and, for some, esports ath- letes it is important as video games increasingly become a mainstream form of entertainment. In addition to examining streamers, we also need to understand how average audiences, both casual, non-compet- itive gamers, and mainstream audiences will consume and react to streamer discussions and discourse and how that impacts attitudes in the community, particularly in relation to toxicity towards minori- ties. My paper uses Tyler “Ninja” Belvin’s statement “I don’t play with female gamers” (Frank 2018) as a rhetorical case study for examining rhetorical power, celebrity, and privilege on Twitch. I ultimately argue that Twitch is a site of laborious play and “playbour” that perpetually remains socially inactive in supporting and accepting minorities on the platform. To support this argument, I use Carolyn Miller’s “Genre as Social Action” (1984) to situate the rhetorics around this situation using her features (context, recursive patterns, discourse, mediation, and exigence) to analyse two interviews with Ninja, labour and com- modification structures on Twitch, and Twitch chat. Through these, I identify the rhetorical implications of Ninja’s statements, how it affects the Twitch gaming community, and reveal a complex power structure that ultimately fails to acknowledge the streamers’ rhetori- cal power and influence while continuing to perpetuate toxic gaming attitudes towards minorities.
  • Article
    Feeling for an Audience. The Gendered Emotional Labor of Video Game Live Streaming
    Ruberg, Bonnie; Cullen, Amanda L. L. (2019) , S. 85-102
    The practice of live streaming video games is becoming increasingly popular worldwide (Taylor 2018). Live streaming represents more than entertainment; it is expanding the practice of turning play into work. Though it is commonly misconstrued as “just playing video games,” live streaming requires a great deal of behind-the-scenes labor, especially for women, who often face additional challenges as profes- sionals within video game culture (AnyKey 2015). In this article, we shed light on one important aspect of the gendered work of video game live streaming: emotional labor. To do so, we present observations and insights drawn from our analysis of instructional videos created by women live streamers and posted to YouTube. These videos focus on “tips and tricks” for how aspiring streamers can become successful on Twitch. Building from these videos, we articulate the various forms that emotional labor takes for video game live streamers and the gen- dered implications of this labor. Within these videos, we identify key recurring topics, such as how streamers work to cultivate feelings in viewers, perform feelings, manage their own feelings, and use feelings to build personal brands and communities for their streams. Drawing from existing work on video games and labor, we move this scholarly conversation in important new directions by highlighting the role of emotional labor as a key facet of video game live streaming and insist- ing on the importance of attending to how the intersection of play and work is tied to identity.