eSports from the Virtual Stands

Abstract

The growth of eSports viewership in the last decade has led to an increase in research completed in the field of eSports. This research investigates how spectatorship is constructed within eSports livestreams. It does so by looking at the dispositif as posed by Frank Kessler of the livestreams of the Dota 2 tournament The International 7 on both Twitch.tv as well as on the in-game spectator mode. This means that this research discusses aspects of the technological and material configuration, the spectator’s position within this configuration and the text itself with its mode of address towards the spectator of both livestreams. By discussing these technological and material configuration this research hopes to gain new ground in eSports research and provide a heuristic approach to analysing the spectatorship within eSports. To accomplish this, this research draws on literature about eSports, eSports livestreams and personal livestreams as well as television liveness. This led to the conclusion that Twitch.tv technological configuration provides unique ways of interacting with media via a live chat as well as the availability of clipping significant moments of the livestreams. From the discussion of the spectator’s position could be concluded that there is a significant discrepancy between the physical and the digital audience which was even larger when discussing the in-game spectator mode. Lastly this research drew some parallels between television liveness and eSports livestreams by discussing the ways in which the text addresses the spectator as well as some aspects of the text itself.