1. Introduction
[1.1] Live streaming video games has become a popular way to produce and consume media, allowing gaming fans to share their love of games in a new way. Twitch.tv, owned by Amazon, is one of the largest streaming sites, boasting 30 million average daily visitors, 7 million streamers broadcasting per month, and 2,500,000 viewers at any moment (https://twitchadvertising.tv/audience/). The games industry has embraced streaming as an additional revenue and advertising method, and streaming has even impacted the game design process itself (Johnson and Woodcock 2018). Streaming has created a thriving industry, including large international conventions (https://www.twitchcon.com/en/). With streaming's popularity growing, continued study of this practice alongside traditional media and technology industries is imperative. For cross-disciplinary scholars interested in fandom, fan production, and fan–industry relationships, streaming is especially intriguing. Video game fans have built a new medium for production, in the process raising questions around cultural production, labor, play, and power hierarchies.
[1.2] I orient streaming as a type of fannish production and streamers as fans who are producing transformative works. Interrogating the place of streaming in a broader ecosystem of fannish production is a worthy question for the field. Fan production centers around the creation of transformative media that builds upon existing media texts. Streaming intersects play and work, which I argue fits within fannish discourses of fan labor as "labors of love" (Hills 2002; Jones 2014). Streaming is noteworthy as a form of monetized fan production that has carved out a space in the games industries, and considering streaming alongside other fannish labor economies has merit. I do not attempt to answer here exactly where or how streaming fits within the fan production ecosystem; I merely provide a potential avenue for broadening understandings of fannish production and situating fannish labor economies in larger social contexts. I suggest one productive direction to do so, but future fan studies work might provide others.
[1.3] To this end, I review existing research on streamers, focusing on the impacts of power and identity on their production and lived experiences. This area is currently understudied but is important for scholars of gaming to attend to. I first connect streaming to existing work on power, labor, and identity, putting fan labor scholarship in dialogue with other labor approaches, before reviewing the current literature. I highlight important insights from qualitative methods (interviews, ethnographies, and case studies) and note that quantitative studies (larger-scale surveys, statistical analyses, and big data research) would be beneficial to pursue. I call on interdisciplinary scholars to investigate streaming alongside other types of fannish labor through intersectional scholarship and methodologically diverse research. This focus would complement fan studies' current and growing attention to the affective dimensions of fannish labor (Hills 2002) and power hierarchies within fannish spaces (Scott 2019; Pande 2018).
[1.4] On streaming platforms (Twitch, YouTube), anyone can watch and stream for free. Webcams allow for face-to-face contact, and streamers talk with audiences via live chat. Streaming platforms allow gamers who love games to connect with like-minded peers and create new media spaces to share their love of games. Twitch also features other content: sports, fitness streams, musical performances, art, and talk shows ("just chatting" streams). Streamers can monetize their broadcasts through subscriptions, advertising revenue, or direct donations (via platforms like PayPal or Patreon), as well as sponsorships, brand deals, or gifts from viewers (Twitch Interactive 2023). Success means large paychecks; in 2021 top Twitch streamers earned between $2.8 and $9.6 million (Çakır and Ernst 2023). The industry is constantly growing; viewership of the most popular streams, such as the role-playing game web show Critical Role, rivals network television (Hoffer 2021; Schneider 2021). Because Twitch is owned by Amazon, it exists as part of a larger, data-based system in which user-generated content (and often fan content; Stanfill 2019; Scott 2019) is exploited by large corporations to generate profit and revenue.
[1.5] Here is an opportunity for scholarship on power, digital economies, fan labor, and identity to converge and to inform further fan studies research on gamers' labor. Computer scientists provide important insights on streaming's technical infrastructures (Hamilton, Garretson, and Kerne 2014; Kaytoue et al. 2012; Zhang and Liu 2015; Harpstead et al. 2019), and communications has studied the norms, cultures, and practices of streamers (Gandolfi 2016; Woodcock and Johnson 2019a, 2019b). Much current research focuses on platforms and viewers, often using computational methods (Harpstead et al. 2019). Social scientific contributions can here be most useful when attending to the experiences of the players engaging in this work. T. L. Taylor's Watch Me Play (2018) provides an impressive initial sociological exploration of the streaming industry, but fan studies scholars interested in gaming and streaming should more closely attend to inequalities.
[1.6] Fan studies has long attended to power hierarchies within fannish spaces, noting how certain fannish activities are celebrated or ostracized (Scott 2019) and how fans are celebrated or ignored (Pande 2018; Wanzo 2015; Woo 2017) based on social factors. This is a welcome intervention, but I argue that fandom scholars should more closely attend to gaming and streaming. Gaming has long been culturally dominated by white men while others experience harassment and violence (Gray, Buyukozturk, and Hill 2017). Studies of streaming by fan scholars have made productive strides, pointing out the ramifications of privileged positions and the "hegemony of play" in gaming's archival spaces (Woodhouse 2021, 2022) and the potential for eSports players to be exploited by the streaming and games industry (McCutcheon and Hitchens 2020), but we can build upon these initial strides by bringing in extradisciplinary perspectives and frameworks. Research on the power dynamics at play in the lives of streamers navigating a precarious, often hostile, digital workplace is ongoing and has ample room for growth and expansion.
2. Players, not games: Self and labor on stream
[2.1] Streaming is, fundamentally, a performance. Streamers engage in "performance play" (Pellicone and Ahn 2017), transforming an existing game into original media (much like other types of fan production). Thousands may play the same game, yet each broadcast becomes unique. Minecraft streamers on YouTube, for example, have created a massive role-play world that has attracted millions of viewers globally (Alexander 2021). Though this is a unique case demanding a lot of work and intertextual engagement, it exemplifies the impact streamers have. Thousands of streamers play games, commentate, and socialize, all while performing emotional labor (Woodcock and Johnson 2019a; Oksala 2016). The more effectively they perform these tasks, the more popular they may become (Woodcock and Johnson 2019a).
[2.2] Since the individual streamer is essential to the resulting media produced, the self becomes necessary to studying the practice. The self is a reflexive process, informed by social positions, identity categories, and power hierarchies (Stets and Burke 2003; Cerulo 1997). For example, Du Bois's (1903) "double consciousness" famously describes the conflict and dual-identity impacts on the self that arise when Black Americans navigate oppressive white society. Because the individual is embedded in systems of domination, intersectional perspectives in this area would prove valuable. Intersectional approaches focus on how the "matrix of domination" (Hill Collins 2015) impacts multiply marginalized individuals and groups through multiple interlocking categories of subjugation. They also highlight how multiple identities shape one's self (though many critique this as superficial) (Bilge 2013; Nash 2008). Though a complete overview of intersectional epistemologies is beyond the scope of this discussion, my review is informed by an intersectional framework.
[2.3] Systems of power in streaming and the broader internet include platform restrictions, algorithmic biases, gig economic policies, and hegemonic cultural norms around identity, among others. In analyzing power and identity in streaming research, I focus first on how individual streamers present themselves on stream. I then focus on how identity-based norms of power privileging whiteness and maleness create tangible, specific barriers to success for Black women and other marginalized creators.
[2.4] Goffman (1959) famously conceptualized self-presentation as performance, noting that individuals present a front via consistent adjustments of behavior to fit the given audience's norms. Online, some scholars emphasize the importance of strategic self-presentation decisions (Djafarova and Trofimenko 2019; Yau and Reich 2019). Others argue that despite these strategies, individuals' online selves reflect their off-line ones (Bullingham and Vasconcelos 2013), suggesting that how much people engage in deliberate identity changes is flexible yet deliberate. This tension between strategic choices and authentic self marks the kind of necessary impression management (Goffman 1959) for streamers. While on camera, streamers are constantly working to craft an effective and evocative performance.
[2.5] Streamers make deliberate choices about which aspects of themselves to showcase, reflecting a similar dichotomy between strategy and authenticity. Some users broadcast a more authentic self (i.e., true to their off-line personalities), and some portray a character on screen or do not appear at all. Popular former streamer Dr. Disrespect crafted a pro-wrestling–inspired character though he has sometimes broken character and his true identity is public (Barnes 2022). Other types of characters include VTubers: digital avatars that streamers use on video in place of their own face (to create anonymity) during their broadcast (Silberling 2022). Other streamers may rely on pseudonyms; however, they often broadcast their face without any disguise. (When I streamed from 2018 to 2020, I used my real first name and face but not my last name.) Sometimes, anonymity is not possible; the top streamers have become celebrities, and their identities are public (Statt 2018; Matarese 2019).
[2.6] Moreover, viewers often expect authenticity and realness, and a seemingly disingenuous performance may hinder success (Woodcock and Johnson 2019b). Many streamers broadcast from their home or bedroom, showing their personality; this creates a more intimate, authentic experience (Ruberg and Lark 2020). Success often depends on one's ability to socialize with other streamers and viewers (via networking and off-site digital communities). This form of "social labor," or job-based social ties (deWinter, Kocurek, and Vie 2017), becomes essential to streaming. Authenticity allows streamers to form these ties more easily.
[2.7] Anonymity is possible when streaming, but with more streamers becoming public figures and with more in-person meet-up events, it is increasingly difficult. The performers and their identities and bodies are often impossible to separate from the stream, and demands for authentic performances necessitate emotional and affective labor throughout. For streamers marginalized by unequal social hierarchies, constantly engaging in this kind of performance work can be taxing. In an ecosystem where individuals create capital for themselves (Johnson and Woodcock 2019) and the platforms they stream on (Postigo 2014; Hesmondhalgh 2010), the user is paramount; the person permeates the produced media, and one's self and body is tied to income and marketability. When one experiences oppression from overarching social forces, especially exploitative capitalist policies, understanding the obstacles people face based on gender, race, ability, and other factors is imperative.
[2.8] Affective dimensions of fan production and fannish "labors of love" (Hills 2002; Jones 2014) have a long scholarly history in fan studies. Fannish "gift economies" (Turk 2014) are profoundly reliant on affective labor, and previous fan studies works have noted that this work is often undervalued (Stanfill and Condis 2014) or not conventionally recognized as work ("immaterial labor"; Hardt and Negri 2000). Affective labor (Hochschild 1983; Oksala 2016) is especially important for streaming, and the gendered and racialized aspects (Hochschild 1983; Wharton 2009) may create financial and social hardships for streamers if they cannot appeal to an audience via the correct affect. For women, who already experience harassment online (Winkelman et al. 2015), and Black gamers, who face racist backlash (Gray 2016), this creates an especially vicious cycle. Streaming's position leads to hierarchies of power that closely mirror other digital labor spaces, and common to all is an ecosystem where the user is secondary to the value they generate for platforms. Thus, it is important to note platform- and media-specific behaviors, norms, and resistance practices that streamers utilize.
[2.9] Though commercial success is often important—and a conventional marker of stream success—some streamers are not necessarily looking to succeed. Many stream as a hobby (as I did), and others look to build a community on a smaller scale or in a specific way (Freeman and Wohn 2020; Chan and Gray 2020). Extradisciplinary perspectives on the self, labor, and streaming can enrich existing discussions on fannish labor and inequalities through considering streaming in this context.
3. Players as producers: Current streaming research
[3.1] Much current research unsurprisingly centers around gender, considering that women and gaming have a complicated history. Emblematic of this is the #GamerGate controversy, a gaming-focused internet harassment campaign from 2014–2015 (Mortensen 2018). Gaming critics, press, and industry figures calling for better treatment for women and people of color received a wave of harassment, doxing, and violence by gamers (St. James 2014), which some have tied to alt-right extremism (Romano 2021; Lees 2016; Mortensen and Sihvonen 2019; Proctor and Kies 2018) and "toxic technocultures" (Massanari 2017, 333). Gender remains salient in gaming and streaming communities; a culture of sexism and exclusion guides platform regulations and restricts women streamers.
[3.2] Streaming platforms' community guidelines cover legal policies, banned content, and prohibited actions. They are often vague, prohibiting, for example, "content or camera focus on breasts, buttocks, or pelvic region, including poses that deliberately highlight these elements" (Twitch Interactive 2022). Critics argue that this has allowed for disproportionate punishment of women and femme streamers because the guidelines unequally regulate visible cleavage or breasts. Though as of this writing these policies do not cover specific garments or attire (only general restrictions—which have since removed specific references to cleavage and breasts), previous iterations prohibited "sexually suggestive" clothing (Cullen and Ruberg 2019). Vague policies allow aggressive policing of women's bodies (Garcia 2018), and vague, evolving cultural norms lead to biases in enforcement (Ruberg 2021). This leads to gender-policing of women ("protecting" the platform) and reflects a disconnect between sexuality in-game and on stream (Zolides 2021; Ruberg 2021).
[3.3] Historically, Twitch's policies have neglected to punish sexual harassment, as Bonnie Ruberg (2021) has discussed thoroughly. As of this writing they have been updated to include more thorough definitions of sexual harassment, including specific actions (i.e., unwanted advances on stream or in direct messaging) (Twitch Interactive 2022), but historically Twitch did not provide clear direction. There also was little discussion of reporting sexual harassment; the platforms policed streamers but not viewers (Ruberg 2021).
[3.4] Sexual content policies focusing on breasts and cleavage framed cisgender women's bodies as sexual objects, and their presence on stream was perceived as threatening. Often women hear insults like "titty streamer," "camgirl," or "boobie streamer," and streamers perceived as using attractiveness to gain viewers are seen as less legitimate and are subject to harassment (Ruberg, Cullen, and Brewster 2019). These women are seen as taking shortcuts—as "camgirls" taking viewership from "real" gamers (Ruberg, Cullen, and Brewster 2019; Taylor 2018). According to Twitch data, only eight of the top 200 streamers on the platform were women in 2021 (Kharif 2021), and approximately 81.5 percent of all Twitch users were male as of 2018 (Yosilewitz 2018). Other estimates put the gender gap at 65 percent male, 35 percent female (Iqbal 2022; Stream Scheme 2022). However, the disparity is clear: women perform for mostly men. Thus, these women are subject to contradictory, masculine perceptions of gender-appropriate behavior, and harm if they violate them (Uzkoreit 2018).
[3.5] Women streamers are expected to always be positive, wear (not too sexual) makeup, and grant viewers access to male streamers (Guarriello 2019). Gendered labor in streaming is not unique; it exists on other platforms as well, with an emphasis on the strategy-authenticity link (Banet-Weiser 2021); digital labor as performance (of gender) is well-researched (Duffy 2015, 2017; Scolere, Pruchniewska, and Duffy 2018). For streamers, this kind of performance is especially pronounced because of the nature of the practice, time, and often invisible extensive effort of it (Woodcock and Johnson 2019a).
[3.6] Taylore Woodhouse (2021) has conceptualized streaming as both live performance and archival practice, discussing how streamers use YouTube to upload a permanent highlight reel version of their stream instead of a temporary one. However, as she describes it, the labor necessary to edit one's stream is intensive, and women of color often choose not to upload to YouTube due to viewers' persistent negative reactions. Using autoethnography, Woodhouse discusses the harassment she received while streaming as a Black woman and argues that this harassment against women streamers of color (who are not always informed of or able to use the necessary moderation tools to combat it; Gray 2020, 118) eliminates these streamers' voices from streaming's archives. Gendered, racialized hierarchies on streaming and archival platforms, and a culture that encourages them, renders women of color invisible; their contributions to streaming are temporary (Woodhouse 2021).
[3.7] Rarely some women have transgressed gendered norms, as Consalvo (2018) showcases in her case study of popular streamer Kaceytron. She describes how Kaceytron's stream attracts trolls who insult her and call her a "titty streamer" because of her appearance. However, rather than discouraging this harassment, Kaceytron engages with it and punishes (perceived) male viewers who defend her. She plays badly during her stream, which contradicts the idea of streamers as professional-level players (Consalvo 2018). Consalvo argues that Kaceytron's experiences on Twitch are transgressive, violating expected norms for women streamers. But despite limited room to defy male-dominated norms, many women are required to conform to be seen as legitimate.
[3.8] Scholars also interrogate how sexuality (Freeman and Wohn 2020), race (Gray 2016; Chan and Gray 2020), and disability (Johnson 2018) impact an individual's potential for streaming success, though these studies are fewer. Freeman and Wohn (2020) consider the role of, and challenges arising from, sexuality through in-depth interviews with LGBTQ+ (cisgender, transgender, gay, lesbian, bisexual, and heterosexual, both white and of color) streamers. The authors describe how queer streamers in this study viewed their community as a safe space to discuss sexuality and gender identity and as a platform to advocate for LGBTQ+ rights. They reported a tension between the desire for authenticity and fear of undermining their off-line lives. They strive for an authentic self-presentation, where they attempt to be genuine and, in many cases, explicitly disclose and make their LGBTQ+ identity a core part of their stream (Freeman and Wohn 2020). Their audiences, though, have different, stereotypical expectations that may lead to harassment or marginalization.
[3.9] Kishonna Gray (2016) discusses the racism and struggle for legitimacy that Black streamers face. Using a content analysis of comments about Black streamers, she argues that they are treated as illegitimate voices; because of this, they are excluded by the largely white gaming community. Gray articulates an opportunity for Black streamers to bypass historically restrictive boundaries but argues that their lack of symbolic capital currently makes this difficult. Their presence disrupts norms, and, as Gray writes, their production acts as a form of social change. She further elaborates on the disadvantages faced by and resistance practices of Black streamers in Intersectional Tech (2020). Streaming allows Black gamers to discuss issues facing the Black community, though they are subject to (covert and overt) racism from white gamers when they do (Gray 2020, 83–85). Black streamers are forced to navigate complex practices to thrive (or simply exist) in this space, and they are often unable to do so effectively (Gray 2020, 118); these difficulties do not exist for their white (male, for women) counterparts.
[3.10] Black streamers face unique hardships. Black women's streams are often not promoted to the same extent on Twitch (Woodhouse 2021). Yet despite the disconnect, Black women appear both absent and prominent. Woodhouse (2021) describes how her Blackness made her an anomaly, rare but hypervisible at the same time, and the uncomfortable position that often resulted. However, Black gamers have developed strategies to mitigate these challenges. Chan and Gray (2020) discuss Black men's streaming practices, arguing that though racism and exclusion often prohibit them from achieving "microcelebrity" (Raun 2018) status, Black men utilize distinct streaming practices to form a resistant community with other Black gamers. They aspire to reach a "small, dedicated audience within the restrictions imposed on them simply for occupying a predominantly white digital space" (Chan and Gray 2020, 360), instead of broad fame.
[3.11] Mark Johnson (2018) writes that streamers with disabilities take measures to make their communities and audiences open, welcoming, and inclusive spaces, and they report generally positive reactions from viewers to disclosures or discussions of their conditions. However, Johnson also discussed reported instances of harassment and the difficulties of streaming work for individuals who have chronic conditions. Long stream hours and/or regular streaming is often hard to achieve, and steps toward disabled streamers' inclusion are hampered by this (Johnson 2018).
[3.12] Lacking in this field is methodological diversity. Many studies of streaming are qualitative: virtual ethnographies (Guarriello 2019; Consalvo 2018; Woodhouse 2021), content analyses (Cullen and Ruberg 2019; Ruberg 2021; Ruberg, Cullen, and Brewster 2019), and interview methods (Johnson 2018; Freeman and Wohn 2020). Computer science and related fields have studied platform infrastructures and text chats (Hamilton, Garretson, and Kerne 2014), but little quantitative work has focused on streamers themselves (Harpstead et al. 2019). Although qualitative methods such as interviews and content analyses interrogate the experiences of certain streamers in depth, they often rely on case studies (Consalvo 2018; Guarriello 2019) and small samples (Freeman and Wohn 2020; Johnson and Woodcock 2019), which limits our understanding.
[3.13] Studies of streaming also have often focused on top-tier creators (Consalvo 2018; Johnson and Woodcock 2019; Guarriello 2019), which obscures the scale of the practice. Thousands of streamers, both professional level and hobby level, broadcast every day. If we wish to thoroughly understand streaming, additional methodological approaches, such as a survey of a wider sample of streamers that captures both qualitative and quantitative data, for example, would be valuable. Investigations of streaming communities on Discord (or other social media) and spaces like TwitchCon would also enrich existing scholarship.
[3.14] Broadly speaking, the current work on power, identity, and streaming shows that women, streamers of color, queer streamers, and disabled streamers face unique hardships not faced by their white, heterosexual, male counterparts. These obstacles mirror those presented in the creative industries, fandom, and gaming generally. This space privileges one kind of voice over all others, resulting in a lack of visibility for diverse media creators and less potential for success.
4. New directions for intervention
[4.1] Streaming research to date is fairly interdisciplinary, but much has come from communications scholars. Informatics scholars (Freeman and Wohn 2020), digital studies and digital humanities scholars (Gray 2016), computer scientists (Hamilton, Garretson, and Kerne 2014), and other disciplines have begun to take note, yet despite interdisciplinarity, sociology and fan studies have had comparatively little to say. Fan studies and gaming studies benefit from greater attention to social scientific phenomena and frameworks, and cross-disciplinary scholars interested in fandom would benefit from greater attention to inequalities and power hierarchies in streaming and gaming spaces as well as fandom more broadly. Further insights from media sociology, sociology of culture, and sociology of labor and work would be especially fruitful.
[4.2] Current research provides some nuanced critiques of power's role within streaming, particularly regarding the place of gender and sexuality. The field is promising, with survey- and interview-based methodologies allowing for important insights. Fandom studies has prioritized a fan-centered approach to research (Dym and Fiesler 2020), and streaming studies have embraced qualitative research. Existing research from within and outside fan studies has made excellent use of ethnography (Taylor 2018), archival methods (Woodhouse 2021), and interviews (Johnson 2018; Freeman and Wohn 2020). Though these cases utilize small samples and particular subgroups, and they would benefit from broadening their contexts, these methodological choices do well in balancing the desire for insight with a population that historically values privacy and distrusts researchers (Dym and Fiesler 2020). While this field is burgeoning and ongoing, existing methodological and theoretical tool kits from disciplines like social science may add further context to these more nuanced insights.
[4.3] Streaming is a white, cisgender, heterosexual, male-dominated space, ruled by patriarchal norms and white supremacist ideas. Streaming reflects the same structural power hierarchies as fandoms and other media industries. Platform ownership, corporate control of resources, and exploitative policies that privilege white, cis, heterosexual men further exacerbate this issue. Individuals outside this demographic often experience harassment, exclusion, and violence (Gray, Buyukozturk, and Hill 2017) when they are successful or simply when they participate; they are seen as less legitimate (Gray 2016) and as "cheating" or polluting gaming (Ruberg, Cullen, and Brewster 2019). "Gaming capital" (Consalvo 2007), a variation on Bourdieu's "cultural capital" applied to gaming, is only available to certain individuals. A type of "geek masculinity" in gaming (Nakamura 2012), privileging men and patriarchy, excludes Black gamers, women, and gamers of color (Gray 2016; Woodhouse 2021; Nakamura 2009). Further interdisciplinary scholarship should foreground intersectional perspectives and Black women, perhaps contributing to what Brown (2022, 247) calls "Black feminist digital sociology."
[4.4] Intersectionality prioritizes studying interlocking power structures beyond single axes (Crenshaw 1989), with research approaches focusing on unique experiences of oppression faced by multiply marginalized individuals (Christensen and Jensen 2012). Critics of current intersectional thought argue it contains many unsolved questions, such as how privilege and oppression may intersect. Jennifer Nash (2008) writes that treating Black women as a monolith limits discussion of differences within their experiences of power and privilege. Intersectional streaming studies should interrogate the experiences of multiply oppressed creators and how platform architectures, gaming's social norms, access to technologies, and larger questions of platform-based digital labor, exploitation, and discrimination lead to multiple barriers to success for creators disadvantaged by these hierarchies.
[4.5] For example, studies of bias in platforms' community guidelines take extensive note of impacts on cisgender women's bodies (namely breasts) (Ruberg, Cullen, and Brewster 2019; Cullen and Ruberg 2019; Zolides 2021), yet they make little mention of differential impacts based on factors such as race, ability, sexuality, and gender identity. Critiques around moderation of these policies are relatively one-dimensional and should go further in their analyses. They do not take into account how women of color are sexualized and stereotyped differently (Biefeld, Stone, and Brown 2021; Rosenthal and Lobel 2016) and how this might impact enforcement of these guidelines for different creators.
[4.6] Studies discussing transgender streamers' experiences are few, with varied findings. Only one article in this review discusses transgender streamers explicitly. The authors note streaming's importance for discovering their own identities, connecting with other transgender people, and educating viewers (Freeman and Wohn 2020). Others discuss gender-nonconformity in performances, as in Ge Zhang and Larissa Hjorth's (2019) study of Chinese femme-presenting streamers. They focus on one streamer who performs while dressed and presenting as a woman but identifies as a heterosexual male. Gamers' preoccupation with women streamers and camgirls has led to foregrounding cisgender women's experiences. Though this is important, as is studying gender performance on stream, studying transgender streamers' differential experiences is also essential. Transgender women (or men), nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming streamers may be disproportionately impacted by platform policies. Whether through community-led enforcement resembling targeted harassment (Zolides 2021) or biases among streaming platform staff moderators, an intersectional analysis of this topic would provide a more nuanced look at how these policies impact streamers.
[4.7] Research currently neglects the biggest enforcers of power on streaming platforms—the moderators—beyond pointing out that their enforcement actions are differential and sexist. Recent scholarship has provided a welcome intervention (Cai and Wohn 2019; Cai, Wohn, and Almoqbel 2021; Thach et al. 2022), but continued study of moderation on streaming platforms (especially outside Twitch) will benefit the field. Studies of moderation should explore the structural power hierarchies among streamers, community moderators (each stream has their own mods), and staff moderators; this will provide further clarity on how inequalities manifest.
[4.8] Streamers of color (especially Black streamers), women, disabled, and LGBTQ+ streamers all experience success barriers, yet little is known about how these barriers impact individuals who belong to more than one of these groups simultaneously and distinctly. Scholarship addressing participatory cultures and transformative works (Sharp 2006; Witkowski et al. 2016) should incorporate labor inequalities impacting marginalized creators, particularly given critiques of fan studies that highlight the lack of attention to race and argue against conceptualizing fandom through a default lens of whiteness (Woo 2017; Pande 2018).
[4.9] Though work on disability, sexuality, and race in streaming has already begun, there is ample room for further study on categories outside of gender. For example, Gray argues that "Black Twitchers act as agents of social change regardless of their intent. The mere presence of their marginalized bodies disrupts the norm of the space designed for privileged bodies" (2016, 366). Future work might examine to what extent this social change has been achieved. There is also little attention in current work to cross-cultural differences between different communities or platforms, though streaming in different cultural contexts can have vastly different norms and expectations (Zhang and Hjorth 2019).
[4.10] Notably, research makes little mention of socioeconomic status/class, although it seems intuitive that access to capital would affect one's ability to stream. This neglect might be due to the inherent necessity of access to technology for streaming, but there is still ample room to interrogate class as an analytical category. This inattention is surprising given streaming's position within the larger economy; platforms are owned by multinational corporations like Amazon and Google, which rely on users to generate revenue. This system necessitates that most income is concentrated in the hands of corporate platform owners and a few popular streamers. A thorough analysis of social class within streaming might consider not just how individual streamers are impacted by social class (through lack of access to stable internet and necessary technology) but also how streaming incomes are distributed and how the rhetoric of success is constructed. Current markers of success follow those of a capitalist economic system. Future analyses might consider how these definitions change based on streamer positionality and motivations. Fan studies interventions in this area might unpack how commercial streaming and hobbyist streaming (and fannish gift economy–type motivations) intersect, align, and/or contrast with each other and interrogate where streamers view themselves within the broader ecosystem of fannish labor.
[4.11] Current research often focuses on the most successful streamers (Consalvo 2018; Guarriello 2019; Johnson and Woodcock 2019). However, streamers like Ninja or Pokimane, who make millions, are rare compared to the general streaming population (likely partially due to the power- and identity-based barriers to success discussed here). Further work on streaming should consider the full spectrum of streamers, including hobbyists and moderately successful streamers (most users). Most have vastly different experiences than do streamer celebrities, and to capture the full scope of streaming practices we must study all its participants. Fan studies work that unpacks streamer motivations and experiences should interrogate hobbyist streamers in more detail, understanding not only their motivations for streaming but their aspirations. Given streamers' popularity and ability to generate revenue (Johnson and Woodcock 2018; Jiang, Hua, and Parviainen 2020), they are uniquely positioned as both social media influencers (Woodcock and Johnson 2019b) and fan producers; the extent to which they consider themselves fans, influencers, or both is an open question that fan studies researchers could explore.
[4.12] Understanding how this industry's labor structures compare to other fannish economies and digital labor spaces would lead to intriguing insights. Quantitative explorations would provide useful statistical context for the full range of streamer experiences; for example, we might understand the full scope of different categories of streamers (top tier versus middle tier) and provide contexts for qualitative insights. Quantitative research into archival practices (YouTube videos/digital archives) might provide context for streamers' motivations for archival preservation, which would complement existing findings on archival visibility and labor processes of archival curation (Woodhouse 2021, 2022). Although quantitative methods may prove challenging, fan studies has noted productive ways to utilize big data research while navigating privacy and other fandom concerns (Dym and Feisler 2020). Technical platform infrastructures can be difficult to navigate and computationally demanding, but insights from disciplines such as computational social science may help fan studies researchers engage productively here.
[4.13] Current research does not necessarily provide a quantifiable measure of identity-based power dynamics' impacts on practice, success, or well-being—an important literature gap. Quantifiable links between community guidelines' biased enforcement, harassment or stigma, and success are not well known. Though scholarship has discussed the nature of specific streamers' experiences with violence, harassment, and other disadvantages, quantifying the impacts on the lived experiences of creators is important. Understanding the size and scope of success gaps between privileged and marginalized creators may provide insights into overcoming them.
[4.14] Though this review has focused on gaming streams, expanding this work outside gaming would be useful in understanding the differing norms and impacts. Further work might study multiplatform creators and the differences in power dynamics on different platforms. The live performance aspect or other unique qualities of the medium could be more closely discussed in future work as well. Though qualitative investigations provide rich, important insights, further quantitative study and methodological diversity would complement existing works nicely.
5. Conclusion
[5.1] I have discussed major research threads on video game streaming, noting gaps and new directions for scholarly investigation in fan studies and beyond. Conceptualizing streaming within a broader framework of fan production and labor and considering how streamers fit within the ecosystem of fannish work have merit for interdisciplinary fannish scholarship. This area will benefit from broadening beyond gender, embracing intersectional research, and interrogating additional practices, norms, and power dynamics within streaming. Social science perspectives on media and technology, cultural production, and labor would complement existing fan and gaming studies perspectives. Streaming as participatory gaming media exists at the crossroads of cultural production and labor, and this crossroads has produced new questions that are only beginning to be answered.
6. Acknowledgments
[6.1] Thank you to Drs Crystal Fleming, Jason Jones, and John Shandra for their insightful feedback during the preparation of this manuscript.