Expanding Livestream Experience and Interaction Design through Examining the Videogame Speedrunning Subculture

Abstract

Livestreaming broadcasts are quickly becoming a ubiquitous form of media, entertainment, and social engagement. As a rapidly developing online subculture, livestreaming practices constantly changing, adapting, and reconfigured for varied purposes. This dissertation explores the novel use practices of livestreaming technologies and identifies design trajectories that push the boundaries of livestreaming as interaction media. To do so, I examine the videogame subculture of speedrunning—where members seek to complete a video game as fast as possible utilizing exploits and gameplay optimization. Videogame speedrunners were one of the earliest adopters and innovators of livestreaming technologies, and pioneers in livestream audience interaction.

In a series of speedrunning studies involving ethnographic and artifact analysis, I explore three design spaces for livestream technologies. I first examine how configuring virtual spaces of speedrunning events as physical living rooms—digital hearths—creates compelling virtual experiences that facilitate social presence and interaction. I then conceptualize livestreaming as material for design, examining how physical spaces at speedrunning events fold livestreams into different configurations, and how the interleaving of these configurations expand livestream viewership experiences. Next, I examine a set of streamer-viewer interaction artifacts across a broad spectrum of interaction experiences, developing a language and taxonomy as more precise and expressive vocabulary for livestream interaction design. Finally, I present a discussion of further research exploring the application of my frameworks outside of speedrunning livestreams as well as charting research to explore additional critical perspectives of identity, economy, and politics.