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IN THE INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER OF T. L. TAYLOR’S Watch Me Play: Twitch and the Rise of Game Live Streaming, the author uses a seemingly straightforward subheader to help outline her research goals for the book: “Games Matter.” While many readers may find this declaration self-evident, the pressing need for scholars to take notice of gaming’s cultural importance rightly remains a critical concern throughout the book. Taylor points out that gaming has become a potentially constant media presence in our lives with the power to shape the way we work, play, and socialize with others. She goes on to outline the larger stakes involved with these connections, writing that “everyday life, filled with both work and leisure, is where people regularly navigate deeply political, culturally productive, socio technical systems. It is where politics comes at us sideways” (11). With this dynamic in mind, Watch Me Play examines gaming’s growing role in our lives by focusing on the emergent Twitch social media platform, in which gamers can live stream their gameplay and build an online audience of subscribers. Ultimately, the book then offers a template to consider the many ways politics comes at both broadcasters and viewers sideways, focusing on how the platform commodifies ideas of play and community, structures complex labor practices, and hastily regulates the community formations taking place on the site.
The scope of Taylor’s book presents a challenge given how large Twitch has become in recent years and how its still-emergent status presents a volatile case study. Spurred on by Amazon’s $970 million acquisition in 2014, Twitch has hosted millions of broadcasters and viewers over the last several years, developed intricate advertisement and user donation systems, and begun to influence ways industry producers can market games through streaming communities. In fact, the platform has become so successful that Time Magazine named the popular Twitch streamer Tyler “Ninja” Blevins one of the one hundred most influential...