This study explored motivations of Twitch Affiliate streamers and has also presented further detailed information about what the Affiliate Streamers like and dislike about Twitch.
Even though the sample was not purposed for generalization, there seemed to be several commonalities between both male and female Twitch affiliate streamers.
6.1. Social Motivation for both male/female streamers
The element of networking on Twitch was found to be the one of the most significant motivators in both male and female Twitch affiliate streamer interviewees, though there has been twice the amount of references or codes in referring to community in female interviewees than male. This is just one part of the results for one of the research questions in this thesis.
From the analysis, the streamers thought the success of a broadcast depended on the community, the interactions going on between the Streamer and the Spectator/s. This is
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compliant with research by Hamilton et al. (2014) which found that stream communities exhibit a shared social atmosphere created by the streamer as well as the regulars. Furthermore, the communal benefits satisfy the needs such as sociability, and the success of the community (Hamilton et al., 2014). It was also found that the streamers thought they were outgoing, sociable persons who felt the need to be with others. This disagrees with Miller’s (2011) view of how people tend to form part of communities to make up for the lack of ‘real-life’ friendships.
Contrary to the stereotype of gamers being lonely people sitting in front of a tv screen, most of the interviewees commented how they enjoyed spending time interacting with their spectators and playing with other streamers. There were no negative comments from both genders about networking, considering it the most important factor that leads to a channel’s success.
6.2. Other Shared motivations
Another motivation which was found to be common in both genders was the notion of bettering oneself, such as helping reduce or remove anxiety, through streaming and interacting with people. This result adds to previous research findings stating that interacting with others online could help reduce anxiety and aids those who find it hard to socially engage with others outside of the virtual environment (Baumeister & Leary, 1995; Desjarlais & Willoughby, 2010;
Mazalin & Klein, 2008, as cited in Hilvert-Bruce et al., 2018).
Quoting from the interviews, there was also a shared notion of simply ‘having fun’, that
‘video games and streaming aren’t about being the best or being popular’. Streamers simply found it entertaining to themselves and for their spectators. The findings are consistent with one of the findings in previous studies on user-generated conducted by Stöckl et al. (as cited in Arnhold, 2010). Their data demonstrated that there were six motivations - enjoyment,
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information dissemination, contact, personal documentation, passing time and earning external economic incentives. Although not all six were found in this study, enjoyment is equivalent to the concept of ‘having fun’. Finally, this also goes back to intrinsic motivation, particularly enjoyment of task, finding the feeling of enjoyment as a motivator to continue streaming for their audiences.
6.3. Gender differences in motivations
Although both genders shared a lot of common motivators, there have been a few which may be worth analyzing further. Firstly, female interviewees did not reference teaching skills to spectators as one of the motivators of streaming whereas interviewee M2 did mention it as being the reason he started streaming:
“I started streaming myself at the very end of February 2018 to give people the same outlet and resource I had as a means to enhance their gameplay and possibly learn some new techniques to incorporate into their play style”
Secondly, even though community was one of the top most significant motivator both genders, there were twice as many codes referring to motivation from the community in female Twitch Affiliates than male. This shows that to female Twitch Affiliates, community is more significant. A possible hypothesis for this reason in future studies may be because female streamers on Twitch are still a minority compared to male and are more appreciative of their spectators. In fact, from a random polling of 2500 channels, women make up just under 20% of streamers (Online Performers Group, 2015).
On the other hand, in male Twitch Affiliates, intrinsic drives were the most significant
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motivator to stream. Previous studies on intrinsic motivation for learning showed mixed results, in a study by Yau and Kan (2011) showed no difference in intrinsic motivation of both male and female participants to learn. In a 2007 study by Narayanan, Rajasekaran, and Iyyappan, it was found that females have higher intrinsic motivation in physical education than males. Since this is one of the first exploratory studies of livestreaming motivation, there is not enough literature in this area to compare it to. A hypothesis for future testing would be a passion for gaming and desire to share that passion with a community of like-minded people.
It can also be noted that in male twitch affiliate streamers, monetary motivation was found to be a more significant motivation. In a monetary experiment by Weinstein (1977), it was found that there were ‘negative incentive effects’ in male individuals after monetary reward was reduced, an effect which was not present in female subjects.
Motivator Male References Female References Most Significance
Extrinsic Motivation 3 7 Females
Monetary Motivation 7 4 Males
Intrinsic Motivation 13 7 Males
Social Motivation 11 12 Females
FIGURE 5-OVERALL RESULTS
6.4. Stream Styles
Most of the interviewees shared a similar stream style which was game streams although only 2 showed interest in IRL (In-Real-Life) streaming, which is typically just interacting and talking with the spectators and not playing games. It is important to note that those two were solely female with no male interviewees having an IRL style of streaming. This could be a hypothesis for future research, that there are gender differences related to streaming styles.
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Linked to the way they prefer to stream is the most common genre of games or most commonly streamed game. In this thesis’s sample, over 60% preferred to stream action games which are usually fast-paced, and they comprise of eight of the top 10 most spectated games according to July 2018 Twitch Metrics. A proposed hypothesis is that this is the most genre that attracts spectators, apart from the fact that eight of the top 10 most sold games of May 2018 were action games (Kain, 2018).
6.5. Summary
All in all, it was shown how the social community on Twitch plays a critical role in motivating streamers to broadcast, some daily, others on a fixed schedule. It is important to ask why is society so important to the Twitch affiliates? It can be speculated that the motivation of community is linked to other motivations, one leading to another. Through being motivated by feeling a sense of belonging in a community leads to other intrinsic motivations, monetary motivations and other extrinsic motivations.
Hilvert-Bruce et al. (2018) had also found links between social motivations and stream engagement on smaller channels. Since the interviewees are relatively new with less than two years’ experience, compared to other more established streamers, they can be considered smaller channels. These younger channels can afford to directly address their spectators and get to know them better than those on bigger more established channels with a larger number of spectators.
Due to the sample not being able to take account of motivations of those larger channels, it could only be speculated that there might be motivational differences from the sample in this thesis.
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