Spontaneous, Yet Studious

Abstract

Esports commentating, the practice of reporting, explaining, and elaborating live competitive gameplay to spectators, is a centerpiece of esports as a rapidly growing spectator sport and an essential component of today's growing gaming/live streaming ecosystem. In particular, esports commentators face three unique challenges: the preparation for conducting real time commentating on highly dynamic esports games; the complexity of in-the-moment decisions during the game's broadcast; and the balance between personal self-presentation and professional content presentation. Yet this emerging and novel sociotechnical practice and how these challenges affect esports commentators' live performance and self-presentation practices has received relatively little research attention in HCI and CSCW. In this paper, we endeavor to address these limitations by empirically analyzing 19 esports commentators' sociotechnical practices. Our findings highlight the complex interaction dynamics involved in esports commentating as well as the importance of professionalism and social presence in esports commentators' self-presentation. In order to execute seamless and spontaneous commentary, commentators must be studious and engage in much prior research and have a clear sense of self. We contribute to the growing CSCW literature on esports commentating practices by revealing esports commentators' unique decision making process presenting information and their self-image.

Cruising Queer HCI on the DL: A Literature Review of LGBTQ+ People in HCI

“…This became more commonplace after 2016 and in particular research contexts. For example, HCI research often gendered as masculine (e.g., boardgames [117] or e-sports [139]) or feminine (e.g., fertility [43] or makeup [138]) routinely describes the omission of LGBTQ+ people as a limitation of their work. Some mentioned using -and having to justify using -datasets or technologies that only include binary genders, such as voice technology [31,194] and video-gamecharacter-creation tools [49,120,122].…”

Systemic issues with narratives of identity: Toxicity and esports media professionals

“…The first case study involves Nathanias, a professional caster or shoutcaster, that is, a person responsible for ‘reporting, explaining, and elaborating live competitive gameplay to spectators’ (Li et al, 2020: 103) of electronic sports events. To assess the importance of casters and the impact they have on shaping the online dynamics of a live event, it is necessary to highlight both the formal and informal factors contributing to the communication framework in which such individuals operate.…”

Functional Models of Elementary Discursive Units in Russian Esports Commentary

“…Although the informing function is the most significant, we should acknowledge that commenting is something more than just dry game facts enumeration. Indeed, we should not forget about such tasks as audience entertainment, self-presentation and image development [Sukhodimtseva & Sukhodimtsev, 2016;Li et al, 2020]. In this way, the aspect under the focus in the current paper is commentators' language as a tool for delivering game facts, for evoking emotions in the viewer and bringing fame for the community members.…”