Play, watch, create: Unpacking community views on esports, game-related content creation, & gameplay careers

IF 2.4 3区计算机科学 Q2 COMPUTER SCIENCE, CYBERNETICS

Entertainment Computing Pub Date : 2025-09-01 DOI:10.1016/j.entcom.2025.101022

Louise H. Trudgett-Klose , Sarven S. McLinton , Susannah Emery , David H. Gleaves

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Despite the growing popularity of gaming content creators, esports, and professional videogaming in research, there is no clear, unified understanding of these concepts. Using a mixed-methods approach, we analysed how members of the gaming community (recreational players, esports players, content creators, and content consumers) defined game-related content, esports, and gameplaying careers. Participants (N = 85) from 18 countries completed an online questionnaire including Likert items and long-response options. We found “game-related content” was an umbrella term comprising information dissemination, vicarious gaming, and competitive content (e.g., esports). We developed the theme season-bound events as key in defining esports. Furthermore, most participants agreed that playing videogames could be a valid career, listing income and exchange of goods and services as their main justifications. This work is a fundamental first step to understanding the nature of gameplay careers, and establishing foundations for organisational classifications, worker rights, and safety policies for this emerging workforce.

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游戏、观看、创造：剖析社区对电子竞技、游戏相关内容创作和游戏职业的看法

尽管游戏内容创作者、电子竞技和专业视频游戏在研究中越来越受欢迎，但对这些概念却没有清晰、统一的理解。使用混合方法，我们分析了游戏社区成员（娱乐玩家、电子竞技玩家、内容创作者和内容消费者）如何定义游戏相关内容、电子竞技和游戏职业。来自18个国家的参与者（N = 85）完成了一份在线问卷，包括李克特项目和长回答选项。我们发现“游戏相关内容”是一个包含信息传播、替代游戏和竞争性内容（如电子竞技）的总称。我们开发了主题赛季赛事作为定义电子竞技的关键。此外，大多数参与者同意玩电子游戏可以是一种有效的职业，并将收入和商品和服务交换列为其主要理由。这项工作是理解游戏职业本质的第一步，也是为这一新兴劳动力建立组织分类、工人权利和安全政策的基础。

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来源期刊

Entertainment Computing Computer Science-Human-Computer Interaction

CiteScore

5.90

自引率

7.10%

发文量

期刊介绍： Entertainment Computing publishes original, peer-reviewed research articles and serves as a forum for stimulating and disseminating innovative research ideas, emerging technologies, empirical investigations, state-of-the-art methods and tools in all aspects of digital entertainment, new media, entertainment computing, gaming, robotics, toys and applications among researchers, engineers, social scientists, artists and practitioners. Theoretical, technical, empirical, survey articles and case studies are all appropriate to the journal.