Spectacularization of Play in Live-Streaming Speedrun Marathons: From Performance to Mediation

Description

This paper proposes to study a particular case of performance play (Pellicone & Ahn, 2017) embedding several spectacular and playful settings: charity marathons of speedrun broadcast in live-streaming on Twitch.tv. We will question the scenographic strategies deployed by performers in this context, and how these can (or cannot) serve as mediation tools for transmitting knowledge, facilitating spectators’ entry into the practice, and guiding audience participation. Speedrun is indeed an example of a gaming practice with a double performative dimension (both competitive, as “display of skills”, and artistic; Huuhka, 2020: 60): it consists in the attempt of completing a game as quickly as possible (see Newman, 2008; Scully-Blaker, 2016; Barnabé, 2017), which can require efforts to optimize the playful gesture, as well as the exploitation of glitches. The practice is currently analyzed through the prisms of its transgressive (Scully-Blaker, 2014; Hemmingsen, 2020), competitive (Barnabé, 2014; Bézaguet, 2016) or artistic dimensions (Hay, 2020). We can also note the recent work of Sher (2019) and Sher & Su (2019) that focuses on streaming technologies and volunteer work in the context of charity speedrun marathons. In recent years, it has become increasingly common for speedrunners to use the live-streaming platform Twitch to broadcast their performances as well as their training sessions. For this paper, we will study a specific case of speedrun spectacularization through streaming: the charity marathon SpeeDons 2022. This event took place from April 15 to 17 and brought together dozens of speedrunners who performed live on stage and on Twitch. Their objective was simple: to finish a game according to a time frame specific to each practitioner, while commentators explained their exploits (haranguing the crowd on the model of sports commentators) and called on the public to donate (raising more than 800 000 euros for the association Médecins du Monde). This object presents several frames of performativity, which the analysis will unravel: on the one hand, gameplay can already be seen as a kind of performance (Huuhka, 2020: 60), involving the adoption of a “make-believe” attitude (or mimicry; Caillois, 1958: 39). On the other hand, speedrun adds to this play frame another staging of the action by introducing a recording device, an audience and additional rules or constraints that transform the meaning of what is shown. Finally, the streaming marathon is itself a show that responds to certain scenographic conventions: it defines a stage, roles for the actors, and even a narrative structure, fed by commentators with the construction of suspense effects and narrative tension (Baroni, 2007: 95). Moreover, this type of event, as game spectatorship practices in general (Cheung & Huang, 2011; Taylor, 2018), may be interpreted as a tool for “secondary play” (Delbouille, 2018), since viewers can indirectly participate to the performance, influence its development and engage in a potentially playful form of experience. Based on the qualitative analysis of 17 semi-structured interviews conducted with participants of SpeeDons 2022, we will question the rhetorical techniques used by practitioners to make the performance spectacular and how these can be used to serve an important dimension of speedrun as a “community of practice” (Berry, 2008): the mediation of knowledge and the facilitation of spectators’ entry into the community. Speedrun is indeed a practice requiring a diversity of skills (“Understand, Investigate, Discover, Plan, Perform”; Koziel, 2019) and the collaboration of the whole community for route planning and glitch hunting. The charity marathon event represents a moment of crystallization of collective intelligence (Jenkins, 2006: 139), during which the spectacle intertwines with the objective of transmitting informational expertise to the audience: what happens on the screen is constantly translated into human language by the commentators, who try to make the gameplay understandable, but also to underline invisible difficulties, to report the history of the tricks used, etc. How does this didactic posture articulate with the performativity (in this context, making an action readable also means guiding the reactions of the audience to perform collective emotions: telling them when to be surprised, tense, appreciative, etc.)? What does the streaming stage mediate exactly (knowledge about the game or the speedrun? participation to the group? aesthetic interpretation of the performance? etc.)? These are the questions this paper will attempt to answer.

Période	5 oct. 2022
Type d'événement	Colloque