LIVE STREAMS » AN D TO X I C CH AT RO O MS Ben Smith
Illustration by Joey Everett
I
remember spending hours with my friends setting up our PCs at one or another’s house, desperately trying to get the network going to host a game of StarCraft or Counter-Strike. Now a glance at the Twitch.tv home page shows over 180,000 people watching various esports. We can all agree that e-sports, whatever your game of choice, is finally taking hold outside the gaming mecca of South Korea. The current situation is, without doubt, impressive from a numerical perspective, but the growth of any sporting medium requires an audience to generate sponsorship. It’s a numbers game, with the more viewers the better from the sponsor’s perspective. I am sure that anyone with a personal or financial stake in e-sports wants to see StarCraft 2 grow and mature. In order to effect that growth, we have seen a new emphasis placed on the online audience. An online audience is different from a live audience in an arena; spectators are shielded by anonymity, and when negative elements exploit this anonymity to detract from the games, it endangers the growth of the audience that is so important to the flourishing of e-sports. I am thrilled by the growth of e-sports, which have gone from my days playing Counter-Strike at events in the early 00’s, to the present where I can go to a barcraft with dozens of other people and see almost any tournament. But this brilliant hope and promise is tempered with concern, and every time I watch an online stream that concern grows. I now find myself as an older gamer, one with children approaching an age where they are developing an interest in online gaming. I find myself increasingly dismayed by the way in which online chat has devolved during live streams. There has always been Bad Manners amongst gamers. I know I’ve lashed out my frustrations at a loss, but this is something more insidious, like BM echoing to itself in some troll-filled mob. I am not suggesting we remove the ability to chat from live streams. The ability to chat with your fellow viewer during live broadcasts is wonderful and I see it as an intrinsic part of what makes online gaming and e-
sports so special to me. The promise of interaction with your own personal idol, be they player or even caster, makes the experience even more special and should be cherished. How many other sports allow you to engage in Q and A with your hero? This same system also allows for abuse. I don’t just mean trolling, which I see as something different, and I don’t mean mere bad language. I mean the hate-fueled racist, sexist, anti-Semitic and homophobic speech which fills far too many chats. The fact that one instance often leads others to join in a frenzy of picking on the target makes the matter all the worse. I once experienced abuse from dozens of people in a channel because I dared to say that it wasn’t cool to wish that iNcontroL had died. Sticking up for him only increased the hate directed toward him exponentially, and left plenty for me. I teach my children to treat others the way they would wish others to treat them; why would I ever want to expose them to such an environment? What self-policing that is done in our live streams relies on the volunteerism of dedicated fans to act as moderators. Their hard work cannot be overvalued, but without further help it is a task of impossible scope. I put a few questions to some of the MODs I see regularly across a number of twitch.tv channels. The most detailed responses came from the lovely Anjellycar and Urbzie. However, the tenor of their replies reflect that of the majority of MODs who responded to my pestering. I asked each of them the following three questions: How time consuming is it to moderate a channel? Does having to moderate diminish your own personal enjoyment of watching the stream? (Given that most mods moderate a stream of which they are a fan) Is there anything you could think of to improve the situation? I have partially summarised and amalgamated the thoughts of these MODs in the parahraphs below: The majority of the people I have spoken to have indicated it can be incredibly time consuming as well rewarding to moderate a channel for a gamer they admire. To moderate for a player with a following as large as say, GLHFMAG.COM
SPRING ISSUE
2013
21