Transformation of Communication and Community Participation Practices in eSports Streaming

eSports popularity is growing rapidly over the last decade. Hundreds of thousands of people watch live-streaming tournaments and championships, which are broadcasted worldwide. The development of such communities can take place in a variety of scenarios, which may be influenced by other community members as well as by established mechanisms for inclusion into communication. In case of game broadcasts, viewers can interact with the help of specific chat rooms. However, behaviour and communication practices can vary depending on the number of active viewers in a channel, which, in turn, can complicate processes of familiarization with eSports space and the involvement into the community by itself. This paper introduces an empirical analysis of participation on chat communication of eSports viewers during Dota 2 championships. Considering live-streaming area as a place for a “crowdspeak” of devoted viewers, it is expected that game competitions can be described as a place, where collective behaviour of users will transform depending on the stage of the live-streaming tournament. Practices emerge here are supposedly vary, which can be captured in a communication building and conventional norms in a chat room, regulated by moderators and users by themselves.