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Citation: Abarbanel, B. & Johnson, M. R. (2020). “Gambling Engagement Mechanisms in
Twitch Live Streaming”. International Gambling Studies.
Gambling Engagement Mechanisms in Twitch Live Streaming
Abstract
This paper examines the ongoing gamblification of engagement mechanisms on the live
streaming website Twitch.tv (Twitch). Twitch is the market-leading platform for live broadcast of
digital games and digital gambling, with two million content creators reaching around one
hundred and fifty million viewers per month. Streamers use a variety of monetisation techniques
to encourage fan engagement while generating revenue: this includes incorporating chance-based
elements and unpredictable rewards, part of the ongoing broader convergence of gambling and
gaming products. The primary research objective for this study is to investigate the chance-based
mechanics in these stream interaction and engagement services, how they work, and how these
mechanics fit within elements of traditional legal definitions of gambling: consideration, chance,
and prize. Understanding how game spectators engage with streamers helps establish a
foundation for understanding how emerging forms of media engagement fit within a policy
landscape that might not be designed for technology-driven gambling and gaming consumption.
The themes that emerge here have important implications for streamers who monetize, stream
extension developers who operate in spaces where certain game mechanics may fall into
gambling or other consumer protection oversight, and regulatory authorities who maintain that
oversight.
Keywords: gambling, gaming, live streaming, Twitch, viewer engagement, gamblification,
monetization, chance
Introduction
The convergence of gambling and gaming has become a widely debated subject over the
past decade, and researchers have increasingly engaged this crossover (see, e.g., Brooks & Clark,
2019; Gainsbury, 2019; King et al., 2019). Many forms of gambling now to incorporate gaming
features in their design, while video games have integrated a number of randomness and
uncertainty elements that resemble gambling (King, Gainsbury, Delfabbro, Hing, & Abarbanel,
2015; Johnson, 2018). There is concern that the use of gambling themes in games may be
normalizing gambling activities, particularly for vulnerable populations like youth (King,
Delfabbro, Kaptsis, & Swaans, 2014). Research has suggested the potential for both positive and
negative outcomes from engaging with such elements. For example, social casino games may
encourage migration to real money gambling games, and some games feature what are generally
understood as predatory or potentially harmful features (Dussault et al., 2017; Gainsbury,
Russell, King, Delfabbro, & Hing, 2016; Hollingshead, Kim, Wohl, & Derevensky, 2016; Kim,
Wohl, Salmon, Gupta, & Derevensky, 2015). Gambling themes within other games, meanwhile,
appear to have the potential to reduce interest in or desire to gamble (Gainsbury, 2019;
Gainsbury, Hing, Delfabbro, Dewar, & King, 2015).
Examples of gambling themes emerging in digital games include the presence of “loot
boxes” as a method of driving game revenues, or the gambling industry increasingly emerging
around the tradeable quality of certain game “skins”, which are all part of a larger ongoing
“gambling turn” in digital game monetization (Johnson & Brock, In Press). The process of
convergence is giving rise to new forms of gambling and gambling-like activities that emerge
from the gaming community itself. Crash betting, for example, is a real-money gambling game
that grew out of the burgeoning skins betting industry that followed the use of skins as a
tradeable currency (Macey & Hamari, 2018). In some games, gambling practices are emergent
within the games themselves, such as the in-game casinos created by players in EVE Online,
which funded massive in-game war activity between player factions (Hall, 2016). Such examples
demonstrate how engagement with the game is driven by gambling concepts that are not part of
the original game designers’ vision, yet still affect the consumer experience. Irrespective of their
impacts, it is clear that these intersections between gaming and gambling are manifesting in an
ever-more diverse range of phenomena.
This manuscript examines this ongoing convergence in the context of a major element of
contemporary gaming culture - the website and platform Twitch.tv, or simply Twitch. Twitch is
one of the most successful live streaming websites in the world. Live-streaming - the live
broadcast of video content, almost exclusively “amateur”-produced, over the internet - has also
been featured on platforms such as Facebook and YouTube, but it is Twitch that overwhelmingly
dominates this space in most of the world. Understood as a form of “social media
entertainment”, blurring our understandings of both social media and more traditional broadcast
entertainment (Cunningham & Craig, 2019; Spilker, Ask, & Hansen, 2018), live streaming has
become a major source of online media consumption. Originally almost exclusively a site for the
broadcast of esports or competitive video game play (Taylor, 2018), Twitch has now expanded to
house several million broadcasters who regularly live stream their activities on the platform
(Sjöblom et al., 2019). Several hundred thousand of these broadcasters are able to secure some
income from their streaming, while a few thousand have secured full-time careers through their
live streaming channels (Johnson & Woodcock, 2017). Although almost all channels are focused
on gaming, these exhibit broad variation in terms of the games played, the consoles used, the
communities of viewers fostered, the gaming ability of the broadcasters (Twitch is no longer just
for the world’s most skilled players), and the levels of engagement with outside actors such as
sponsors or even the games industry itself (Woodcock & Johnson, 2019). And while gaming is
still the dominant streamed activity on Twitch, the platform also hosts streaming of other
activities, such as music and performing arts, talk shows, crafting, and a channels for “Just
Chatting.” Given the age range of users, streams can be labelled as “mature”, in which case they
are viewable by registered viewers over 13, or those who lack an account but confirm via a
button-click that they are willing to see such content.
What role, therefore, does Twitch play in the aforementioned ongoing gamblification of digital
gaming content? Specifically, it has emerged as a platform through which traditional definitions
of gambling, and modalities of gambling action, are being transformed and reconstituted. This all
takes place within the broader context of monetization on Twitch, in which the platform’s
ongoing gamblification is conceptually situated. There are seven elements that live streamers use
to secure income from their viewers (Johnson & Woodcock, 2019). All of these have a variety of
user motivations behind them (Wohn, Freeman & McLaughlin, 2018), but the most significant of
these are two methods of viewers directly giving money to streamers, via "subscriptions" - a
promised monthly payment to a broadcaster in exchange for a little more social status in their
channel - and "donations" or "cheering" - one-off payments, either outside Twitch or using
Twitch’s Bit currency, which also makes a viewer more visible in a streamer’s channel.
Streamers also monetize their content through advertising, securing sponsorships, setting goals
and targets for their viewers to help them reach, implementing unpredictable rewards for
donations, and constructing or installing “channel games” for their viewers to play while
watching their content. Central to many of these are Bits (Partin, In Press), which Twitch sells to
viewers at a cost of USD $0.014 per bit. Viewers then use Bits to perform many of these
processes of giving money to streamers, who receive a percentage share of USD $0.01 per Bit.
Equally, across many of these monetization methods, Twitch assists streamers by allowing for
the downloading and installation of extensions (sometimes referred to as add-ons), small pieces
of code that alter the capabilities and possibilities of that particular streamer’s channel - for
example, one extension might facilitate streamers linking other their social media profiles to
Twitch, while another might play a humorous sound whenever a donation is received, or show a
graphical overlay noting how many subscribers have committed to the streamer’s channel during
that day’s broadcast. It is these extensions that seem to facilitate the overwhelming majority of
the gamblified monetization activity on Twitch. Any developer can create and submit an
extension to Twitch, who reviews all submissions in a process based on set guidelines (Twitch,
2020). Extensions are available to anyone who streams on Twitch, not just those who broadcast
gaming, although digital play content remains the overwhelmingly dominant broadcast form on
the platform. Through these processes collectively, therefore, Twitch exhibits a "highly effective
gamification of monetary support" (Johnson & Woodcock, 2019; Siutila, 2018) from viewers to
streamers: it is this gamblified monetization that serves as the focus of this paper.
Platform Context and Legal Context
To understand the emergence of this gamblification, this study is contextualized in two
ways: firstly, Twitch must be understood as a platform with particular norms of governance and
infrastructure, and secondly, the gamblified activity taking place on it must be understood within
a legal context. The production of all content on Twitch, including that which is gamblified, is
contingent on the possibilities allowed by Twitch itself, understood here as one of a small
number of “powerful digital platforms” (Nieborg & Poell, 2018) that increasingly govern large
parts of our online activities. These have led to the emergence of what scholars have called the
“platform economy” consisting of a “growing number of digitally enabled activities in business,
politics, and social interaction” (Kenney & Zysman, 2016:62). Rather than simply being digital
marketplaces of existing businesses, platforms "do not enter or expand markets”, but rather they
“replace (and rematerialize) them" (Cohen, 2017:133). Most platforms are supported through the
work of individuals who are not directly employed, but rather function as independent
contractors who are subject to precariousness and often inferior working conditions to more
traditional forms of labour (Schmidt, 2017). As with all platforms, Twitch exhibits a “designed
core architecture that governs the interaction possibilities” (Srnicek, 2016), which in terms of
monetization has arisen out of an ongoing iterative process between top-down control and
bottom-up innovation (Johnson & Woodcock, 2019). This means that the processes by which
new forms of engagement (such as gamblified extensions) emerge remains complex, opaque, and
constantly changing (Bruns & Weller, 2016), making platforms challenging sites of study.
Equally, it has been noted in turn that platform holders can also provide the infrastructure to
allow others to post apps or equivalents on their services (Tiwana, 2014), seen in the extensions
and add-ons allowed by Twitch. The platform allows for a wide range of extensions in a broader
context of a very - although not completely - open infrastructure for the user-generated creation
of new extensions. At the same time, however, these extensions are integrated with existing
platform infrastructure, such as Bits and “cheering”, and thus increasingly being “captured” by
the platform (Partin, In Press) as potentially elements of its core offerings: in this way, Twitch
itself may be increasingly gamblified.
This understanding of the possibilities of interaction on Twitch must be accompanied by
the legal context of potential gambling activities on such a platform. As streaming platforms like
Twitch are accessed online, they typically are not restricted by national or provincial
jurisdictional lines. Gambling activities, meanwhile, are regulated by local policies that vary not
only between countries, but sometimes even within. In the United States, for example, gambling
is regulated at the state level, so gambling operators are subject to up to 50 different regulatory
schemes within a single country (Cabot & Pindell, 2013). While a critical definition of gambling
could be described as risking something of value on an event whose outcome is uncertain, legal
definitions of gambling typically constitute three parts: consideration, chance, and prize (Cabot,
Light, & Rutledge, 2010; Reber, 2012). Consideration refers to the item being tendered for the
chance of winning a prize (Fitchner, 2011). Chance describes the element of uncertainty in the
activity (Abarbanel, 2018). The prize element is the potential item of value awarded to the
winner of a game – not all laws require the prize to be pecuniary, though most jurisdictions’
regulations refer to tangible value, such as the UK or Isle of Man’s “money’s worth” (Gambling
Act, 2005; Gaming Betting and Lotteries (Amendment) Act, 2001; Gaming Betting and Lotteries
Act, 1988) or Nevada’s “money, property, checks, credit of any representative of value”, with
“representative of value” being described as “any physical or tangible thing” (Chanos, 2006;
NRS 463.0152). These definitions help to assess the gamblification extensions on Twitch, and to
consider their implications for Twitch as a platform and the activities of Twitch’s users.
The presence of gambling themes in video games and esports has come under increased
social and legal scrutiny within the past three years, particularly with regard to the use of virtual
items as prizes and chance-based elements in game (see, e.g., the particular focus on loot boxes:
Abarbanel, 2018; Federal Trade Commission, 2019; Gambling Commission, 2018). In general,
regulatory interpretation of gambling in games has thus far hinged on prize value and the ability
to use a prize outside the virtual game (Gambling Commission, 2018). Many video games also
include language in their end-user license agreement (which all users must accept in order to
play) that defines in-game items as having no real-world monetary value. Twitch has similar
language in its acceptable use policy that states that “bits are not a money instrument” and “bits
cannot be directly exchanged for items or services of value” (Twitch.tv, 2019a). Despite this,
several regulatory agencies have recognized that virtual items may have outside monetary value,
such as Kansspelautoreteit (2018) and the Washington State Gambling Commission (2018). The
State of Washington has gone through multiple iterations of this legal debate; a State court
deems virtual items to not hold value, but a subsequent appeal overruled this finding and some
members of the games industry have now launched a lobbying organisation that seeks clarity
from the State (Gatto, 2018; Nickelsburg, 2019; Sieroty, 2020). Existing legal definitions of
gambling, particularly where reference is made to what constitutes an item of value, are growing
out of date as a result of contemporary digital practices. VGO skins, for example, are blockchain-
based virtual items that can be used in multiple games, and were created specifically for use as a
gambling consideration and prize (Abarbanel & Macey, 2019).
Similarly, there is significant social and cultural value to be attained through being a
Twitch user who can develop relationships with streamers. Although it is true in a formal sense
that this currency has no pecuniary value outside the platform, it has significant worth in the
ecosystem of Twitch, in order to facilitate these sorts of engagement (Johnson & Woodcock,
2019) and relationship-building (Anderson, 2017) activities. Strict interpretation of most current
gambling law would exclude such potential prizes, but the potential association of chance-based
mechanics, coupled with the critical definition of “something of value” suggests the need for a
broader interpretation of some of these Twitch engagement tools.
The Current Study
As the broader discussion continues to grow, the continued proliferation of gambling
themes in games and spectatorship in the online environment is not fully understood. This
incipient field is developing and changing rapidly (Johnson & Brock, In Press), while legal
interpretations are slow to be established. Understanding how spectators engage with streamers
on a platform that is primarily geared toward video game play establishes a foundation for
understanding how emerging forms of media engagement fit within a policy landscape that may
or may not be designed for technology-driven gambling and gaming consumption, while also
shedding light on one of the many new forms of gaming-gambling activities taking place on the
internet.
The themes that emerge here have important implications for streamers who monetize,
extension developers who operate in spaces where certain game mechanics may fall into
gambling or other consumer protection oversight, and regulatory authorities who maintain that
oversight. The primary research objective for this study is thus to investigate stream interaction
and engagement services, including different gaming and chance-based mechanics, how they
work (including if and how outcomes can be manipulated), how these mechanics fit within
traditional legal definitions of gambling, and what they mean for Twitch as a platform and for its
viewers. The study then examines how certain extant engagement mechanics fit into our
academic interpretation of gambling, as well as a broad legal classification of gambling, and
what this means for the streaming and broadcast industry.
Materials and Methods
Data Collection
We sourced our list of engagement tools from Twitch’s list of extensions and streamer
tools (Twitch.tv, 2019b), found on the user dashboard. The data set only included applications
that were directly available through the Twitch streamer account platform, and not unapproved
third-party tools. Twitch classifies extensions into eight categories:
● Extensions for games – extensions built to work with specific games in stream
● Loyalty and recognition – sets up rewards for viewers for supporting the streamer)
● Schedule and countdowns – calendars that display schedules and countdown timers to
stream starts
● Viewer engagement – encourages interaction between viewers and streamer
● Polling and voting – audience feedback
● Music – shows music information to viewers, or allows viewers to select/suggest new
music
● Games in extensions – the extension itself is a game to be played while viewing
● Streamer tools – logistical tools for the streamer.
In addition to streamer tools extensions, Twitch also offers a separate streaming tools
category in the streamer’s account dashboard. This category displays “the most common tools
for broadcasting” from the extensions list, all of which are drawn from the above-listed
categories. We conducted our analytical procedure for each extension and/or tool in the eight
category, using the information provided in the extension description and on the extension
developer’s website (where available). We conducted an audit of the extension list prior to data
analysis, to ensure that tools classified into multiple categories were only analysed once. We
identified a total of 442 extensions, with no overlap between categories. This list is exhaustive as
of 29 August, 2019.
Analytical Procedure
We used a directed content analysis approach, which is guided by a structured process
(Hickey & Kipping, 1996). We used a deductive approach for the directed content analysis, in
which the coding and theme development are driven by existing theory or incomplete knowledge
of certain phenomena (Hsieh & Shannon, 2005; Mayring, 2000). First, we identified key
concepts as initial coding categories, and established definitions for each category (Potter &
Levine‐Donnerstein, 1999). During the coding process, any data that could not be categorized
with the initial codes were given a new code. With this study, the existing structure of the legal
definition of gambling served as a coding framework, and in turn applied critical sociological
interpretations of each component to assess the chance-elements in Twitch streaming
engagement, in order to generate a holistic approach of theoretical (social sciences) and applied
(legal). As an audit of the coding framework, two gambling law and/or policy experts reviewed
the coding definitions to ensure the accuracy of our predetermined categories.
For each extension, we collected basic information on the extension, and coded relevant
gambling-themed characteristics based on the three main components of the legal definition of
gambling: consideration, prize, and chance. The initial set of coding variables were established,
which broke down to 23 individual coded items:
1. Extension Information – basic descriptive information about the extension. Data gathered
included: Name, Category (as defined in Data Collection section), Developer Name,
Brief Description of Purpose, Format (Text-based vs. Audio-Visual), Interactive
(Yes/No), and Screenshot. We also classified the extension based on Twitch’s typology:
Video-overlay (Full-screen content rendered as transparent overlay on top of the video
player. Active only during live feed.), Video-component (Content rendered on top of both
video player and any video-overlay, can be smaller in size. Active only during live feed.),
and panel (Appears in panel area below video player. Stays active even when feed is not
live).
2. Consideration – the item of value that a participant risks to be part of the activity. Data
gathered included: the item risked (if any), risked item description, the associated item
value (e.g., monetary, social, other, or none), availability of controls and the type of
control (e.g., ability to set limits on play). For coding purposes, items were considered of
monetary value if they held financial value or were a tangible item that could be
exchanged for financial value.
3. Chance – the element of uncertainty present in the activity. Data gathered include: any
presence of randomness, determination if the mechanism appearance mimics a traditional
gambling game (e.g., roulette), and which game it mimics.
4. Prize – the potential reward or outcome of the activity. Data gathered include: the reward
item, item description, item value (e.g., monetary, social, other, none), indication if the
item can be exchanged for something else, and an indication if the exchanged item is of
monetary value. As with Consideration, items were considered of monetary value if they
held financial value or were a tangible item that could be exchanged for financial value.
5. Gambling Assessment – Finally, the coder indicated if they observed the mechanism to
constitute “gambling” based on the social definition established in the literature review:
risking something of value on an outcome that is uncertain.
Each researcher completed coding independently. Intercoder discrepancies were reviewed within
a discrepancy protocol defined by the literature review and coding framework until consensus
was reached for final coding.
The final coding was then examined for similarities along these five axes to determine
underlying themes. Five core themes emerged that underscore the broader coding structure and
weave together the underlying elements of that structure. We present the findings below based
on those underlying themes.
Results
General Overview of Extension Traits
A total of 442 extensions were collected for the data set. Some extensions were removed
from the extension dashboard between data collection and manuscript submission, so these 28
extensions were also removed from our analysis. The remaining 414 extensions included 120
Extensions for Games, 36 Loyalty and Recognition, 13 Schedule and Countdowns, 110 Viewer
Engagement, 17 Polling and Voting, 11 Music, 35 Games in Extensions, and 72 Streamer Tools.
Among these categories, extensions coded as meeting social definitions of gambling were noted
in Extensions for Games (N = 5), Loyalty and Recognition (N = 11), and Viewer Engagement (N
= 3). Within these extensions, several included multiple engagement tools meeting the social
definitions of gambling (as detailed in the sections that follow). At least one of the three
components of legal gambling definitions (consideration, prize, chance) were present in all
categories other than Schedule and Countdown. In total, we identified five core themes which
shed light on the gamblification of Twitch streams, and help us to understand how gambling-
style mechanics and systems are being increasingly interwoven into the platform’s content.
Importantly we note that this applies to both gaming and non-gaming content – although gaming
content dominates Twitch, almost all these extensions can be used irrespective of what is
actually being broadcast.
Gamblification Themes in Extensions
Gambling with Social Prize, not Monetary
Firstly, we found a number of extensions that can primarily be understood as gambling,
but in which the prizes offered hold social rather than monetary value. Examples include
Streamlabs, Wizebot, Phantombot, and ddbot.net. Some of these are gambling-like mechanisms
that enable the accumulation of points in a manner similar to a loyalty program, while others are
games in themselves. Streamlabs, for example, effectively offers a loyalty points program
through which viewers can request songs, vote in polls, enter giveaways, and play mini-games.
Twitch’s Bit currency is used as consideration, as well as a different in-stream virtual currency,
which can be granted and taken away by the streamer. This in-stream virtual currency is unique
to each stream, and the streamer can personalise the currency’s name (e.g., “nerdpoints”). The
minimum and maximum values of potential wagers are set by the streamer. Within Streamlabs,
gamblified systems include a spinning wheel game, a betting system, minigames with random
elements chance in which the streamer sets the probability (e.g., !heist), a head-to-head chance
based game (!duel), a form of parimutuel betting (!ffa, which is a “free for all” game based on
random outcomes), players competing against the “house” (!boss), and more. Prizes can take the
form of in-stream currency and advancing up a leaderboard, as well as having one’s name or
playing achievements noted verbally by the streamer.
Another example, Wizebot, also offers ranking levels for viewers, an in-stream virtual
currency, and a similar range of gamblified systems. Like Streamlabs, Wizebot also uses Twitch
Bits and in-stream virtual currency as consideration, though only in-stream currency is used as a
prize. One Wizebot command explicitly requires a viewer to type "!gamble" in order to take part,
while another requires the use of the command !ticket. Other games speak to specific, familiar
forms of gambling: !bingo is a bingo game, and !roulette is a roulette game. Unlike some of the
Streamlabs games, streamers using Wizebot extensions lack control over the chance percentages.
With another extension, Phantombot, enabled, streamers gain access to what is primarily
a chatbot (cf. Siutila, 2018) with a leaderboard system, with similar Bits and in-stream currency
use and wagering controls as in the Streamlabs example. Figure 1 displays a sample chat
exchange between a viewer and the streamer’s personalized Phantombot autoresponse account
name (here, “qewzeebot”) using the text command !slot. Below the !slot command is the
resulting outcome Phantombot text, which displays a win amount along with three emote images,
separated by vertical bars, meant to replicate an image of the three reels in a slot machine.
<<FIGURE 1 HERE>>
ddbot.net, our final example in this category, is an overlay on Twitch and creates a points and
betting system for Twitch chat, with an in-stream virtual currency, streamer controls, and various
gambling-like commands for chat participants, such as !bet, !giveaway and !roll. Many
extensions of this sort have a range of raffles or chests or similar mechanics, with in-stream
currency as the consideration and prize. Some elements require a degree of decision-making,
while others are pure chance. Regardless of the degree of skill and chance involved, these games
often incorporate terms, actions and visuals that directly relate to broader notions of gambling. A
command of !roulette, for example, is clearly a version of the gambling game of the same name,
even if the consideration or prize is not directly monetary in nature.
With these extensions that display multiple gamblification themes, some do not always
use Twitch’s own Bits as consideration or prize, but rather a loyalty points currency used only
in-stream. This creates a value proposition that generally holds value only by social definitions.
The social value exists within the streaming channel, in which viewers compete to climb to the
top of leaderboards, win the most points, and so forth. There are, however, a few cases where
points can be indirectly exchanged for items, such as where a streamer used points as currency to
enter viewers into an in-stream raffle for real-world prizes (such as one month of subscription or
a promotional t-shirt). There can also be separations of the value proposition for Bits and in-
stream currency, such as in Bobmob, where Bits can be used for in-stream purchases, but they
cannot be used as the consideration in minigames with randomised chance, and potential rewards
cannot be traded nor purchased with Bits. Also within this subcategory are extensions like Bingo
99, which is categorized as a Game in Extension and merits our attention because of the
streamer's ability to select a winning number, akin to a house choosing which bingo number
emerges from the cage (see Figure 2, which displays the random and streamer-selected outcome
options). Although the prize for this system is social and there is no consideration, excluding it
from legal gambling definitions, it is not hard to see how such a system presents a gambling
activity by social interpretations.
<<FIGURE 2 HERE>>
These loyalty-focused extensions sometimes contrast with extensions that encourage
gaming, but do not incorporate chance mechanisms into their loyalty point generation. An
example of this is Alter, a loyalty extension in which in-stream virtual currency is earned from
viewing time, and can be used to challenge other viewers in mini-games where the participant
makes active choices (e.g., a Rock-Paper-Scissors challenge). This extension is reminiscent of
similar player vs. player mobile skill game exchanges (e.g., Skillz; Skillz, 2019), in which
players compete using real money or virtual currency. Such platforms typically fall under skill-
based competition classifications, and not legal gambling (Cabot, Roberts, Cohen, Graboyes,
Rutledge, 2018).
Predicting Winners and In-Game Events
In the second major theme, we observed a number of extensions dedicated to predicting
winners and in-game events. This is commonly tied to sports simulation game streams, such as
NBA G League, by setting up prediction challenges for viewers to try to select the winners of
matches. These extensions do not include consideration in monetary form, but do contain games
that mimic common sports betting options. For example, the demonstration video for the
"inthegame" extension displays an example from the tv show, Australian Ninja Warrior, that
offers outcome selection on a competitor's finishing time (see Figure 3). These selection options
include percentage probabilities on each option, though it is unclear if the percentage displayed
is the distribution of participant selections, or an outcome probability. When the prediction ends
up correct, a pop-up appears, congratulating the viewer on their correct prediction and indicating
that they have won a pair of headphones. Another example includes a prediction of the next
outcome in a football match: a goal or a card penalty, with a one minute timer (as also relates to
the marketing theme below) and a frequency count of other participants who have selected each
option. The inthegame extension also includes a Time on Stream bonus, which ties to the
marketing theme below; the demo video includes a claim that the extension gives a "+90%"
increase in the time viewers spend on stream.
1
Of particular note here is that the extension also
includes a wide range of engagement mechanisms that are not related to gambling or chance,
such as messages on stream, participating in polls, or selecting avatars for a profile.
<<FIGURE 3 HERE>>
In addition to predictions in sport and esport, similar systems exist for award show
predictions, such as those from Muxy, Inc. that set up engagement mechanisms through
predicting winners in awards like SXSW Gaming Awards or Crunchyroll Anime Awards. There
is no consideration present in these award predictions, the mimicking of a gambling-like activity
is fairly minimal, and the prize is a community-level leaderboard. This is, therefore, a strong
example of how a prediction outcome of something uncertain is an engagement mechanism that
separates from gambling and engages the social component in a collective prize. This is
especially important when considering emerging evidence suggesting that esports spectator
behaviour – one part of the Twitch platform streaming product – may be related to increased
participation in betting and video-game-related gambling (Abarbanel, Macey, Hamari, & Melton,
2020; Macey & Hamari, 2018b). There is the potential that these prediction extensions may serve
as a normalization (and later, migration) platform for “fully” gambling activities, although this is
outside the scope of the current study.
Legal Components of Gambling Distributed Among Participants
Thirdly, we uncovered a range of extensions where all legal definition components of
"gambling" are present, but different elements are assigned to different participants. These are
particularly intriguing in that they reflect, on Twitch, the game industry's broader ability to
dodge around "gambling" legislation by distributing systems, competencies and agency in
distinctive ways. One example is Conflux Cubes, from the category Extensions for Games. This
extension is built for the game Minecraft, and allows viewers to send “Conflux Cubes” to the
streamer. Conflux Cubes are blocks in the Minecraft game that can be broken or mined by the
player to generate a random effect. The random effect can be a beneficial or detrimental in-game
effect, such as granting items (beneficial) or spawning “mobs” (in-game enemies; detrimental)
for the streamer to fight. Viewers present the consideration element of legal gambling
definitions, using Bits to purchase the Cube and send it to the streamer. The streamer then incurs
the chance component when they open the cube, whose contents are unknown and have positive
or negative in-game value. The streamer and the viewer share in the prize, though the prize value
is different for each. The streamer gains the in-game prize, and the viewer gains the prize
associated with the stream engagement: streamer interaction, their name on stream (if they
include it in a message associated with the cube), and recognition from the streamer. The viewer
and streamer also both gain the dramatic turn created by the chance element in the game – the
added entertainment value in anticipating the result. The viewer gains similar entertainment
value in watching the streamer’s response to the outcome, both in terms of their physical reaction
(if they are streaming a video feed alongside gameplay), and game play reaction to a beneficial
1
Although we cannot independently verify this claim, it is interesting in its own right as a marketing discourse.
or detrimental item.
2
These prizes are all of social value, not monetary, presenting another
separation of the value proposition between the risk and the reward.
Gambling in Giveaways
The fourth theme developed out of our coding was gambling in the form of giveaways
(Johnson & Woodcock, 2019). While several extension types and themes included prizes that
held or could be exchanged for tangible value, all extensions that fit into the gambling in
giveaways category included such prizes. One example is the extension Gamers Beat Cancer by
GameChanger, in which all elements of legal and social gambling are firmly present. The viewer
donates money to the charity, and is entered into a raffle for a prize (e.g., an Xbox One; see
Figure 4). In addition to the potential raffle prize, a leaderboard displays the top donators’ names
and donation amount. However, it is of note that this form of gambling may fall under regulation
of charity raffles and raffle-style games (though it depends on the jurisdiction, as terminology
and specific legal definition may vary). The average age of viewers, as well as the limited age-
gating for streams (e.g., simply marking a stream as “mature” does not prevent anyone underage
from progressing past the “mature stream” alert) may also contribute to a debate over potential
harms. In Nevada, for example, problem gambling and game developer organizations have
pushed back against proposed regulatory amendments that would allow underage minors to
purchase raffle tickets (Sieroty, 2019b). The Nevada Gaming Commission eventually determined
that youth under the age of 18 could participate in charitable organizations’ raffles, so long as no
cash prizes were involved (Sieroty, 2019a). Under such rules, the Gamers Beat Cancer extension
would be legal, as the prize is not cash (despite it having a monetary value). Given that - as noted
earlier - these raffles are taking place on the Internet, on a rapidly-changing platform with global
reach, complicates this picture significantly.
<<FIGURE 4 HERE>>
Marketing and Advertising Practices in Legal Gambling
Our fifth theme is how marketing for some of these extensions promises or implies a
level of engagement or anticipated long-term commitment that is typically forbidden under
gambling advertising standards. For example, Samsara - Stones of Eternity promotes how "super
addictive" the game is. Another, Advance Streamer Gifts, markets itself through the creation of
urgency, advertising a limited number of gifts available to be claimed. These gifts may include
treasure chests with random elements inside. It is of note, however, that the viewer has the
choice whether or not to purchase the items inside after they see the chest contents, changing the
dynamic of chance in the game. Other extensions, like Enchiridion, TwitchArcade and
StreamBreak are all designed to engage viewers while the streamer is "AFK" (away from
keyboard) and to encourage viewers not to change their spectatorship to a different Twitch
channel. Enchiridion specifically identifies itself as a “distraction” for viewers when the streamer
is not actively playing a game. While this theme does not specifically speak to gambling content,
it highlights the presentation of the compulsive element of gaming and gambling in a positive
and exciting manner, potentially normalizing behaviours that might become more problematic
(Abarbanel, Gainsbury, King, Hing, & Delfabbro, 2017; Gainsbury, Delfabbro, King, & Hing,
2
The authors are aware of research in progress on dramatic moments and how different forms of game play generate
that drama, but such research is unpublished at the time of this writing. Future research in this space should engage
the subject.
2015; Gainsbury, King, et al., 2015). The use of "addiction" as a positive discourse in the
advertising of primarily mobile and social media video games is a compelling area for future
research, and here it also appears as having a growing effect within the live streaming space.
Discussion
Twitch, the leading platform for the live streaming of digital games, has increasingly
pursued a highly effective and ongoing “gamification and gamblification” (Johnson &
Woodcock, 2019) of monetization. It also exhibits a growing range of non-gaming content, into
which these gamblified extensions can be woven just as easily as gaming broadcasts. Many of
these possibilities have now been present on the platform for several years (Siutila, 2018); some
have been created by the platform itself, some by its users, and some through the interactions
between the two (Partin, In Press), but all contribute to turning the platform into a central space
for digital gameplay and increasingly various forms of digital gambling or quasi-gambling play.
In this paper we have focused for the first time on the gamblified elements of these monetization
processes. In doing so, we uncovered five major themes in how these processes engage elements
of legal gambling definitions to create monetized engagement tools:
1. The presence of familiar elements of gambling, such as gambling terminology, but prize
elements that hold social value rather than monetary value.
2. The use of prediction actions, such as award winners or in-play events in video games.
3. The presence of all the legal components of "gambling", but with different components
assigned to different participants in the activity.
4. Raffle giveaways that engage all elements of legal gambling, but fit into typical
charitable gambling scenarios.
5. The use of marketing practices that are typically proscribed or discouraged in gambling
advertising standards.
Not all streamers use these sorts of extensions - and, again, we stress that many of these
extensions do not meet the legal definition of gambling, either due to the absence of a monetary
component, or the distribution of different elements of “gambling” across various actors on
stream (such as viewers, streamers, and the platform). Nevertheless, the extensions engage many
of the elements that comprise legal gambling, and often fit within more sociological definitions
of gambling, such as risking something of value on an event whose outcome is uncertain. Such
behaviours potentially merit attention from a public health and regulatory perspective,
particularly when they engage the use of Bits, which require monetary investment in addition to
time and effort.
One of the most important conclusions drawn from this study is the essential role of the
cultural capital that streamers are "gambling for" when they engage in many of these systems.
One of the primary appeals of giving streamers money is the ability to appear visible in their
broadcasts, to accrue a sense of influence through showing a streamer support and signalling
insider status on their channel (Johnson & Woodcock, 2019). Many of these systems allow for
viewers to have their names read out or otherwise noted on screen, to exert even a small level of
control over a channel (e.g., by changing the current music), to potentially win a prize that will
give them (or at least their username) a level of interest or notoriety for the remainder of the
viewers - and so on. Although these might sound trivial or even irrelevant to the reader
unfamiliar with live streaming, within these close-knit communities such connections to a
streamer are seen by viewers to have significant value (Wohn, Freeman & McLaughlin, 2018).
This evolution in how consumers value products suggests an emphasis on the need for
legislative, regulatory, and judicial bodies to re-evaluate the consideration and prize components
of legal gambling definitions. Contemporary gaming practices incorporating exchangeable items
– even if they do not carry monetary value – may warrant new classifications within gambling or
entertainment regulatory structures for consumer protection purposes. Such classifications may
include, for example, monetary investment in prizes that cannot be redeemed, but have social
capital value. The value of virtual items and in-stream currencies that can be purchased with real-
world currency – Bits, for example – are an additional transactional process that separates value
proposition in current definitions of gambling.
This redefining process is not limited to policy decisions. Twitch and other primarily-
gaming streaming platforms are themselves still determining internal definitions of gambling.
The site’s own terms and conditions, which are cautious on gambling activity but not gambling
games (e.g., restricts skins betting activity engendered by some video games, but permits
streaming of poker and slot games), are contrasted by this gamblification process that is
occurring throughout its engagement extensions. Indeed, the platform’s apparent mixed views
regarding what is and is not acceptable gambling content remains itself an interesting potential
site of future study, which might shed further light on popular conceptions of “gambling” within
gaming communities and cultures.
Addressing ourselves to the users, as well as the gambling-like systems and the platform
which enables them, also emerges from this study as a key channel of inquiry. As with all
platforms Twitch constructs certain kinds of users (Ask et al, 2019) through the affordances
(Sjöblom et al., 2019) and infrastructure it presents, enables and co-constructs. What sort of user
is Twitch constructing through the growing range of gamblified extensions or add-ons that a
growing number of streamers are incorporating into their channels? Research on Twitch
consumers has tended to lag behind research into the streamers themselves, and we propose that
studying Twitch viewers’ responses to these extensions will be important for future scholarly
research into the platform’s gradual gamblification, legal definitions of gambling and their
challenges in a digital era, and relevant public health applications. The ethical implications of
this gamblification are already present in the results. If viewers are not aware of the streamer’s
ability to pre-select winning bingo numbers in Bingo 99, for example, the gambling-like game is
not presented in the same “fair” manner that a regulated gambling game would be required to do.
Debate over this subject has come up in past discussions in gambling, particularly surrounding
social games and the potential effect of migration from such games to gambling games (see, e.g.,
Gainsbury et al., 2016; Kim et al., 2015). The ethical concern in both cases is that these games
are not presenting a realistic pattern of loss, normalising inflated win conditions and offering a
false sense of success in gambling games, during which cash – and not non-monetary virtual
currency – is at risk. Such situations may increase the propensity for problematic behaviour
(Dussault et al., 2017).
Given Twitch’s status as a live streaming website that is focused overwhelmingly on
gaming content, this points towards a particularly interesting direction to explore further in the
future: to what extent does a cultural familiarity with games (and the possibility of
unpredictability in games) generate a greater comfort with the gamification and gamblification
(Siutila, 2018; Johnson & Woodcock, 2019) of live streaming, if at all? By this we are
emphatically not suggesting any kind of “slippery slope” argument, but rather the possibility of
exploring how shared elements of gameplay (broadly understood) circulate between games,
players, platforms (i.e., in this case Twitch), and beyond even to non-gaming contexts. In an era
where gaming and gambling are increasingly converging, understanding the sharing of concepts
across these spaces is crucial.
Twitch is not alone in being a digital gaming company increasingly recognising the
potential of gambling techniques to drive user engagement, retention, monetization, and so forth
(Johnson & Brock, In Press). The rise of loot boxes and skin betting are also a testament to this
trend (Macey & Hamari, 2018a, 2018b). However, the gamblification of live streaming remains
under-examined compared to these other phenomena, and we believe this to be the first study
focused solely on establishing data about this practice. Twitch’s status as a transnational
platform, combined with the deployment by the platform and its streamers of various techniques
that blur whether or not some of these extensions legally, socially or psychologically amount to
“gambling”, points towards the potentially growing importance of understanding such sites as
increasingly popular locations of gambling-like play. Twitch and its extensions are using game-
based systems to make the entire platform more game-like, and perhaps even more gambling-
like - how does this, in turn, alter our understanding of what constitutes normal consumer
behaviour on such a platform?
Lastly, we acknowledge several limitations to this research. Foremost as a limitation, this
analysis only includes extensions from Twitch, and no other streaming services. While Twitch is
the primary streaming platform globally, it is banned in China as of September 2018 (BBC,
2018). The two largest China-based streaming platforms, Douyu and Huya, recently expanded
into Western markets (including IPOs for both on the US stock market in 2018 and 2019), and
future research should also engage how gamblified engagement mechanisms are used on these
sites (Huang, 2019). While these platforms and others have begun to see initial work (see, e.g.,
Zhu, Yang & Dai, 2017; Zhang & Hjorth, 2019), they remain under-examined compared to
Twitch, yet bring in similarly sized markets of viewers and broadcasters. Given the international
nature of many of these platforms, it would be germane both to example platforms outside of the
primarily North American, European and Australasian contexts (where Twitch dominates), as
well as examining platforms that are either implicitly or explicitly tied to a single national-
cultural-legal setting. Additionally, our study also excludes non-extension add-ons such as
Streamloots, a largely platform agnostic add-on which, by being positioned outside of the
platform itself (whether Twitch or other sites), further complicates our analysis of gambling-like
processes in engagement tools. Nevertheless, this study lays the groundwork for both future
research and policy discussions on the role of gambling and gaming in these engagement tools
for a relatively new consumption platform for digital gameplay. Future cross-cultural research
that incorporates these forms of gambling-like engagement will continue to extend our
understanding of gambling, and gamblification, in a digital world.
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