Jan 8, 2014 - Let's Play videos are recordings of video games with live commentary, ..... http://youtube-global.blogspot.de/2010_03_01_archive.html ... comments into Google+ in 2013 made it possible for users to post with their Android or.
Saarland University Master Thesis Examiners: Prof. Norrick & Prof. Diemer
Interactional Practices in Let’s Play Videos 01.08.2014 Daniel Recktenwald
Suggested Citation in MLA Style (7th edition) Recktenwald, Daniel. “Interactional Practices in Let’s Play Videos.” MA Thesis. Saarland University, 2014. Print. Suggested Citation in APA Style (6th edition) Recktenwald, D. (2014). Interactional Practices in Let’s Play Videos (Master’s Thesis). Saarland University, Saarbrücken, Germany.
Table of Contents 1. Introduction
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2. Origin and Development of Let’s Plays
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3. Let’s plays and YouTube – Community meets distribution
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3.1 From Puppy to Juggernaut
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3.2 About the You in YouTube
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3.3 YouTube’s layout and features
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4. The Play in Let’s Plays
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4.1 play, games and the magic circle
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4.2 video games
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4.2.1 Skyrim and the Computer
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4.2.2 Skyrim as a High Fantasy Role Tale
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4.2.3 Skyrim the Role Playing Game
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4.2.4 Skyrim’s Game Design
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4.3 Summary – Skyrim the video game
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5. The Us in Let’s Plays
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6. A Frame Analysis of Let’s Play Videos
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6.1 Data and Transcription
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6.2 Let’s Player to Audience Interaction
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6.3 Meta Commentary by the Let’s Player
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6.4 Interactions with Non-Player Characters
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7. All frames considered References
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1. Introduction Let’s plays are a new and very popular internet phenomenon forming part YouTube’s and gamer culture. In these Let’s Play videos, the so-called Let’s Players engage with their audience and the game. In doing so, they interact in different participation frameworks. The following paper sets out to identify and describe the properties of those frames. Let’s Play videos are recordings of video games with live commentary, uploaded on YouTube for other viewers to watch for their enjoyment. This very basic definition does not encompass all of the features or different types of Let’s Plays. However, it is broad enough to cover almost all videos that are considered Let’s Plays and it provides an overview of its most important components. Metaphorically Let’s Plays are similar to onions; both consist of several interrelated complex layers.
Fig. 1: The Let’s Play Onion and its different layers
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Individual sections of this paper will explore and elaborate on the different layers. This is done for feasibility but also analytical purposes. A reductionist approach dissects the phenomenon into manageable parts. This common academic practice allows for a fine grained description and analysis of the individual parts and how they relate to each other. In their present form Let’s Plays are video recordings with live commentary but the format looked somewhat different in the past. Therefore, section 2 of the paper will be dedicated to the history and growth of Let’s Play videos. This growth in popularity is intimately linked with YouTube and its success. Section 3 will highlight the most important YouTube features from the aspects of content distribution and user interaction. The development of Let’s Plays and YouTube is essential but Let’s Plays are more than just videos. They are defined not just by their video character, but also the elements of play and the game itself. A deeper understanding of Let’s Plays requires knowledge of the games themselves. Section 4 will describe the issue and introduce concepts required for the analysis. The dissection of Let’s Plays from all these perspectives provides support for the analyses. In section 5 the paper will discuss Goffman’s participation framework and how it relates to the analytical tools used in the case study. The main body of the paper is section 6. In this section, the analysis will apply all these insights to carefully transcribed examples of Let’s Play videos. The analysis will peel the onion and propose a three-legged pattern of interaction between Let’s Player, game and YouTube audience. Section 7 summarizes the findings and highlights the main
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differences between the three frames. The section also discusses some remaining issues, points of criticism and potential future projects.
2. Origin, Growth and Economic Relevance of Let’s Plays Videos. In this section the paper presents the origins and rise in popularity of Let’s Play videos from their beginning as a type of screenshot diary uploaded on insider forums to their present form as one of the most popular types of videos on YouTube. It will briefly describe how Let’s Plays have changed and which features have remained the same and become conventionalized. Let’s Plays did not start out as edited high-quality videos on YouTube. Their genesis and rise to popularity is linked to the Something Awful Forums1. This forum was founded in 1999 and has been a place of nerd or geek humor ever since. Aside from Let's Plays, many other internet phenomena, such as Slender Man, have originated on this forum before spreading all over the web. On Something Awful, Let's Plays started out as forums threads. Beginning in 2006, players wrote about their gaming experience and provided screen shots of their progress. At the time this was called a screenshot Let's Play. Written text commented on screenshots. These texts were most likely drafted after the gaming session was already over and players remembered their emotions and impressions.
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http://forums.somethingawful.com/
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It was not until January 2007 that a user called Slowbeef uploaded the first Let's Play video2. His new Let’s Play videos became a template and its basic features are hallmarks of the genre to this day. Since then there was live commentary that accompanies the game footage. The change in format from screen shots to videos affected several features of Let’s Plays. Screenshots were replaced by film recordings of the game and written texts were replaced live commentary. Community-based websites stress the importance of the live commentary. Let’s Play Wikia, a popular web page with guides and tips for Let’s Plays, reads, “the commentary is what separates LPs from simple gameplay videos. If you don’t include commentary on your videos, then you aren’t making a Let’s Play, but rather a walkthrough or playthrough”3. It is worth pointing out that a written narrative drafted after a gaming session will almost certainly look very different from a transcript of live commentary. Thus the consequences of this change in format extend beyond a simple shift in modality from written to spoken; it also necessitates a complete change in the production of the commentary. This change is very likely to have an effect on both the form and the content of the commentary. Due to the popularity of Let’s Play videos, the Something Awful forums opened a specific section for them in 2007. Around the same time, similar videos and threads became increasingly common on internet forums.
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A reupload to YouTube can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KA1kIBwGhrk http://letsplay.wikia.com/wiki/LP_guide_for_newbies
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Using Google Trends as a metric we can visualize the growth in popularity of Let’s Plays over time as well as their regional distribution. Google search queries for the term “Let’s Play”
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Fig. 2: Retrieved from Google Trends April 17 2014 Comment on Method: Google Trends graphs the magnitude of search queries over time. This magnitude is expressed as a percent of the maximum number of search queries that occurred in a single month throughout the time frame. Thus the month with the highest number of searches is scored as 100%. Each line on the graph represents 20% increments. While this does not give absolute search numbers it shows the diachronic development of search queries. There are two points open to criticism. First, Google is not the only search engine available. Secondly, the number of search queries does not necessarily equate with the popularity of a term. However, Google is the by far most dominant search engine and although popularity and number of searches are not the same, they certainly correlate. Therefore, a growth in the number of searches for “Let’s Play” indicates a growth in popularity of Let’s Plays.
After periods of minimal to no growth from around 2006 to early 2007, there was a sharp increase at the end of 2008, which coincides with the introduction of high definition videos on YouTube4. Another spike is visible from August 2010 onwards. The graph reached its zenith in December 2012 and since then has maintained this level, given some seasonal fluctuations. Google Trends extrapolates only a moderate growth for 2015 and 2016 (not shown in Figure 2
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http://techcrunch.com/2008/12/05/did-youtube-just-turn-on-hd-for-real/
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above). This may indicate that the phenomenon of Let’s Plays has already peaked and may perhaps decline in the future. Google Trends can also show the regional distribution of search queries. Regional Distribution of Google Search queries for “Let’s Play”
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Fig. 2: Retrieved from Google Trends April 17 2014
It is no surprise that internet phenomena have a strong presence in the Anglosphere, but it might be surprising that Let’s Plays are most popular in the German speaking countries of Germany and Austria. This fact is even referenced by some Let’s Players in their videos. Gopher, the Let’s Player analyzed in this paper, mentioned his concerns regarding his German viewership, which sometimes suffers from GEMA’s censorship 5. There are many forums dedicated specifically to Let’s Plays such as Letsplaycentral.com, Letsplaysanctuary.net or the German speaking Letsplayforum.de. Looking at these websites reveals that Let’s Play forums are a dime a dozen with many of them having only hundreds or around a thousand 5
http://youtu.be/1s0gyQsaplw?t=47s
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registered accounts. Active users represent only a small fraction of these accounts. This is due to the strong tendency towards centralization, which occurred after the initial spread of Let’s Plays. Most high-profile Let’s Players migrate from the various external forums to YouTube as their main hub for content distribution and community interaction. Gopher’s channel has around 177,000 followers, which by far exceeds the number of registered users in most Let’s Play forums. As of Febuary 2014, the most prolific Let’s Player is PewDiePie with a following of over 26 million subscriptions. These numbers become important because of the internet’s economies of scale. Let’s players receive a small amount of the ad revenue their videos generate on YouTube. The most reliable estimates suggest that PewDiePie earns over $130,000 US a month or $1.6 million per year6. For some selected individuals, Lets Playing becomes a significant source of income. This income has also attracted the attention of major publishers. In 2013, Nintendo began claiming ownership of all Let’s Play videos that contain footage of their games, thus funneling the ad revenue to Nintendo and away from the Let’s Player7. This situation is the topic of interesting and heated legal debate about copyright and ownership of “derivative works” (i.e. forms media that are based on other media but amend or transform them)8. What is most important for the current paper is the fact that millions of people watch Let’s Play videos and communicate with the Let’s Players. For these viewers, watching Let’s Plays on YouTube is a new form of media 6 7
http://socialblade.com/youtube/user/pewdiepie http://www.joystiq.com/2013/05/16/nintendo-mass-claims-revenue-from-youtube-lets-play-videos/
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http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/MonaIbrahim/20131212/206912/Deconstructing_Lets_Play_Copyright_and_the_You Tube_Content_ID_Claim_System_A_Legal_Perspective.php
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consumption comparable to watching TV or reading books. The scope of the phenomenon, its new and interactive character as well as its legal and economic tail, makes it a subject worthy of academic investigation. Yet there is little to no description of the interactive patterns between Let’s Players and their audience in the growing body of academic literature on YouTube. YouTube’s success and growth is inseparably linked to Let’s Plays today. Moreover, the development and features of YouTube are essential for understanding the interactive patterns in Let’s Plays. Therefore, the next section will explain how YouTube started and changed.
3. Let’s Plays and YouTube – Community meets distribution As crude and colloquial as it might sound, YouTube is big. Section 3.1 quantifies just how big it is and how fast it is growing. This growth is related to YouTube’s specific character. Therefore, section 3.2 gives a short literary review about important previous research done on YouTube. It addresses the question of “what YouTube actually is.” Section 3.3 describes the most relevant features of YouTube’s layout and user interface. It is through this interface that users, uploaders, and viewers alike interact with one another as well as the website itself. The layout shapes aspects of the interactional patterns in Let’s Plays because it facilitates certain forms of communication while limiting others.
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3.1 From Puppy to Juggernaut YouTube’s very first video was only 18 seconds long and was uploaded in April 2005. Its shaky footage shows the founder of YouTube in the San Diego Zoo talking about the trunk size of elephants9. Since then YouTube has come a long way with regard to the content as well as the quality of its videos. At first YouTube videos were very limited in resolution and duration. Their initial 360p resolution was comparable to VHS tapes and videos could only run for a maximum of 5 minutes. At the time, these limitations existed because YouTube was a small startup and the cost of online storage space and bandwidth were much higher than today. In 2009, the maximal video quality was gradually increased to 720p and then 1080p (today’s standard for high definition). YouTube has also allowed users to upload longer videos, many of them between one or two hours and some extreme cases run a loop of 500 to 600 hours of footage. This bump in resolution and video length was absolutely necessary for Let’s Plays to rise in popularity. Most Let’s Play Videos are between 20 to 30 minutes long and showcase graphically advanced games that would be much less appealing on lower resolutions. In 2014, YouTube reached over one billion unique viewers every month. That is, one seventh of the world’s population visits the site at least once a month. Since 2010, it is the 3rd most frequented website only behind Facebook and Google according to ranking portal Alexa (2014). The amount of uploaded material per minute is also continually rising. In 2008, YouTube stated that 15 hours of video material were uploaded each minute. In 2010, this number rose 9
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNQXAC9IVRw
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to 48 hours (see Frobenius 2014: 28). In 2014, YouTube reached 100 hours of material uploaded every minute, again more than doubling its growth10. Although YouTube’s technical advancements were very important, they are not the only explanation for the rise in popularity. Other online video services, such as Vimeo or MyVideo, also allow the upload of HD videos. Yet they are much less successful. YouTube is more than a site to upload and watch videos. It is a social hub that fulfills a variety of functions for its user. The next section explores these social characteristics of YouTube.
3.2 The You in YouTube Burges and Green (2009) describe four perspectives from which YouTube has been looked at. It can be seen as an online video distribution platform, a repository of weird videos, a cultural archive or a social network. According to YouTube’s own documentary The Making of YouTube, the founders realized that improvements in digital cameras and video capturing software allowed users to record footage faster and easier. However there were very few possibilities to distribute your recording11. Therefore, YouTube’s slogan broadcast yourself is more than just a catchy phrase. YouTube literally enables its registered users to broadcast themselves on its website. YouTube provides virtually no content of its own and limits its role to be a central hub for user generated videos. This distinguishes YouTube from traditional forms of media such as radio stations, TV channels or newspapers. Its decentralized and userdriven nature is considered one of the hallmarks of the so called Web 2.0 as 10 11
https://www.youtube.com/yt/press/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2N_V2dfS1U
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described by O’Reilly (2005). Web 2.0 websites, such as YouTube, Facebook or Twitter, are services that allow users to connect, interact and collaborate. In her literary review, Frobenius (2014: 29) states that YouTube has been described as a social network and community by a large group of scholars. The term community is also used by YouTuber users for self-reference. Burgess and Green (2009: 57) even argue that the users should be seen as participants instead of passive consumers. Looking at these participants, several researchers showed that the community of YouTube is organized very heterogeneously. Quantitative analysis by Santos et al. (2007) examined the different groups and connections among users. Measuring subscriptions and YouTube friending, they identified the clustering of people into several specific groups. Each group shares an interest in specific video topics, such as anime music videos, Vlogs or prank videos. Similarly, Paolillo (2008) stated that the YouTube community shows a high degree of diversity but also “semantic coherence.” It seems that grouping on YouTube is not centered on socioeconomic factors such as age, income, or race but rather preferences for certain types of videos. These findings suggest that it is important to move away from the concept of a single YouTube community. Traditionally communities are defined by the membership of some people and exclusion of others. This in- or exclusion is based on a feature or behavior of a person (Gee 2005: 216). This becomes problematic in the context of the heterogeneous YouTube community. If interests as well as background are so diverse, how can we talk about one community, i.e. a single unified community? Incorporating the notion of sub-
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communities also introduces the problem of determining where to draw the boundaries between them. Another issue is the question of core members, marginal members and non-members. It is rather easy to recognize core members of communities but it is difficult to distinguish a marginal member from a non-member (Gee 2005: 216). Should a grandmother that is shown a YouTube video once a month by her grandson be considered a member of the YouTube community? To avoid these and similar problems I follow an alternative to the concept of community. Gee (2005: 216) introduced the notion of affinity spaces. These spaces can be real spaces, such as schools or churches, as well as digital spaces. In such spaces, affiliation is established through a common and shared activity and not based on an inherent property of its visitors. I believe that this concept provides a better tool to understand YouTube and its sometimes loose and varied forms of association. Based on my understanding and personal experience, YouTube today is “a site of participatory culture” (Burgess and Green 2009: 11) and thus qualifies as an affinity space but not necessarily a community. You do not share a bond with other YouTube viewers that are unknown to you. Nevertheless, YouTube’s website serves to facilitate the interaction between visitors of the website and content creators with its simple yet feature rich layout.
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3.3 YouTube’s layout and features Frobenius (2014: 24) writes concise and elegantly: “YouTube’s architecture firmly situates it as a Web 2.0 network: anyone with access to high speed internet can upload and view content free of charge; video content is selected, titled, described and tagged by the uploader; video content is searched, watched, rated, recommended (‘shared’) and commented by the viewer, the embedding function allows video content to be incorporated into other online spaces”
This structure made YouTube very appealing to all kinds of amateur video creators and among them Let’s Players. Free of charge means there is no entry barrier and the upload does not even require any specific software. Any modern web browser will suffice and YouTube will automatically convert almost any video format. Low resolution videos will be turned into .flv files and HD videos into .mp4. The aforementioned tagging, titling and search options become increasingly elaborate as users agree upon search phrases and tag options. There is a user driven form of standardization based on “shared and emergent social structures and behaviors, as well as related conceptual and linguistic structures” (Marlow et al. 2006). Moreover, YouTube has improved their search options. You can now search for videos, channels as well as playlists, movies and shows that contain your desired search phrase.
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Channels, Playlists and Videos
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Fig. 3: Retrieved from YouTube April 18 2014
Figure 3 provides an example of the different types of entries and the information provided in YouTube search results. The first search result is a channel called LetsPlay. Displayed is the total number of videos uploaded to that channel and the last time it was “Active”. Active means the last upload of a new video. Interestingly, this information is always relative to the time of the search. For example, it states “1 day ago” instead of April 17th. The search result also includes a short preview of the channel description. Lastly, there is the total number of subscribers alongside a link, which allows users to immediately subscribe to the channel. The second search result is a playlist. Included in its information is the name of the playlist, its uploader and the number of videos in the playlist. Missing from playlists is the information about the last upload and any form of description. The third and final search result is
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an individual video. Similarly, these results show the title, its uploader, upload date, total view count and video description. Each search result is accompanied by a still image, which is often but not necessarily a screenshot taken from the video12. Clicking on the image will open the video, playlist or channel page. Channel pages are small hubs in the otherwise decentralized structure of YouTube. Their layout is standardized but offers designated slots for minor customization (Burges & Green 2009: 64). In their core design, YouTube channel pages are very similar to Facebook and Google+ Profile pages. Gopher’s Channel Page
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Fig. 4: Retrieved from YouTube April 18 2014
For all three websites, the most salient features are the profile picture and the banner. The profile picture, here a Viking helmet on a black shield, is spatially embedded into the banner. Arguably profile pictures and banners on
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To attract more views it is a common practice to use pictures of beatiful women, that are otherwise unrelated to the video.
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YouTube fulfill similar functions as they do on other social networks. In their study on Facebook, Zhao, Grasmuck, and Martin (2008) showed that pictures and banners are an integral part of identity construction in a mediated environment. Profile pictures and banners allow users to display versions of themselves. For viewers that are familiar with videogames, Gopher uses his profile picture and banner to position himself as a fan of Skyrim (Dragon) and Fallout (man in hazard suit). He also utilizes the banner to brand his channel as “Gopher’s Vids”. On the bottom right corner of the banner users can also provide links to their external homepage and profiles of other social networks such as Google+, Twitter and Facebook. The links are represented in form of the well-known icons of these websites. Right below these icons is the YouTube “Subscribe” button. From a functional perspective, subscribing is almost identical to following on Twitter or liking a profile on Facebook. If a channel uploads a video, it will appear in a video feed called “My Subscriptions”. Burges and Green (2009: 37) call features like this the institutional function of YouTube. YouTube coordinates between many individuals and allows them to interact with one another. Uploaders know that their video will be visible to their viewers and viewers have a convenient list of all their subscriptions. Further features on the channel page are included under the headers “Discussions” and “Featured Channels”. The discussions section is analogous to the comment section of the profile page (e.g. the so called “wall” of Facebook). On YouTube, however, the discussion section is not very popular. Often a single video by an uploader can have more comments than the whole
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discussion section on his or her channel page. For example, Gopher’s discussion page currently has 1,080 comments, whereas his most popular video has over 7,700. On the far right side of the channel page is a list of “Featured Channels”. This list is created by the channel owner and contains his or her suggestions of noteworthy channels. These suggestions often show a great deal of semantic coherence (Paolillo: 2008). That is, users often promote and interact with channels or videos that are similar to their own. Gopher’s featured channels are all related to Let’s Plays of Skyrim (e.g. ShoddyCast) or Skyrim modding (e.g. Brodual, SaoTV). The most prominent sites of interaction on YouTube are the comment threads for individual videos. These threads are located on the webpage for each video. This might be of little surprise since videos are at the very core of the functionality of YouTube. Every user who is registered with a YouTube, Gmail or Android account can post comments. The layout of the video page has changed almost every year between 2005 and 2012. The screenshot on the next page shows the structure of the current iteration in 2014
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Video Page and Comments
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Fig. 5: Retrieved from YouTube April 18 2014
At the top of the video page is the actual video, which is played within the flash player of YouTube. The player has some very basic functions such as a toggle for play / pause, volume controls, a settings cog for video quality and a button for “Large Player” or full screen display. Underneath the flash player, YouTube again provides information about the uploader and the video. Notable
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new pieces of information are the number of likes and dislikes, indicated by a thumb up or thumb down symbol. The thumbs up and thumbs down system replaced the older 1 to 5 star system in March 2010, because YouTube realized that people only used the extreme scores to express their liking or disliking of a video13. The 2 to 4 Star rating was rarely used14. As for the comment system, the most striking property is perhaps the arrangement of the posts. In the western tradition, texts are written and read from left to right. New sentences and information are added at the bottom until you reach the end of the page. The second page is located at the right of the first page. If you reach the bottom right corner of the second page you flip the paper and repeat the reading process from the top left of the next page. In the digital context of YouTube, however, reading and writing comments works differently. YouTube offers two forms of organization. As seen in Figure 5, a drop down menu allows users to select between a “Top Comments” or “New Comments” organization. Originally, the “New Comment” organization was the default. This organization adds a new comment on top of older comments and the remaining comments move downwards. As a result, comments are arranged in reverse chronological order with the most recent comment being at the very top. Similar to videos, comments can be rated via the thumbs up or down buttons. Replies to comments are also possible. They are shown indented under the post they are in response to (see Figure 5). The newer organization system is called “Top Comments”. This organization was introduced in November 2013 when the YouTube comment system was integrated with the 13 14
http://youtube-global.blogspot.de/2010_03_01_archive.html http://youtube-global.blogspot.de/2009/09/five-stars-dominate-ratings.html
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social network Google+15. It orders comments based on their thumbs up rating and the number of replies they received. YouTube stated that their motivation for the new system was to turn ”comments into conversations that matter to you”. Jones and Schieffelin (2009) characterize the interaction between commenters in the old system minimal. Looking through comment section of videos, the authors noticed that many comments had similar content and that commenters rarely replied to one another. This can be seen as another argument that YouTube is not a traditional community but rather an affinity space of people with similar interest. People care little about the opinions and interests of others. Jones and Schieffelin (2009) negatively judged this repetition as redundancy. Arguably this repetition is a result of the spatial arrangement of comments and their sheer abundance. Checking for a specific question among several thousands of comments requires more effort than adding your own question at the very top. Therefore, the repetition becomes self-perpetuating. Nonetheless, I would argue that repetition is only redundant if it does not add anything or if it has no function. An additional post, be it supportive or derogatory, will have a function for the individual poster as well as the uploader. The individual poster positions him or herself with regard to the video and the uploader will see the repetitions as intensifiers of the positions expressed. If one person comments negatively on a video, he or she might be a hater or flaming. If there are several thousand derogatory comments the issue might be with the video material itself rather than the individual commenter. Such features of
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http://youtubecreator.blogspot.sg/2013/11/turning-comments-into-conversations.html
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these comments, which fall outside of the acceptable behavior in face-to-face discourse, have been noticed by many scholars and the public alike (Moor et al. 2010, Burges & Green 2009: 95). Widespread and popular opinion attributes these harsh forms of discourse to online anonymity. People create accounts under an alias and post offensive content without fear of potential backlash. However, anonymity cannot be the only explanation, since there is an increasing amount of offensive commentary from users who post with their real name16. Therefore it seems that hostile comments might be part of the “communicative character” of YouTube and other online environments (see Frobenius 2014: 34). Such comments become the new norm and are no longer considered transgressive. The communicative character of YouTube is constantly changing. In the past, video responses used to be a common practice and they were prominently featured on the YouTube layout in 2010. Essentially, users recorded themselves and stated their opinion about a video. This recording could then be linked as a response and was visible on the website of the original video. Such responses were particularly widespread among Vloggers up until 2011 (Frobenius 2014: 27). Today the feature is less salient on the website and seems less common. This example and the others described above illustrate how changes to the YouTube layout lead to changes in the ways in which users interact. Tolson (2010: 285) described YouTube as “a network where clips of media professionals, non-professionals and celebrities are interlinked without 16
The integration of YouTube comments into Google+ in 2013 made it possible for users to post with their Android or Gmail account. For these accounts people often use their real names.
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an institutionally pre-imposed hierarchy.” 4 years later this seems less to be the case. YouTube becomes more and more structured and as such hierarchies develop over time. YouTube uploaders can group videos into playlists on their channel page and viewers can combine channels into so called collections. This means there is a hierarchical grouping from video → playlist → channel → collection. Moreover, The Google+ integration of the comment system and highlighting of top comments centralize interactions, which have been previously spread across several videos. Highlighting one post always marginalizes another. This trend towards centralization increases order and YouTube’s usability (Burges & Green 2009: 64). Usability is the ease with which even unfamiliar users can work with YouTube as well as its flexibility for new phenomena. As new types of videos emerge uploaders can tag, i.e. categorize, their video accordingly and potential viewers will easily find them. Each iteration of YouTube’s layout becomes more accessible and usable. By bringing together Let’s Play uploaders and viewers, YouTube has become the most important affinity space for Let’s Plays. Many of YouTube’s features such as the tagging and playlists make it easy for uploaders and viewers to find each other quickly and effortlessly. Furthermore, YouTube’s evolving comment system helps to facilitate conversations between these two groups. When looking at the analysis of the data, it will be essential to keep in mind the effect of such advantages and limitations of YouTube on Let’s Plays.
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4. The Play in Let’s Play Let’s Plays are more than just videos. The play element of the game is equally important. To understand Let’s Plays you need to know games in general and the specific game of the Let’s Play. Games are a very broad subject that has been investigated from a variety of perspectives. Section 4.1 gives a basic introduction to the concepts of play and games. The features described there are true for all forms of games and also apply to video games. Video games and their specific properties are the topic of section 4.2, which will introduce Zagal’s (2009) game literacy and use it as a guideline. Subsections 4.2.1 through 4.2.4 apply Zegal’s four dimensions to explain the important aspects of Skyrim.
4.1 play, games and the magic circle In general, play can be used to describe a wide range of activities. Due to this variety there is no clear definition for it. Two foundational works of the study of play and games (later called Ludology) were Homo Ludens (Huizinga 1938) and Games and Men (Caillois 1958). Both scholars attempted to create a first proper description of how people play and what the features of games are. Huizinga points out five characteristics of play. First, play is free and the participants engage in it out of free will. Second, play is not part of the normal or ordinary life. Third, it is separated from our normal life in both time and place. Fourth, play demands order and rules. Fifth, play is not connected with material interest. These five points clearly define Huzinga’s concept of play. It is a voluntary (1) but rule-governed activity (4) that is very distinct from work (2, 3, 5). This conceptualization has led to the dominant view of a dichotomy between
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productive work and joyful play, which has remained influential ever since. Building upon this dichotomy, Caillois coined the term magic circle. Play occurs in a magic circle and is strictly separated from daily life. When we play we enter the magic circle and the rules of play start to apply. In recent years, there has been some debate over the boundaries between play and daily life (Pearce 2006). Still, the magic circle has remained a powerful metaphor to describe and understand play. Caillois also distinguishes three types of games: competitive games, games of chance and role play. For him these categories were mutually exclusive. However, many traditional as well as modern games combine competitive and probabilistic elements. Most card games fall under this category. The rule-governed nature and competitive character of games also introduce another element – strategy. Rules limit the number of possible outcomes and define victory conditions. Players have to develop strategies to win according to a game’s rules. Players take great pleasure in a victory that arises from a superior strategy Aside from rules, many games also use tools. Soccer is played with a soccer ball and a card board game requires a board, some tokens and a dice. To date, the most sophisticated and advanced tools for gaming are personal computers. Their processing power and displays allowed for a new type of game – the video game.
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4.2 video games Video games17 have been met with an incredible amount of skepticism and criticism. While “normal” play has been realized as an important component of child development, computer games are still seen as a waste of time by the majority of parents (Pearce 2006: 17). As a leisure activity they supposedly do not create anything of value. The most concerned voices even argue that computer games threaten the moral compass of young and impressionable adolescents (Corliss 2011: 7). Adolescents are portrayed as naive consumers that internalize virtual violence on screen and potentially re-enact it in real life situations. This presumes a direct one-to-one relationship between media input and its effect on behavior. Surprisingly absent from this debate is the brutal and realistic depiction of violence of other media, for example daily news broadcasts. There the portrayal of atrocities, suicides and other forms of real violence is not assumed to have a direct and negative effect on people. The negative image of video games is closely related to a lack of understanding about what they are. Many parents and decision makers in politics and media have no game literacy. The concept of game literacy was developed as an analogy to text literacy. Traditionally, the term literacy has been used synonymously with alphabetization, describing the ability to read or write. For the last 30 years, the meaning of literacy evolved and also has been applied to other media such as television literacy (Buckingham 1993), emergent literacies (Spencer 1986) and computer literacy (Hoffman & Blake 2003). Gee (2003)
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I will use terms such as video game, computer game, pc game and digital game synonymously. However, not all video games are played on personal computers anymore. There is also mobile gaming on handhelds (Nintendo DS) or smartphones as well as gaming consoles such as the PlayStation or Xbox.
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defines literacy as the ability to decode, understand and produce meanings with respect to a semiotic domain. Being able to read and write is only part of being literate. You also need to be able to understand the meaning of texts and how to create meanings. Analogously, game literacy implies that “games can be analyzed in terms of a kind of language – that they make meanings in ways that are similar, at least in some respects, to written language” (Buckingham & Burn, 2007: 325). Similar to Gee’s position on literacy, Zagal (2009: 3) defines game literacy as: having the ability to explain, discuss, describe, frame, situate, interpret, and/or position games: 1. in the context of human culture (games as a cultural artifacts), 2. in the context of other games (comparing games to other games, genres), 3. in the context of the technological platform, on which they are executed, 4. and by deconstructing them and understanding their components, how they interact, and how they facilitate certain experiences in players.
He argues that understanding games is very complex and covers seven skills across four interconnected domains. Therefore, game literacy for Skyrim requires knowledge in these four domains. The following subsections explore each of the four domains for Skyrim.
4.2.1 Skyrim and the Computer As a computer game, Skyrim has to be understood in the context of the personal computer18. This leads to two important implications: Computer games
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Skyrim was also released for the XboX 360 and PS3. For the most part, this only affects the way users control the game. PCs are controlled via mouse and keyboard, whereas consoles use proprietary controllers.
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are enabled and limited by the computer platform and they are a commercial product. First, Computer games have distinct modes of production, consumption and distribution (Miller 2006: 6). They are the fastest growing entertainment industry (Raessens 2006: 53). They are produced to be sold. High profile games are developed by large studios with several hundred employees. Sometimes their budget can dwarf Hollywood films. Star Wars the Old Republic was reported to cost more than $200 million in development (Los Angeles Times 2012). It is a collaborative effort with very specialized roles ranging from story writer to level designer. Skyrim involved a team of over 100 developers19. Publishers then advertise the games on television, in magazines and on the internet. The finished games can be bought in retail stores or via digital distribution (i.e. online shops such as Valve’s Steam or EA’s Origin). Games are digital goods and have almost no cost outside of their initial development. Producing additional copies of a game is very easy. It only requires producing burning and shipping more DVD’s. Therefore, games can generate huge profits thanks to economies of scale. Since its release in November 2011, 20 million copies of Skyrim have been sold (Time Magazine 2014). As one of the bestselling computer games of all times, it generated revenue of almost one billion dollars. Considering these initial investments and potential revenues, Miller (2006: 7) suggests taking an even closer look at the economics of video gaming in game studies. The business side might influence games just as much as the evolution of technology. 19
http://www.elderscrolls.com/community/welcome-back-elder-scrolls
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Second, “video games are implemented on technological platforms that shape the form and functionalities and experiences they can offer” (Zagal 2009: 8). Computers allow but also limit certain actions. Even state of the art computers have a limit to their storage space, processing power, display size, screen resolution and input methods. Zagal (2009: 8) gives the example of the stripecolored sprites graphics of the old Atari 2600. Today’s computers are more sophisticated. However, it is worth pointing out that the graphical representation of Skyrim’s dragons or castles are between 15 to 30 inches. Digital representations can never break out of their platform’s limitation (e.g. screen size). Another limitation that is often overlooked is the controls. Players give input to the game via mouse and keyboard. These inputs translate into actions in games. For the most part these translations are standardized. Moving your mouse forward will result in an upward movement of the avatar’s head. Moving the mouse backwards will make your character look down. This is the standard for most three dimensional games. However, real people can move their eyes as well as their head. It is possible to gaze in one direction and tilt your head in another. This is impossible in video games. Compared to the Xbox 360 and PS3 platforms, the PC provides additional possibilities for Skyrim that the other two do not. When played on the PC, Skyrim is mod-able. Players can create game modifications called Mods, which other users can download and install. These modifications give users the ability to generate, or at least customize, their own gameplay experiences (Corliss 2011: 8). Kücklich (2005) pointed out that many mods boost the value
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of particular video games. They can contribute to product branding, extend the shelf life of games and increase customer loyalty. Players continue to purchase and play games for longer when the games are sustained by a prolific mod community, which is constantly generating new content. This is particularly true for Skyrim. Even two and a half years after its initial release, there are still two major websites dedicated to user modifications. On both, Skyrim Nexus20 as well as the Skyrim’s Steam Workshop21 players can find new levels, graphical overhauls and many other modifications that modernize and innovate the game so it stays appealing. Gopher himself is a very dedicated modder. He has published four very popular mods designed to enhance the realism of the game. He is well known for this and often refers to his and other game modifications during his Let’s Play sessions.
4.2.2 Skyrim as a High Fantasy Role Tale When Zagal describes games as cultural artefacts, he means that they are part of human culture and deeply embedded in other cultural phenomena. Games often share thematic and aesthetic qualities of broader media genre, for example science fiction or fantasy, and the present values and viewpoints of certain cultures and societies (Zagal 2009: 4). Skyrim is the fifth part of the Elder scrolls game series. The game world is an independent product sprung from the creative minds of Bethesda Studio.
20 21
http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/? http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/browse/?appid=72850
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Nevertheless these games “borrow” from the cultural inventory of western history, philosophy and high fantasy tradition. As such they are interdiscursive (Fairclough 2003). High Fantasy is a well-established genre of fiction. High Fantasy is “set in a secondary world […] as opposed to Low Fantasy which contains supernatural intrusions into the real world (Wolfe 1986: 52)”. As Sullivan (1996: 302) notes these secondary worlds are not totally fantastic. Their elements have to be recognized so that readers, viewers or players can make sense of them. In Skyrim the secondary world is Nirn. It is an earthlike planet with a large central continent called Tamriel. Map of Tamriel
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Fig. 6: Retrieved from Elderscrolls Wiki April 24 2014
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Tamriel consists of several provinces and Skyrim is the most northern. Its landscape features tundra plains, boreal forest and arctic desserts in the north. Geographical north and cold climate are linked, which is very similar to the situation in Northern Europe. The native inhabitants of Skyrim are called Nords. Their tall, blond, pale but also rugged appearance makes them similar to today’s stereotypical image of Vikings. Characters carry anglicized versions of Nordic names such as Bjorn (Björn) or Hakon (Håkon). Their pantheon, Sovngarde, resembles Asgard from the Norse mythology in name and form. In the pantheon, the bravest warriors, who died during battle, are allowed to feast with the gods for all eternity. Politically Skyrim is ruled by the Military Governor sent by the Empire. Nords and Imperials
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Fig. 7: Retrieved Ingame April 24 2014
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Figure 7 shows a Nord on the left and an Imperial on the right. The clans of the Nords are engaged in a war of secession from the Empire. Their conflict has ethnic, political and religious dimensions. The Empire suppresses the Nord’s pagan worship. The appearance of the Empire’s troops is themed after the Roman Empire. Generally the political situation in Skyrim seems to be inspired in parts by Roman Britain, which was a province from 43 to 409 AD. Technology in Skyrim reflects an early medieval setting. Different kinds of leather, chain vests and shields are the available armor and the weaponry includes swords, daggers, axes, bows and crossbows. Any form of gun powder is notably absent. Villagers live inside fortified holds with a central castle. All of this makes Skyrim a believable place, alluding to the western stereotype of the early Middle Ages. This believable setting is enriched by staples of High Fantasy. There are a variety of supernatural phenomena such as magicians, vampires, werewolves and daemons. Dégh (1979: 63), in defining the German genre Märchen, mentions several other features of High Fantasy: -
It is an adventure story centered on a single hero
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The hero’s career starts like everyone else’s
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He encounters a sudden involvement or challenge by the supernatural
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He faces evil powers and performs impossible tasks
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He grows and matures
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He defeats and punishes the evil and rewards the good
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These same features can be seen in Skyrim, where the player takes control of a character who: -
Starts as a prisoner on a carriage heading toward his execution, which is interrupted by the arrival of a dragon
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Takes on several quests, up to a final battle against the dragon in heaven
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Defeats the dragon, ends the civil war and restores peace across the land
The game clearly follows High Fantasy story conventions set in the Arthurian tradition (Sullivan 1996: 303). One could argue that it is a very generic tale tailored to appeal to a very broad audience. The themes and actions are known and recognizable by all potential players. Striking similarities between games and other media lead Murray (1996) to the conclusion that games are new forms of narrative that should be analyzed as such. Digital media and poststructuralist theory teach us that it is impossible to create and study the new without drawing at times on forms and processes taken from what is already around us (Jenkins 2004: 118)
Therefore the proper analytical tools should be adaptions of traditional narrative theory. While not all games tell stories nor can all player experiences be reduced to the experience the story, most games have “narrative aspirations” (Jenkins 2004: 118). They tell stories in different ways than other media can. The experience of the player cannot be reduced to the experience of the story. Games incorporate narrative elements locally (Jenkins 2004: 118ff.). Popular examples are so called cut scenes, which are usually included between
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segments of gameplay and are used to progress the story. Cut scenes are cinematic clips where the player does not have any control over the action on the screen. Looking at games from a narrative perspective requires moving away from the classical notion of linear storytelling. Jenkins (2004), in his review of narrative approaches to games, describes alternative methods of interpreting storytelling. Some of these insights will be valuable when examining Skyrim. Games can be considered spatial stories. Game designers do not tell a story, but rather construct a story world. In Skyrim this world is very coherent. It draws from several well established themes (e.g. civil war), discourses (e.g. folk tales of heroes and dragons) and historical similarities (e.g. Empire and Romans). These elements are then packed into an authentic and fitting landscape. A look at Whiterun
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Fig. 8: Retrieved Ingame April 24 2014
Figure 8 is a screenshot of the Valley of Whiterun. It is authentic because it looks like a mountain range in Northern Europe and its buildings and roads are appropriate for the medieval setting. In virtual worlds, the player is experiencing
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an emergent narrative. “Emergent narratives are not prestructured or preprogrammed, taking shape through the game play, yet they are not as unstructured, chaotic, and frustrating as life itself” (Jenkins 2004: 122). In Skyrim, players can define their own goals and write their own stories. The region Skyrim is open for exploration. Players choose which path they take and thereby progresse through an emerging narrative. Undoubtedly, different narrative approaches to games provide valuable insights for Skyrim. In general terms they make it possible to analyze the setting in which the gameplay is situated. Skyrim is an emergent High Fantasy tale in the medieval high fantasy world of Skyrim. However, narrativists tend to ignore the ludic / play element of games. Great stories do not automatically make great games. It is the gameplay that also makes games so appealing.
4.2.3 Skyrim the Role Playing Game Following Zagal’s dimensions of Game Literacy it is crucial to examine Skyrim in context of other games and genres (Zagal 2009: 3). Skyrim’s gameplay and design follow many Role Playing Game (RPG) conventions. When a game is described as a RPG, players have expectations about how the game will look and feel. This subsection of the paper explores some of the core features of role playing games. In role playing games, the player usually controls a hero in a fictional world. These fictional worlds can have different settings from Cyberpunk (Deus Ex) to Dystopian Futures (Fallout) or classical High Fantasy. In Skyrim the player enjoys considerable freedom to explore the world as he pleases. He or she can walk around, talk to Non-Player Characters
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(NPC), gather herbs or mine ore. There is no certain timetable that constricts his or her actions. Structure is given by quests, which are self-contained tasks. Often they are given by a NPC and follow some variation of; go to X → slay or collect Y → return to NPC → receive your reward (Rollings & Adams 2003). Quests can be chained together and make up the main storyline. In Skyrim, the main storyline consists of the hero ending the civil war and defending the land form an invasion of hostile dragons. Individual quests reward players with items such as weapons or armor, experience points and magic abilities. On the one hand, these rewards are a motivation for the player because his or her character becomes stronger. On the other hand, the rewards are also required for the increasingly difficult tasks ahead. This phenomenon of an ever-improving hero is called character progression and it is present in most role playing games. Many RPGs have a class system which features prototypes of heroes such as mages, thieves or knights. These prototypes then use specific weaponry, for example knights will wield swords and shields whereas mages use wands. Skyrim is exceptional in the openness of its character progression. The player is not pre-determined to build a specific type of hero. If desired, he or she can become a plate and shield wearing wizard and still solve all quests. This is because of Skyrim’s very open combat system. Genre conventions such as character progression, quests and items are not the only dimensions that define game play. Of equal importance is the game design.
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4.2.4 Skyrim’s Game Design So far Skyrim has been examined based on its High Fantasy setting and background in the RPG genre. However, this ignores the actual gameplay itself and how it looks on the computer screen. The last domain of Game Literacy is the ability to deconstruct and understand a game’s components, how these components interact and how they facilitate certain experiences for players. Elverdam & Aarseth’s (2007: 3) argue that genre-based descriptions of games often fall short in some aspects. They have developed a typology of games that focuses on game play. Their model consists of eight categories divided into 17 different types that describe how the player interacts with the game. The current paper will use a subset of their model and its categories as a guideline to describe the gameplay in Skyrim. 1) Virtual space describes the spatial configuration of the game’s perspective and positioning. The player’s perspective in Skyrim is vagrant, i.e. you cannot see the whole game area. Instead you look through the eyes of your avatar. Your field of vision is similar to that of humans. Your avatar’s position in the virtual world is relative because you can move around freely. An enemy that was in front of you earlier might sneak up on you from behind. The perspective and positioning gives the impression that you, through your avatar, are truly part of the world in Skyrim. 2) External Time describes relationship of the game time to the outside world. For example, World of Warcraft has a fixed day and night cycle of 24 hours that matches the day and night cycle of real world. In contrast, Skyrim’s game time
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is arbitrary since there is no connection to the real world. The game time is also infinite. Skyrim is not played in rounds or levels that create an artificial time limit. Players can play for days without taking a break. 3) Internal time describes how outside influences affect game time. This is best understood together with the concept of haste. If haste is present, the passing of time in the real world will affect the game state. This is often the case in online games, where certain events will start or end on weekends. In Skyrim, however, haste is absent. There is no real world time table that influences the game. Moreover, the player has interval control. At any given moment the player can pause or resume play. 4) Game state contains the criteria mutability and savability. Mutability asks if changes to the players avatar are temporary or permanent. Savability is concerned with saving and reloading a game. As described in section 4.2.3, character progression in Skyrim is permanent. Over time avatars become stronger and abilities that they have learned will not be lost. The game can also be saved at any given moment. 5) Player composition in Skyrim is simple. It is a single player game and the player takes over control of one character, his avatar, for the entirety of the game. 6) Struggle is an aspect of competition. Is the player competing against other agents, i.e. people, or “against” the game? Is there variation in the tasks given to a player or will tasks be identical each time he or she plays through the
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game? In Skyrim, the campaign and story do not vary. There are elements of choice but each playthrough will have a similar story. This configuration of features found in Skyrim is characteristic of many single player games. It allows the individual player to set their own pace, playing for however long they want. For a Let’s Player it also means that he or she can record at any time that fits his or her schedule.
4.3 Summary – Skyrim the video game Section 4 showed the most important game related aspects of Skyrim that are relevant to Let’s Plays. It introduced Zagal’s (2009) concept of game literacy and reported on Skyrim’s nature as a computer game, its High Fantasy story and RPG conventions as well as its game design. This will ground the reader, allowing him or her to recognize the game element when Let’s Plays are analyzed in Section 6.
5. The Us in Let’s Plays The previous sections established that Let’s Plays are a very popular type of YouTube video and that understanding them requires knowledge of the properties of YouTube, gaming in general and Skyrim in particular. It did not address a very fundamental question: why do people watch Let’s Plays if they could play the game themselves? There is likely no single answer and different viewers will have different motivations. For instance, some may not have a
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powerful enough computer or are unable to afford the video game. Others might prefer watching a game and the unfolding of its narrative without the stress of playing. It is easier to watch someone else do a hard task than to do it yourself. However, it is unlikely that these are the primary reasons. Returning to Lets Play Wikia provides an alternative explanation. “The commentary is what separates LPs [Let’s Plays] from simple gameplay videos”. Commentary is a further distinction between watching Let’s Plays and playing yourself. This commentary adds additional value to the simple gameplay videos and it is an important factor in the appeal of Let’s Plays. The commentary is a source of entertainment and enjoyment. It seems obvious that the commentary is not random or arbitrary. It is central to the social dimension of Let’s Play videos because it establishes relationships between Let’s Players and their audience as well as between Let’s Player and the game. To describe these relationships, I will use the concept of frames. Frames and frame analysis is rooted in the work of Bateson (1972) and Goffman (1974). Frames are “definitions of a situation [...] built up in accordance with principles of organization which govern events […] and our subjective involvement in them.” This vague and abstract definition has been the subject of much debate. It has been attributed to the Interactionist as well as the Structuralist traditions (Gonos 1977). Structuralists propose a top down understanding of frames. Frames are a set of rules and expectations that influence behavior and our ability to make sense of a situation (Gonos 1977: 857). Interactionists, however, propose a bottom up understanding of frames that “remain[s] true to the human experience at close range” (Gonos 1977:
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856). Interactionists believe that “an adequate social science […] is committed to study social interactions as a process” (Denzin & Keller 1981: 52). Meaning is to be found in the interaction itself. This meaning can be accessed and described by studying the interaction and interpretation individuals bring to and construct during interactional episodes (Denzin & Keller 1981: 53). The term interactional episode, also known as situation or event (Goodwin 1992), conveys that interactions are formed by distinct instantiations. These distinct instantiations form the micro level of interaction. Interactional episodes can be observed and described empirically (Gonos 1977: 857), whereas frames have to be deducted based on the properties of the situations. Both the bottom up and top down traditions have advantages and disadvantages. The bottom up interactionist position, however, is more powerful in explaining the development of frames in Let’s Plays. It is unreasonable to assume that a very new social phenomenon, such as Let’s Plays, emerged with a fixed set of rules or structures. Especially considering that conventions on the internet are rarely fossilized and continually changing (see sections 2 and 3.3). Individual Let’s Players do not follow pre-defined rules, instead they develop reoccurring practices that frame social actions and their interpretation. From the interactionist perspective, the commentary by the Let’s Player is the entry point for studying the social interaction. Commentary is natural language and as such is open to linguistic analysis. Discourse Analysis is an umbrella term for a branch of linguistics. It describes several approaches that study social interaction in and through conversational interaction. Most notably there are two important schools within Discourse Analysis. The first is
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Conversational Analysis, which is based on the work of Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson (1974). The second is Interactional Sociolinguistics, which is rooted in the works of Schiffrin (1980), Hymes (1974) and Gumperz (1982). For both schools, “the joint act is the unit of analysis and the way joint acts are assembled, put together, constructed and built upon” (Bulmer 1969). There are significant differences, however, on how each school approaches and understands this joint act. As Schiffrin (1994: 23) notes, Conversational Analysis is a structuralist approach in so far as it has a “focus on the way different units function in relation to each other.” Meaning is the result of the assemblage of utterances. Its main methodological tool is the sequential analysis of turn-taking, whereby a turn at talk contains information both about the previous turn, was well as about how the next turn could be constructed (Frobenius 2014: 15).
The approach argues that all meaning can be derived from the order and content of turns. Every utterance has a clear and easily graspable local meaning within the interaction. Conversation Analysis’s strength is that it developed terminology, such as adjacency pairs, to make sense of locally and temporally sequentially constructed interactions. However, it has been criticized for ignoring contexts. The same utterance or turns can have very different meanings in a given setting. Interactional Sociolinguistics positions itself as an alternative to Conversation Analysis. Instead of following a structuralist thinking, it suggests that language use should be seen as signaling background knowledge and cultural understanding (Schiffrin 1994:105). Interactional Sociolinguistics rejects
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a strict mapping of form to meaning and proposes that forms are used to fulfill functions. Utterances have to be analyzed according to their local as well as global function within the interaction. Background knowledge is essential for the participants as well as the researcher precisely because in interactions not everything is stated explicitly. Hence it is critically important to understand the speech situation of Let’s Plays based on the aspects of its origin (section 2), YouTube (section 3) and gaming (section 3). Section 6 will examine the interactional practices Let’s Players engage with. With regard to frames, the analysis will follow an interactionist bottom up approach. I will describe and analyze instances of the Let’s Player’s commentary. The commentary and its speech situation will be examined using tools from Conversation Analysis and Interactional sociolinguistic. The insights gained from this analysis will illustrate how Let’s Players establish and juggle different sets of frames. The current study will not (and cannot) show a conclusive picture of all possible frames. Instead it will explore if there are certain archetypes, which are the result of the configuration between the Let’s Player (Gopher), YouTube and game (Skyrim).
6. A Frame Analysis of Let’s Play Videos Section 6 will present the analysis and consists of the four subsections 6.1 through 6.4. Section 6.1 describes the data and method of transcription. This allows the reader to better understand the transcripts and figures that are presented. The analysis begins in 6.2 with the Let’s Player to audience
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interaction. This section shows how Gopher communicates with his viewers. Section 6.3 is concerned with Gopher’s metacommentary. Metacommentary is a type of commentary that occurs when a Let’s Player interacts with the game menus. The section gives examples and explains the phenomenon. The last but still very important type of interaction is Gopher’s communication with nonplayer characters. It will be presented in 6.4. Each subsections ends with a short summary and a graphical representation of the findings.
6.1 Data and Transcription As indicated earlier, the current analysis is a case study of a single subject. Gopher does not represent the average Let’s Player. Quite the opposite, he was selected because of his exceptional standing. He has uploaded many high quality Let’s Play videos since joining YouTube on March 3rd 2010. He is a very dedicated member of the Skyrim community as both a well-respected modder and Let’s Player. The examples are taken from his Playlist Let’s Play Skyrim (modded). The title already signals two things. It is a Let’s Play video series and it is modded. As of June 2014, there are 478 videos about Skyrim on Gopher’s channel. Most of them last between 20 to 30 minutes. It is safe to say that he is considered an expert in his particular field of Skyrim Let’s Plays and modding. Transcription of Let’s Plays is not a simple task. Games are invariably multimodal in Kress’s (2006) sense. There is the game’s sound track, in-game texts in the form of menus and user interfaces, as well as the visual and graphical representation of the game world. Let’s Plays add to this the audio
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commentary of the Let’s Player and text messages he or she adds into the video. All these modes work interactively but need to be dissected for the analysis and their representation in a paper. It is essential that an analyst adapts his or her transcription method to be appropriate for the work at hand (Ochs 1979). The current method strikes a balance between faithful representation and workability. Each example will begin with a brief introduction of the situation. The transcription is split into three columns. The first column is the commentary of the Let’s Player. It is done according to the conventions of the Department of English Linguistics at the University of Saarland. The utterances of the Let’s Player are described in the form of intonation units. The second column is the voice acting of non-player characters. These utterances were transcribed when the Let’s Player acknowledges them. This acknowledgment can be in the form of speech or action. For example, Gopher might respond to a character or turn towards them. The third column contains meaningful nonlinguistic actions occurring in gameplay. For example, noting when Gopher turns his avatar toward a character or navigates through the game’s menus. Utterances and actions that represented in the same row indicate that they occurred synchronously in the Let’s Play. Direct quotations will be put in quotation marks. Meta language referring to lexical items will be italicized, e.g. the pronoun you.
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6.2 Let’s Player to Audience Interaction The analysis begins with several extracts from the first video in the Let’s Play Skyrim (modded) playlist. The episode is titled Prelude. For this extract, there will be a special focus on how Gopher set’s up the video as an introduction to his Let’s Play and how he positions himself vis-à-vis his audience. Extract 1 - Introduction
In the opening sequence there are many features that have been identified in Frobenius’ (2014) work on Vlogs. There is an informal greeting “hi” which is followed by “guys”. Gopher uses “guys” as a term of address for his audience. Although guys is technically a male term, it is often used generically and can include both men and women. This use of informal register minimizes social distance. Gopher’s use of plural is also interesting. He is addressing his viewers as a group, although they are not necessarily watching his videos together. There is a welcoming message which resembles an invitation to the video. Its title Prelude indicates that it is an entry point for his Let’s Play series as a whole (L.2 & 3). What follows is an elongated pronunciation of the temporal adverb “now”. The elongation stresses the adverb. By foregrounding
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something new, it signals the end of the greeting. It also serves to highlight the introductory function of his prelude because it will prepare the audience for the Let’s Play. Explicit in this formulation is the distribution of roles. Using Goffman’s taxonomy, Gopher is clearly the principle, author and animator of the utterances. He conveys his opinion and plans. The second person singular pronoun You addresses viewers and makes them ratified listeners. Although Goffman’s participation frameworks were conceived for face-to-face interaction, their main characteristics still apply. In Computer Mediated Communication, the mediated presence in the affinity space of YouTube compensates for the lack of physical presence. Gopher is talking to his audience in absentia. The entire exchange is accompanied by an introductory picture with text. It reads LETS PLAY SKYRIM PRELUDE. Overall there is thematic cohesion between Gopher’s utterances and the text (Yu & O’Halloran 2009). The text resembles the title page of a book chapter with Gopher’s commentary being the foreword. Extract 2 continues right as the introductory picture fades into the game intro and Gopher begins to talking about his plan.
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Extract 2 – Power Mad
There is an initial repetition. This repetition is binding the episodes from Extract 1 and Extract 2. It creates coherence between larger parts of discourse (Tannen 1989: 77). His speech can be considered monological because it features all the criteria Mindt (2008: 1509) identifies for monologues. It is a long stretch of talk with no turn taking. His interlocutors are not (physically) present and unknown to him. The speech seems pre-planned because there are very few disfluencies and very clear transitions. Gopher has chosen a set topic, which is his "orc mage play through (L.3).” Here he is appealing to schemas of knowledge that his Let's Play audience is familiar with (Tannen 1987). As discussed in Section 4.2.3, players can decide their avatar's strengths and weaknesses in Skyrim. The audience must know this in order to understand Gopher’s remark and they must also know that mages are a character archetype in role playing games.
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Gopher elaborates on the categorization of his mage without fully committing to it (L.4 & 5). The character will be "a kind of" and "type" of warlock or shaman. The uncertainty can be attributed to two facts. First, the boundaries between the concepts of warlock and shaman are sometimes vague. Second, the specifics of the character development can change in the course of the play through. Gopher’s speech is in a state of flux and the discourse marker “ehm” signals that he is thinking about his next points. He initially describes his character as "power mad"(L.8) but immediately moves away from this judgment (L.9). He uses the response marker “well”, which allows him to reposition himself with regard to his previous utterance (Schiffrin 1987:103). The marker introduces a self-repair. In monologues, self-repairs are often a feature of audience design because they can mitigate potential criticism (Hutchby and Wooffitt 1998: 201). "Definitely after power" is closer to the idea that Gopher had in mind. Gopher then moves on to describe the needs of his character. In talking about the avatar, however, Gopher is not talking about an independent body. The avatar is his entry point to the game world (see 4.2.1 and 4.2.4). Graphical representations on computer screens have no inherent needs. “Virtual characters have virtual minds and virtual bodies” (Gee 2008: 258). These virtual minds are filled out by players, who “inhabit the goals of a virtual character in a virtual world” (Gee 2008: 258). This inhabitation means that players act within the game world as if the virtual characters goals are their own. Gee (2008: 258) argues that in doing so, players take on a projective stance. This projective stance is visible in the wording of Gopher. At first he talks about his gameplay
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plans from a first person perspective (L.13) and the proposed needs of his character in the third person (L.14). These lines are followed by the discourse marker “so”. So functions in the organization of transitions in participation frameworks and has the potential to re-allocate roles (Schiffrin 1987: 177). “He’s gonna be focusing on” is an allo-repetition with a small but very important difference. The “I” replaces the “he” as the agent of the actions. At this point Gopher is taking on the projective stance of his avatars. His goals become the goals of the avatar. This example provides linguistic evidence for the conceptual and cognitive fusion proposed by Gee. Another allo-repitition of line 13 occurs on line 24. Lines 13 and 24 form a left and right bracket. Gopher’s utterances within the brackets can only be understood by reference to information given outside of the brackets. The avatar’s need to focus on “developing his magic” (L.17) is the result of Gopher’s intention to play an orc mage (L.3). Similarly, not doing side quests (L.20) and factions (L.22) can be attributed to Gopher’s desire to focus on the character’s needs. The formulation of line 24 is hiding the agency of Gopher and his avatar. The planned actions (“it”) are framed as an object. At this point Gopher is not talking as his avatar anymore. There is a long pause, which brings about a complete shift in topic.
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Extract 3 – Listing my mods
Extract 3 (L.1) continues immediately where extract 2 left off (L.26). In the first two extracts, Gopher positioned himself as the speaker, in first person, and the audience as direct addressees. The forms of address were rather generic and apply to almost anyone. In Extract 3 the situation is different. The YouTube viewers are not addressees anymore. Instead they are overhearers. In Goffman’s taxonomy, overhearers are still ratified listeners. In this particular sitation there are also two strong arguments for this. First, YouTube videos are made to be watched. Video sharing is an inherent property of YouTube. Second, we can draw an analogy from speech act theory. Clark and Carlson (1982: 332) argue that any speech act can be separated into the speech act itself and an informative, which is directed to all participants. Gopher clearly conveys certain information, which has a function. There is an implicit audience
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design (Bell 1984: 159). He accommodates his listeners with a particular language style (161). This language style, or register, depends on non-linguistic factors such as topic and setting (162). Apparent in this extract is the Let’s Play setting and the topics “mods”22 (L.2) and “recording” (L.19). Mods are a central concern for Gopher and his anticipated audience. He is an expert on user modifications and states that all the mods are “in the description below” (L.4). This is a spoken reference to a written text outside of the video. This referenced text will be on the YouTube page underneath the video. Such metaphorical uses of deixis have become conventionalized on YouTube (Harley & Fitzpatrick 2009, Frobenies 2014). Gopher mentions “ENB” and “ACRN”, which are user-created graphical modifications for Skyrim. Since choices in register are a form of audience design we can conclude that Gopher considers his viewers to be knowledgeable of mods because they must be able to identify user modifications by their acronyms. This assessment of his followers’ knowledge is based on previous interactions (L.9). The prelude of his Let's Play series itself is embedded within a larger interaction between Gopher and his long-time followers. The recording aspect is also visible in the register, when Gopher talks about performance (L.15 & 27) and his system (L.18). The topics of modding and recording are causally linked. Gopher anticipates further questions about why he is not using ENB or ACRN and explains that this is not possible due to the technical consequences of recording a Let’s Play. While the specific registers of “ENB” or perfomance” are based on the topics modding and 22
Mods are user generated game modifications.
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recording, Gopher also makes register choices which cannot be explained by the topics. For instance, he uses informal contractions such as “cause” or “gonna” (L.10). Here, the choice of register can be attributed to the casual setting of Let’s Play videos. A casual or informal register minimizes social distance between speaker and interlocutors. The first three abstracts cover very different issues, but they all have something in common: they are very orderly. The utterances appear to be preplanned and there are rather smooth transitions from one topic to another. Pauses in Gopher’s speech or interaction with the game as it unfolds are missing. Extract 4 explores a different type, namely interactions that are cued by the game. Extract 4 – I’m not a rebel
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The scene is rather complex and requires a short summary of its setting. Gopher’s avatar has been arrested with several other non-player characters. Together with Ulfric, Ralof, and a horse thief, the avatar faces execution by beheading. The transcript starts when another non-player character, the captain of the legion, commands the first prisoner to step towards the execution block. The first pause by Gopher is significant. There has been in-game dialogue in the first three extracts but none of them elicited a reaction from Gopher. For the most part, he loudly spoke over them and elaborated his intentions. In-game dialogue in Let’s Plays cannot self-select turns. Turns are always given by the player. A very simple method to give a turn to the game is by not speaking. Extract 4, which is about 20 seconds long, contains six pauses. Whenever the Let’s Player stops to talk, the Let’s Play audience is able to hear the utterances in the game. This behavior is arguably a modified version of reportability (Labov 1997). In an oral narrative, a teller has to make certain choices about what he is going to say. An event has to be important enough to be reportable. Events can either be intrinsically reportable or because of their relevance to the narrative. Gopher and his Let’s Play is a very complex co-constructed narrative. He knows the scripted dialogue because he played the game many times. Since he knows the upcoming scripted utterances ahead of time, he can make strategic choices. Not speaking thereby attributes reportability to the dialogue of the non-player characters. In this example the reportability clearly lies in the fact that the avatar of the player is about to get executed.
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Gopher’s reaction to this dialogue is interesting. He shows very little involvement with the game material. Involvement is a concept first coined by Gumperz and Gumperz-Cook (1981). They stress the observable nature of involvement. Speakers and hearers show their involvement directly through words or indirectly through gestures or similar nonverbal signals. Chafe (1985:116) argues for a finer distinction between self-involvement of the speaker, interpersonal involvement between speaker and hearer, and involvement with the subject matter. In at least two of Chafe’s three types of involvement, Gopher’s involvement can be characterized as low or maybe even minimal. His remarks are uttered in a rather monotonous and low-pitched tone. There seems to be no personal excitement. Similarly, his monotonous tone indicates a rather low interpersonal involvement with his audience. The utterance, “I don’t know about you,” however, directly addresses the audience. Its intonation marks it as a question and questions are inherently interactional. Even rhetorical questions open up the possibility for response in the minds of the interlocutors. In the context of Let’s Plays, such rhetorical questions cannot be responded to due to the asynchronous nature of the communication. However, phrases like "I don:t know about you" likely occur in conjunction with statements that a speaker considers to be common sense. The question offers choice but invites the interlocutors to share the speaker’s conclusion. The wording of such phrases is very formulaic (Norrick 2000: 48) or prepatterned (Tannen 1989: 47). This prepattering promotes comprehension by hearers (Tannen 1989: 59) and together with interactivity, is a key marker of
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interpersonal involvement (Tannen 1989:61). Therefore, it is impossible to make a clear judgment with regard to his interpersonal involvement. Gopher’s involvement with the subject matter can be described more clearly. His utterance, “I don’t like her,” contains no reference to the content of command of the captain. Instead he expresses a general sentiment about the female NPC. He seems to respond to the directive of the Captain and her very firm and commanding voice. He ignores the implication of the command that his avatar and many others will be executed. Even though it is a fictional execution, one could expect a stronger reaction. Here, Gopher clearly does not embody his avatar and instead adopts an external perspective. From this external perspective he continues to describe the game’s characters and positions himself. He begins with the captain and refers to her as “that woman” (L.9). In contrast to this, the deictic expression that marks distance between speaker and referenced object. There are changes in Gopher’s syntactic and lexical choices. The captain is not a captain, she is a woman. Referring to her as a woman diminishes her authority as captain and stresses her gender. Gopher´s “I” moves away from subject position and agency (L.4). The woman becomes the agent who is “annoying” Gopher (“me”) (L.9). This framing makes being annoying a property of the woman rather than a personal preference of Gopher. Considering that his utterance was cued by the commanding tone of the directive, rather than its content, Gopher seems to be expressing a sexist discourse on annoying or bossy women. Examining the frames reveals that the interaction is characterized by Gopher talking to the YouTube audience. The audience is still ratified and the
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addressee. Although Gopher speaks about a non-player character, this character does not have a listener role. Neither his wording nor the setting establishes the NPC as overhearer or any other form of extended audience. However this speaker-to-listener configuration does not mean that Gopher will always distance himself from non-player characters entirely. Gopher clearly indicates his alignment with the other characters in the scene. The interaction with them unfolds as follows. It begins with the character Ralof, who says, “it has been an honor” (L.10). Upon hearing the utterance, Gopher turns his avatar towards Ralof. With his mouse movement Gopher can control the direction in which his avatar is looking. Gopher becomes in essence a director when controlling the field of view. His decisions, however, are not completely independent. The movement of the avatar’s point of view is cued by the scripted utterance of the non-player character. Ralof becomes the focal point (L.11) for Gopher as well as his viewers. Gopher is always constructing a shared focal point between himself and the audience (see Goodwin 1992). Moving Ralof to the center of the screen establishes him as the obvious referent of “this guy.” This exemplifies two types of coherence across the spoken and visual mode. First, there is what Yu & O’Halloran (2009) call compositional or syntactical coherence. “This” goes together with placing Ralof in the center of the screen. Second, there is semantic coherence. Ralof is a male non-player character and is referred to as “guy.” Gopher’s lexical choices “like”, “this” and “guy” function together. The semantics of like inherently express a positive stance. The deictic expression “this” signals spatial proximity. Together with “like” and the informal “guy,” which Gopher also used to address his audience, the phrase shows an
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affective closeness to the character. The contrast between don’t like / that / woman and like / this / guy is very striking. The alignment with Ralof is not negotiated with the audience. It is not, however, unconditional. Gopher judges Ralof to be “depressing.” This response is connected to the previous utterance with the conjunction “but”. The conjunction but can signal a break from expectations (Tannen 1993: 44). Liking a character is usually linked to a positive trait. Ralof is liked despite being depressing for Gopher. Gopher gives no linguistic evidence as to why he should like Ralof and dislike the captain. The most reasonable explanation has to come from the game situation. Ralof is a prisoner just like Gopher’s avatar. The avatar and Ralof both are about to be executed. Gopher takes on a projective stance (Gee 2008: 258) to the events occurring in the game. His alignment with Ralof and disalignment with the captain are not arbitrary. Arguably, he is siding with Ralof because this is what his avatar would do. The example described shows that Gopher always takes a stance, even when he is talking to the YouTube audience about characters or in-game events. Sometimes this is done in an embodied way, where the boundaries between himself and his avatar’s identity become fuzzy. Extract 2 illustrated the strong linguistic evidence for such embodiment. The alignment with the characters in Extract 3 was less clear. Understanding this alignment requires contextual knowledge, in this case the game’s storyline, which is outside of the rules of turn taking. Gopher’s projective stance is expressed implicit to the audience. He does not justify or explain why he likes Ralof but not the captain. Presumably because the YouTube viewers, as an expert audience, share some
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knowledge about the game’s storyline and can infer the reason for his preference. Transitions between a more subtle projective stance and full embodiment can be very quick and may be caused by frame shifts. This is evident in the interaction between Gopher and the thief (L.15). At first, Gopher’s utterances are very similar in form and function. He is talking about the thief from an external point of view and is attributing him as being reasonable. What follows is a dramatic escape attempt by the thief to avoid execution. The event becomes the visual and auditory focus of both Gopher’s and the audience’s attention. Gopher constantly repositions his camera to keep the escape attempt right in the center of the screen. He does not speak, which makes the in-game actions even more pronounced. After the thief is killed, the captain asks Gopher’s avatar if “anyone else feels like running?” (L.24) Gopher’s reaction, “yeah me actually” is a response to the non-player character. Goffman (1981) distinguishes between responses, which break frame, and replies, which stay within the same frame. In the context of gaming, responses describe players that either talk on behalf or address a game character (Aarsand & Aronson 2009). Therefore, Gopher’s response “yeah me actually” needs to be looked at from several angles. Yeah is a valid response to the question, both on a content as well as structural level. The first person pronoun “me” is self-identifying Gopher as the responder. Interestingly, his utterance is positioned inside the game discourse and targets the captain. He responds as if the captain could hear him. Frame shifts often include changes in footing (Goffman 1981). Footing is the stance a speaker takes to his or her utterance (Wine 2008: 2).
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Gopher’s external projective stance is shifted towards a more internal position. “Actually” plays a critical role here by signaling a break with expectations (L.25). The captain’s question is rhetorical because it assumes that no one would want to be shot by an arrow. Gopher’s utterance is positioned against that assumption. Moreover, he is not simply repositioning himself via his wording. There is also a change in his prosody. Prosodic changes are another way to signal changes in footing (Tannen 1987: 207). Gopher almost sounds enthusiastic and displays much more self- and subject-oriented involvement when talking to the characters. Metaphorically, he is in the scene. “Honestly” (L.26) strengthens his commitment to his response by appealing to his credibility. Unfortunately, one can only speculate who is answering. On first glance, it seems that Gopher is giving an embodied response and is speaking as his avatar. However, the use of “actually” (L.25), “honestly” (L.26), and the modal “would” (L.27) suggest that Gopher is responding as himself. At least superficially, Gopher gives the idea of dying by bow some thought. Despite the frame shift, Gopher maintains thematic coherence. He considers the thief the most sensible (L.16) because he dies in the process of attempting to escape, a fate which Gopher prefers over execution (L.25-27). The salience of the scene paired with the pragmatic force of a question is what causes the frame shift. In general, speakers are inclined to reply to questions. This is particularly true in this specific setting. Gopher’s avatar and his identity are linked. The avatar is Gopher’s extension into the game world. He experiences the game’s interaction as if he is personally being addressed.
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The previous four extracts allow us to draw some preliminary conclusions. First, there are linguistic activities that set up a frame and there are activities that occur within frames. Central for setting up the frame are two features. There is directionality of the communication from Gopher to the YouTube audience and there is its asynchronicity. First, his talk is pre-planned and monological with smooth transitions and no turn taking. The YouTube audience takes on two of Goffman’s (1981) listener roles. They can either be an addressee or an overhearer. Gopher often explicitly addresses the audience by using pronouns, such as “you”, or generic nouns, for example “guys”, or other directional phrases23. When these features are missing, the audience can be described as overhearers, based on the settings and the content Gopher talks about. In the YouTube setting, videos are meant to be watched. The audience will always be ratified even without direct terms of address. Second, the communication is always asynchronous. There is no immediate communication between Gopher and his audience. Gopher talks to an imagined audience that might watch the video in the near future. However, his particular version of audience design does not define the structure of the frame. It is a parameter that can vary. Therefore, Gopher’s audience design is feature within the frame. For example Gopher talks about mods because it is part of his history of interaction with the audience. In this field, he positions himself and the audience as experts by using a specific register and acronyms. Other choices in register show that he minimizes social distance. He uses colloquial and contemporary English and 23
Welcoming someone as in extract 1 has an inherent direction from the welcomer to the welcomee
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is at least linguistically close to his “guys” (i.e. the audience). Due to the multimodal nature of video games and YouTube videos, Gopher’s linguistic and paralinguistic communication go together. Spoken deictic expressions and camera movements identify reference points within the game. Pauses play an essential role. By highlighting scripted in-game events, they can attribute reportability. Gopher is the central agent, who makes strategic choices. This can account for many of the phenomena found in the extracts. It cannot, however, account for all of them. This gap leads to an important second conclusion. Gopher has to be seen in two interrelated roles. There is Gopher the Let’s Player and there is his avatar. The avatar’s identity is self-imagined and filled in by Gopher, who conceptualizes a fictional version of himself within the game. The degree of embodiment of his avatar is scalar and can change rapidly as seen in Extracts 2 and 4. There can be a full embodiment where Gopher speaks from within the game but also instances of a more subtle external projective stance. Linguistically, the embodiment and projective stance are expressed in the different alignments Gopher takes when talking to the audience about the in-game characters.
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The following graphic illustrates the essence of the previous findings and conclusions. Configuration of the Audience Directed Communication
YouTube Audience and Commenters (asynchronous)
Gopher
in-game Avatar (Gro Fur)
Fig. 9: own adaption of findings
The ellipse with the dashed line represents the dualism between Gopher and his avatar and its permeability. Gopher is able to move from one side to the other and does so depending on the in-game situation. The arrow symbolizes the semantic directionality of Gopher’s communication. Its position is important, which has to be on Gopher’s side of the ellipse. Gopher never talks in an embodied way to his audience. For example, he does not mimic the voice of a medieval person or address the audience with a register that could be attributed
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to his avatar persona Gro Fur24. He is always Gopher, the friendly expert in modding, Skyrim and other Bethesda games. Talking to the audience is an important interactional practice. It is not, however, the only practice. The next section analyzes instances of metacommentaries uttered by Gopher while he is playing the game.
6.3 Metacommentary by the Let’s Player When Gopher talks about Skyrim, he can talk about many different things. As seen in Section 6.1, he talks about characters, the game’s story and even to the characters. There were embodied interactions with the content of the game, its story line and narrative (see 4.2.2). However, there are also interactions with the game’s medium specific features (see 4.2.3 & 4.2.4). For example, Gopher often navigates through menus to modify options or select abilities. Such actions are inherent to games and make the actual gameplay possible and smooth. Therefore, such utterances that accompany these actions can collectively be called metacommentary. This section analyzes two extracts that illustrate different forms of metacommentary and their role within the participation frameworks.
24
Gro Fur, pronounced as grow fur, is the fictional name Gopher has given his avatar. It is a pun because his character is a hairy Orc.
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Extract 5 – Berserker Rage
Extract 5 is taken briefly after the game’s introduction sequence. With Gopher’s avatar having escaped the execution, Gopher looks for starter equipment and magic spells he can use. While looking around he asks, “so what do I have?” This utterance is not targeted towards the audience or a nonplayer character. Instead the semantic directionality of the question and of the following utterances is towards Gopher himself (Pfister 1977: 182). This makes his speech a soliloquy, a form of monologue addressed to oneself (see Frobenius 2014: 22). His actions and speech are simultaneous. He performs the actions as he describes them in his soliloquy. I argue that the question “what do I have” is a verbalization of his thought process, which serves to support his in-game action of opening the menu. The act of opening the menu via a hotkey and uttering the question are two parts of an embodied interaction. Both actions co-occur simultaneously and are related. Once the menu is opened its text becomes visible.
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Piirainen-Marsh (2013) identified texts in the user interfaces of games as resources for players: Players orient to them in a variety of ways in their talk. They may, for example, display understanding of them, respond to the new information carried in them or treat them as sources of trouble (208).
Fig.10: Screenshot of user interface
As the tip of the mouse reaches the words “Berserker Rage” in the top left of the screen, Gopher reads the words out loud but in a rather quiet voice (L.5). This reading out loud signals a change in his information state. He now knows that one of the spells available to him is the ability called berserker rage. Moving the mouse over the words “Berserker Rage” opens two pop ups. The first is titled “Favorites” and the second “BERSERKER RAGE.” Gopher immediately understands that the pop up BERSERKER RAGE in the bottom right refers to the ability with the same name he selected moments earlier. He re-orientates his attention and again reads out loud mumbling the tooltip of the pop up. This reading of the tooltip again indicates comprehension, which becomes even more apparent because of the assessment sequence of ”this might be useful” (Goodwin 1992). Reading the tooltip rather quietly has a
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cognitive function for Gopher. Therefore, I would argue that he is not reading the texts to the audience. He is too quiet and the text is too salient on screen to need to be read out. Even though the directionality of his utterances is towards himself, the audience stays in the listener role of overhearers. Sharing a video publicly on the Website of YouTube always ratifies every potential spectator. Reading out loud can play a role in frame shifts. As Gopher reads “god of warzones” he realizes an incongruency. He was expecting the name of another ability. Instead he reads the name of a well-known game modification. He is amused and begins laughing. The burst into laughter is a change in footing. Gopher moves away from a more serious mode that tries to evaluate and understand abilities and their usefulness within the game. Now, he is elaborating and contextualizing the mod, referring to its real world mod author using his acronym MGE (L.13). I interpret this as a form of audience design. The information about the mod is given for the audience. Further evidence is that Gopher also raises the volume of his voice and his utterances become much more audible. There is an increase in involvement because it concerns his favorite subject mods. Thus, Gopher’s amusement and laughter has a consequence for the organization of interaction (Norrick 1993). It reframes the interaction from a sequence of self-directed metacommentaries to the audiencedirected explanations. The organization of interaction is an important feature of the Extract 6. The extract is accompanied directly by a set of subsequent screenshots 10 a), 10 b) and 10 c), which helps to visualize the key aspect of synchronicity and coordination across three different modalities.
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Extract 6 – NOVICE?
Fig. 11a)
Fig.11b)
Fig.11c)
Fig.11: Subsequent Screenshots of Menu Navigation
Interaction starts with Gopher’s combat versus two non-player characters. Gopher becomes suspicious because it felt too easy and he decides to check on the difficulty. The conjunction of speech, deixis and written text play a central role. Similar to Extract 5, the text serves as resource for Gopher. However, he does not utter every written item on the screen. He only states the three words that are relevant to him (settings, gameplay and novice). In the user interface the mouse cursor has an essential role. It is only visible if the user interface is opened and is the main input method. It has an iconic form with a clearly defined tip. In this digital context it is a method of directing-to. As a deixis it can index items or objects (Clark 2003: 251) and such pointing is where language, culture and cognition meet (Kita 2003). There is coordination of
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action, speech and cognitive state. They are inseparable activities that help Gopher to maneuver through the interface. The order of his maneuvering is predefined. On the one hand there is the structure of the user interface. On the other hand Gopher wants to reach certain items in the menus, in this case the difficulty setting. This leads to a virtual path of interaction. The utterance of the word “setting” (L.3) is synchronous to the mouse cursor pointing to the text SETTING (Fig. 11a). This is followed by a very similar pairing of pointing-to and reading out loud for “gameplay” (L.4 & Fig. 11b). The third and last pairing however, has a different quality to it. Novice is not a menu header. It is a scalar parameter of the difficulty setting (ranging from novice to master). It has meaning for the actual gameplay, outside of the structure of the user interface. Gopher’s signals his strong surprise by reading “NOVICE?” in a loud voice with a rising intonation. In contrast to the previous menu headers, this parameter can be modified. Relying on Chafe’s (1985:116) distinction, I argue that Gopher displays a high degree of self-involvement and subject involvement when he realizes the low difficulty setting. However, there is no indication for interpersonal involvement. Gopher negatively evaluates the setting as can be seen by his response cry “dah” (L.6) (see Aarsand & Aronson 2009). The response cry is a further expression of his inner state. It also shares the directionality with the previous utterances. The response cry is not towards the audience or a non-player character within the game. It is self-directed reaction, which is evoked by the in-game difficulty settings. Both examples from Extracts 5 and 6 highlight several conclusions that summarize features of the metacommentary frame. Again it is useful to
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distinguish between features that essentially set up the frame and those more varied parts within the frame. Metacommentary only occurs during Gopher’s interaction with menus and settings. The interaction is also synchronous, because his commentary about and interactions with the game are immediate. Moreover, this interaction has a circular element to it. The menus are opened if there are problems with the gameplay. Once the settings are adjusted and spells are selected, the interaction with the menus is immediately finished and Gopher returns to the game. The interaction with the menu is a means to an end. Gopher’s spoken commentary in this interaction is self-directed. It helps him to navigate through the different settings more easily. His commentary is also a means to the same end, rather than a form of entertainment for his audience. The audience is always in the role of overhearer and never the addressee of the commentary. The content of the commentary is a feature within the frame. The most salient feature is Gopher’s interaction with the written text. The text is very visible and Gopher uses it to navigate through the menus. There is a synchronous coordination of his reading out loud and pointing to the written text. This coordination display Gophers involvement with the subject matter. Most of the time, the self-involvement is rather low. However the self-involvement can spike in sudden moments of surprise, as seen by his laughter (L.12) in extract 5, his loud repetition of “NOVICE?” (L.5), and the response cry “dah” (L.6) in Extract 6. Interpersonal involvement is absent in this frame because the communication is never directed towards the audience. Perhaps not surprisingly, there is no projective stance taking or embodiment of Gro Fur.
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Based on these new findings, the diagram from figure 9 can be modified to represent the two frames that already have been analyzed. The curvature of the second arrow symbolizes that the metacommentary originates from but also ends with Gopher. Configuration of the two frames of interaction
YouTube Audience and Commenters Metacommentary by the Let’s Player
(asynchronous)
(synchronous)
Gopher
in-game Avatar (Gro Fur)
Fig. 12: modified model
6.4 Interactions with Non-Player Characters The last frame that the current paper examines is the interaction between the Let’s Player and the non-player characters of the game world. Qualitatively and quantitatively this interaction is at the heart of the Let’s Play. Quantitatively the majority of Gopher’s utterances is part of this frame and qualitatively they are the interactions that happen while the game is actually played. The paper will present several extracts which demonstrate the wide variety and features of
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this frame. The first sets of interactions are very short responses to commands or questions. Extract 7 – hear that?
In Extract 7, Gopher and the friendly non-player character called Hadvar try to sneak out of a fortress. In this encounter they meet and later fight members of the hostile Stormcloak faction. The non-player character talks to Gopher’s avatar. The scripted dialogue is designed this way to be inclusive and immersive for the player. Hadvar’s utterance has the possibility to give the floor to Gopher’s avatar. However, it is Gopher who uses this chance. He immediately picks up the floor, responding on behalf of his avatar (L.4). Although he does not address Hadvar directly, Gopher criticizes Hadvar’s proposition. Therefore, the utterance is directed towards Hadvar. The response also has an internal perspective because it is reasonable within the game world of Skyrim. It is an utterance Gopher’s avatar Gro Fur could have said. Responses can also have an external perspective, which can be seen in Extract 8.
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Extract 8 – what’s next?
The scene is set in a dungeon. At first there is an intense fight between Gopher and Hadvar and a group of giant spiders. While the combat is ongoing Gopher remains quiet. Presumably he is focused. Both Gopher and Hadvar barely survive the fight. Hadvar then asks Gopher’s avatar two rhetorical questions, which express his fear and disbelief (L.3-4). Again Gopher seizes the opportunity and responds that “giant snakes would be cool” (L.5). Here the perspective is external. Gopher, as himself, is responding to Hadvar’s question. Giant snakes would be cool for him, as a Let’s player. The imagined Gro Fur, who almost died to the spiders, would think otherwise. The responses in Extract 7 and 8 were both mono modal. Gopher interacts only with Hadvar’s speech. The physical presence of Gro Fur played no role. In every day conversation, however, many more modes of communication are used. For example, individuals orient their posture towards one another, point at objects, nod or share eye contact. Due to the mediated nature of Skyrim, some of these modes of communication are impossible. However, Gopher displays behavior that in many ways mimics features of real life conversations.
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Extract 9 – see that?
Fig. 13a)
Fig.13b)
In Extract 9 Gopher is actually interrupted by Hadvar. This is interesting because Gopher could speak over the scripted utterance. Instead he chooses to be quiet. In doing so, he attributes reportability to non-player character utterances when interacting with them. Hadvar’s question contains the three deictic expressions “that” “up” and “there”. Hadvar is the origo for these expressions. In accordance to “that”, “up” and “there”, he fully elongates his arm and points with his virtual index finger to the far upper right of Gopher’s screen (Fig.13a). Gopher immediately repositions the point of view of his character, moving behind Hadvar and looking upward over Hadvar’s shoulder (13b). Thereby Gopher identifies the structure, which Hadvar indexed with his pointing, deictic expressions and label “ruin.” His responses, “bleak falls barrow” (L.3) and “yeah” (L.4), correctly reply to the question “see that ruin up there?” They also signal understanding of the reference. Gopher notices the pre-
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scripted cues given by the game and appropriately reacts to them. He considers his own position relative to Hadvar and the ruins. Extract 9 provides examples of multi-modal interaction from both parties. However there is an important difference between the two. Hadvar’s reaction is pre-programed and fixed, whereas Gophers interaction is spontaneous. In this mediated and embodied interaction Gopher uses his keyboard to issue commands, which achieve a situation that is similar to a real conversation between Hadvar and Gro Fur. The short responses and bursts of commentary to non-player character dialogue are very frequent. The utterances by the non-player characters were either very salient in the gameplay situation or had a strong pragmatic force, i.e. questions are asked to be answered. Often, but not necessarily, Gopher will embody his avatar or express a projective stance in his replies. However, he always responds to the non-player characters as if they were real people, who could hear him. The non-player characters take a symbolic listener role. They are the addressee of his responses. Specific to this first set of interactions is that Gopher’s responses are elicited by the game dialogue. The second set of interaction is grounded in a core gameplay feature of Skyrim, i.e. its fast paced combat.
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Extract 10 – YOU IDIOT
In Extract 10 Gopher explores an area, searching for new items and equipment. Alongside him is his companion character Hadvar. The transcript starts when a group of hostile NPCs attack them. It is important to remember that Gopher’s avatar Gro Fur is a “warlock or shaman” with magic abilities but very little armor. Gopher’s response cry “u:h” (L.1) signals that he was not ready for the sudden combat. He is verbalizing the events as a mental aid and develops an ad hoc strategy. He is running zig zag and sets the ground around the enemies on fire (L.2-4). Hadvar’s artificial intelligence is also triggered and he joins the fight. Rather stupidly, the Hadvar runs straight towards the enemy right into the burning area. Gopher’s strong reaction is based on Hadvar’s behavior. He gives Hadvar the direct command to not through the fire. Gopher uses the metaphor “pool of fire” to describe the situation. Such metaphors and verbal imagery signal high involvement. Aside from this subject- or topicoriented involvement, the utterance also displays a great deal of interpersonal involvement in the form of the exclamatory noun phrase “you idiot” (Zwicky 1974). Thereby Gopher is not just giving a command; he is also negatively
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evaluating the artificial intelligence’s action. Continuously throughout the Let’s Play video series, Gopher gives spoken orders as if Hadvar could hear and react to them. For example, as Gopher’s avatar is severely injured he commands Hadvar to fight on his behalf. Gopher is very rarely aligning with his allied non-player character. This is very much in line with Gopher’s inception of Gro Fur; a power mad orc who believes in the supremacy of his own race. When dealing with Hadvar, Gopher is embodying Gro Fur. Often he is using blunt and value-laden language to positions himself and his avatar above Hadvar. Gopher, however, never imitates a form medieval English. He speaks in contemporary colloquial English and uses phrases such as “nice one dude” (L.19) or contractions such as “gonna” (L.7). There is also a theatrical quality to his interaction in the way that he comments on what is happening (L.2 & 7-8) and what Hadvar is supposed to do about it (L.11-14). When talking to Hadvar, Gopher has the audience in mind. His dialogue is supposed to entertain his viewers and repetitions are used because for their local comedic effect (Tannen 1989: 71). There is an incrongruency between Gopher’s retreat and hiding and the repeated command towards Hadvar to continue fighting. Throughout the Let’s Play, entertainment is a central concern for Gopher as he is communicating with Hadvar and other non-player characters. In extreme cases, it can even be the guiding principle of the whole interaction as will be shown in Extract 11.
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Extract 11 – hey Hadvar, run
The scene begins with Gopher and Hadvar walking inside a cave. In this cave is an unavoidable encounter with a bear. Before Extract 11 begins Hadvar sayins “I’d rather not tangle with her right now” and suggests to sneak past the bear to avoid a fight. Initially Gopher agrees with this until he has a sudden change of heart. He decides that his avatar will play a practical joke on Hadvar. It is important to note that it is not a real practical joke but rather a playful mimicry on Gopher’s part. His speech and the actions of his avatar emulate the joke. However, Hadvar as a non-player character is lacking any real consciousness and agency. Therefore, he cannot be tricked in the normal sense. Nevertheless, Gopher copies the structure of the popular children’s game ding-dong ditch. Gopher turns his avatar towards Hadvar, while he utters the vocative noun phrase “hey Hadvar” (Zwicky 1974). In conjunction with his speech, Gopher utilizes the rotation of his virtual avatar. His multi-modal behavior resembles a call for attention. Once the artificial joint attention is established the next stage of the prank begins. Gopher barely attacks the bear (ding-dong), which is just enough to trigger the combat. Gopher then flees the
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scene commanding Hadvar to run, too (ditch). On the surface this interaction is with Hadvar but it is also a performance for the YouTube audience. The joke does not unfold as foreseen. As Hadvar slays the bear rather easily, Gopher picks up and modifies Hadvar’s previous utterance of “I’d rather not tangle with her right now.” It is an example of intertextuality, which uses the in-game dialogue as a resource. However, it is not a simple repetition. Gopher transforms Hadvar’s utterance when he says, “you’d rather not tangle with a bear stuff” (L.9). Gopher is mocking Hadvar’s dialogue. He contrasts the seriousness of Hadvar’s utterance with the ease of the battle. Gopher’s reformulation is embedded between two assessment sequences. Both sequences highlight how quickly Hadvar defeated the bear (L.11 & 14). Moreover, Gopher’s formulation changes the utterance’s direction, voicing and lexical items. The origo and direction changes as Hadvar’s “I” turns into Gopher’s “you” (L.9). The allo-repetition re-uses very similar wording, which creates coherence between Hadvar’s dialogue and Gopher’s response. Gopher’s voicing is alternated and further signals that he uses borrowed material. Gopher distances himself from the concerns originally expressed by Hadvar. The addition of colloquial phrase “bear stuff” downplays the event from a serious encounter to a minor incident. To summarize, Gopher’s synchronous interaction with non-player characters sets up the frame. He is talking the non-player characters as addressees. Within this frame, the dialogue of the non-player character is very important. Gopher gives spoken responses to questions (Extracts 7 & 8). He also shows signs of embodied multi-modal communications (Extract 9), when
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he is interpreting Hadvar’s pointing and repositions Gro Fur accordingly. Gopher picks up utterances and re-contextualizes them as responses. Such stylistic devices signal a high degree of interpersonal involvement with the non-player characters. Not surprisingly, the most common method to refer to non-player characters was the pronoun you or the character’s name. Gopher’s actions and speech suggest that he always has the YouTube audience in mind. There is a theatrical element to his interaction with the non-player characters. It is supposed to be entertaining to watch. Surprisingly, there are very few features that could be attributed to Gro Fur. Some of Gopher’s utterances express a projective stance or embody Gro Fur, but most of the time the register suggests that it is Gopher talking as himself to the non-player characters. Therefore, the third and final version of the diagram will represent this imbalance with the position of the last arrow. The arrow is slightly above the dashed line on the side of Gopher. It symbols the synchronous interaction with the non-player characters.
Fig. 13: Gopher’s interactive participation framework
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7. All frames considered From the start Let’s Plays had to be seen as highly complex phenomena, which consist of several layers. The first few sections established the important background knowledge about Let’s Plays, YouTube and gaming, which proofed to be essential for the subsequent analysis. This allowed to peel the metaphorical onion using Goffman’s concept of participation frameworks and analytical tools from Conversation Analyis and Interactional Sociolinguistics. It uncovered a three-legged participation framework. The current paper showed that it is important to distinguish between defining features of frames the more variable content within frames. The two frame defining features are the synchronicity / asynchronicity of interaction and direction of communication. Gopher’s utterances in the metacommentary frame are self-directed. They occur synchronous to his actions in the settings menu and have a supporting function. The metacommentary frame is the most marginal frame as it is only a means to an end. In comparison the other two frames are more important. The interactions with non-player characters are also synchronous. Gopher immediately reacts to verbal and non-verbal communication. The majority of all interactions take place in this frame. The direction of the communication distinguishes it from the metacommentary frame. Utterances are made towards NPCs and NPCs have symbolic listener roles. The to-YouTube audience communication is the only frame which features asynchronous communication. This is because absence of the audience in the moment of the recording. Often the YouTube audience is the addressee in this frame. In all three frames the YouTube audience is a ratified listener. They are at least overhearers because
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of the configuration of the speech situation. Gopher’s virtual identity Gro Fur influences the content of frames but is never frame defining. In analyzing Gopher’s Let’s Play of Skyrim, the current paper established a solid base for the understanding of interactional practices in Let’s Play videos. Further research will need to address the problem of natural variation in Let’s Play videos. It is possible that individual Let’s Players might behave differently. Moreover, the choice of game is also likely to affect the interactional patterns. Different games have very different genre conventions and features. In that sense, the Let’s Player and the game are two variables. Keeping one variable constant and changing the other will reveal more general implications of the influence of the game’s content and the individual Let’s Player for the Let’s Play commentary.
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