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Liking the game

CitationSjöblom, M., Hassan, L., Macey, J., Törhönen, M., & Hamari, J. (2018). Liking the game: How can spectatingmotivations influence social media usage at live esports events? In Proceedings of the 9th InternationalConference on Social Media and Society, SMSociety 2018 (pp. 160-167). ACM.https://doi.org/10.1145/3217804.3217908Year2018

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Published inProceedings of the 9th International Conference on Social Media and Society, SMSociety 2018

DOI10.1145/3217804.3217908

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https://doi.org/10.1145/3217804.3217908


https://doi.org/10.1145/3217804.3217908

Liking the Game: Social Media Usage at Live Esports Events SMSociety, July 2018, Copenhagen, Denmark

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Liking the Game: How Can Spectating Motivations Influence Social Media Usage at Live Esports Events?

Max Sjö blöm

Tampere University of Technology Gamification Group Tampere, Finland

[email protected]

Löbna Hassan

University of Tampere Gamification Group Tampere, Finland

[email protected]

Jöseph Macey


[email protected]

Maria Tö rhö nen


[email protected]

Juhö Hamari

Tampere University of Technology Gamification Group Tampere, Finland

[email protected]

ABSTRACT

There is no doubt that various social media services shape the ways in which we approach our daily lives. The ubiquitous nature of these services, afforded by mobile devices, means that we can take them with us wherever we go including when we attend live events. Uncovering why individuals use social media during live events can help improve their organization, marketing, and the experiences of attendees. Our understanding of the motivations for using social media during live events is, however, still lacking in depth, especially in regard to emerging live events such as esports. This study aims to answer the question: what motivates the use of social media during live eSports events? Data was gathered via a survey (N=255) at the Assembly 2016 LAN-event, a major live esports event. We examine the relationships between using various social media services and the motivations for esports spectating, through the Motivation Scale for Sports Consumption. While the results indicate that using social media services while attending Assembly 2016 was quite popular, it seemed that in many cases social media usage was a distraction from esports spectating, a core activity of the event. The results provide implications as to how marketers of live esports events should encourage or control usage of social media by attendees.

CCS CONCEPTS

• Information systems➝Social networks • Human-centered

computing➝Social media • Networks➝Social media networks

KEYWORDS

social media, live events, esports, sports consumption, motivation

ACM Reference format:

Max Sjöblom, Lobna Hassan, Joseph Macey, Maria Törhönen, and Juho Hamari. 2018. Liking the Game: How Can Spectating Motivations Influence Social Media Usage at Live Esports Events? In Proceedings of the International Conference on Social Media & Society, Copenhagen, Denmark (SMSociety). DOI:

1 INTRODUCTION

With the advent of social media, the lines between creator, marketer, and consumer have become increasingly blurred. Individual consumers can simultaneously play both roles and find the channels through which they most prefer to play these roles, challenging the traditional views of not only media creation and consumption [17, 46], but additionally those of services and product marketing [52]. Smartphones and ubiquitous computing increase the impact of these changes as users of social media now enjoy virtually unlimited access, including at times and in places where that usage may not be prominently expected [43], for example during live events [3]. Observing these trends, marketers intensively employ social media channels to advertise their products, services and events to current and future consumers. Event organizers are increasingly seen to utilize social media users as co-marketers of their events by encouraging them to use specific hashtags [4, 11, 47], share photos or videos [42, 61], or to invite their friends to online media pages [15, 34]. Looking at these practices through the lens of word of mouth marketing, they are a means to rely on cönsumers’ önline wörds

SMSociety, July 2018, Copenhagen, Denmark Sjöblom, Hassan, Macey, Törhönen & Hamari

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and reviews to advertise products or services instead of, or alongside, traditional media channels such as TV and newspapers [13, 23, 29]. As confirmed by previous work, social media marketing practices appear at times to be very effective in getting brands, products and events to become viral [13, 52] increasingly driving marketers to utilize these practices. Höwever, individuals’ use of social media, either organically or under the influence of event marketers, is a very interesting phenomenon when the individuals are present at a live event. The intersection of live events and social media has been studied, in one form or another, within the contexts of concerts [3], political events [35, 53, 61], sports events [22, 24, 30] and even cultural experiences [59]. Social media and politics have also been investigated in more general contexts [14, 20, 35, 47]. One of the primary reasons individuals attend live events is to be immersed in an activity relating to their interests, to the exclusion of other activities during such moments [49]. After all, individuals have voluntarily invested their time, and possibly money, to attend these live events, as such some dedication to being fully present and immersed in the attended event is to be expected. Yet, even during such events, individuals are still observed to intensely utilize social media channels [e.g. 1, 17, 21], raising the question of why that is the case and whether these tools add to the experience of being at a live event or subtract from it. When individuals voluntarily buy a product, a service, or attend a live event, it is to gain some form of value. Similarly, when individuals use social media during a live event, it can be assumed that the behavior occurs in order to gain a certain value. The theoretical framework of uses and gratifications states that the media user, as an active participant, seeks out media that provides a certain gratification, rather than being a passive pawn in the cogs of media [28, 60]. Given the instant and ubiquitous nature of social media, how and when the user interacts with social media impacts the type of content the user produces, how content produced by others is perceived, and which type of content is sought. Understanding why individuals use social media in virtually any context is important as it could help in better understanding consumers and how to design products, services and events that best suit their needs [14, 33, 44]. Furthermore, this knowledge has immediate practical implications for marketers and organizers of live events who could use it to effectively plan a strategy for social media usage during live events, including which social media channels would best fulfil the needs of attendees. Understanding the motivations for social media usage is especially significant for emerging live events such as

esports, where such an understanding is still absent [55]. Esports is defined as a form of sports where play is “facilitated by electrönic systems” and where the input of players and teams as well as the output of the esports system are mediated by human-computer interfaces [10, p. 211]. The same technological advances that have paved the way for social media have also brought many previously niche phenomena into the mainstream [5, 32]. Live esports events have become a popular part of the culture centred around competitive gaming, commonly attracting tens of thousands of attendees [6, 7, 19, 25, 48], along with hundreds of thousands of online spectators. The Assembly computer culture event takes place twice yearly, and the summer event is the largest annual gathering of game and computer enthusiasts in Finland [1]. Esports is a highly interesting context for studying live event social media usage, as the core audience of esports is predominantly young people, who are likely to be avid social media users [37]. In addition, the fact that esports is primarily broadcast through various internet services means the internet & media services are an integral part of the esports media landscape. Despite the importance of media convergence related to consumption of esports events, whether online or live attendance, and the role of such factors as social media in the waxing and waning of its popularity, current research has not adequately addressed these issues. This study investigates the practices of using social media while attending live esports events in order to understand organization and spectatorship of these events, and to draw transferable conclusions as to why social media are consumed during competitive gaming events. The aim of this research is to provide an answer to the question: What motivates the use of social media during live esports events? We do this through looking at one particular esports event (Assembly Summer 2016) and how the motivations for spectating esports at said event relate to the usage of various forms of social media. This provides not only interesting insights into the nature of spectating gameplay in live attendance, but also helps guide further research into social media usage on a wider scale, applicable to other types of live events. This understanding could allow organizers of such events to better serve the attendees and to understand the social media channels they should target in the marketing of their events.

2 Methodology

2.1 Sampling

This study employs a self-selected convenience sample of responses collected at the LAN event Assembly [1]


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Summer 2016, between the 4th and 7th of August 2016. As an incentive to participate respondents were offered the opportunity to be entered into a raffle for six gift certificates from the Steam webstore, each worth 50 euros. Event attendees were approached as they passed from one hall to another, and asked to participate in the survey. Respondents that chose to complete the survey did so immediately at a table set up for this purpose, rather than filling in the survey and returning it later. A total of 281 responses were received and after removing surveys with missing or invalid data, a total of 255 responses were recorded. The demographic details of the respondents are displayed in Table 1. Respondents reported having attended an average of 6.4 live esports events lifetime (Mdn = 2, SD = 19.7). The sample had a strong bias towards male viewers, with 79.2% being male, closely resembling the estimates for gender distribution among esports fans, as provided by third-party analytics [37]. The Finnish context of study is also highly relevant for the study of social media usage, something that is highly driven by mobile devices. The penetration of mobile devices and mobile internet in Finland is extremely high, particularly among young people [39].

Table 1. Demographic information for study respondents

Factor Value

Age (years) Mean 22.69

SD 6.53

Sex Male 79.2%

Female 18.4%

Other 1.6%

Not disclosed 0.8%

Hours played per

week

Mean 22.83

SD 19.60

2.2 Measurement

Survey respondents were asked if they either do, or do not follow seven predetermined social media services during the event, along with a write-in option. The same format was used to ask about posting to social media services. The approach of analyzing social media usage is twofold. Firstly, we report the descriptive statistics of social media usage amongst event attendees, including

separate investigations into following said social media, and posting content. Secondly, we investigate how sports spectating motivations [9, 50] reflect upon social media usage, using the Motivation Scale for Sports Consumption [51]. The Motivation Scale for Sports Consumption (MSSC) comprises 10 distinct scales of spectating motivation: vicarious achievement (VA), aesthetics (AES), drama (DRA), escapism (ESC), acquisition of knowledge (KNO), appreciation of skill (SKI), social interaction (SOC), physical attractiveness (ATTR), novelty (NOV) and enjoyment of aggression (AGGR). The MSSC shares many commonalities with scales used in traditional media research, such as those employed within the uses and gratifications theoretical framework [28] and is, therefore, well suited to investigating motives not purely related to sports spectatorship, but also to wider media usage. The MSSC was supplemented with a novel scale reflecting gambling motivations (GAMB) in an effort to build a better understanding of the prevalence of gambling within esports. Furthermore, it addresses a shortcoming of the MSSC which currently lacks any reference to gambling as a motivator for consumption, an association which has been highlighted previously [27, 40]. GAMB included the three items which constitute the “ecönömic” cönstruct of the Sports Fan Motivation Scale [56, 58], the individual items were adapted by directly substituting “espörts” in place öf “spörts” in the öriginal items. A föurth item was developed which reflected the structure of the initial items while addressing the core motivation of winning money, an aspect validated by several previous studies [18, 31].

2.3 Validity & reliability

A randomization of psychometric items was performed ön the survey, tö limit the respöndent’s ability tö detect patterns between the items [10], thereby reducing the chance of common method bias [41]. The analysis in this study was performed using the structural equation modelling software SmartPLS 3.2.6 [45]. Structural modeling is considered the de facto analysis method for models involving latent variables that are psychometric [45]. Pair-wise deletion of missing data was used in order to maintain a high level of reliability within the data. Internal consistency was assessed through the Cronbach’s Alpha, Cömpösite Reliability (CR) and Average Variance Extracted (AVE) measures. These were all above the recommended thresholds [16, 38], and thus we can conclude that internal consistency for the model was met. These calculations are displayed below in Table 2. Discriminant validity was also met, with the square root


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of the AVE for each of the constructs being higher than the correlation for any other construct [8, 16, 26].

Table 2. MSSC constructs validity calculations

Construct Cronbach's Alpha CR AVE

VA .818 .895 .741

AES .788 .881 .714

DRA .701 .798 .507

ESC .746 .854 .665

KNO .801 .885 .721

SKI .767 .866 .684

SOC .900 .941 .842

ATTR .710 .833 .626

NOV .821 .895 .740

AGGR .780 .858 .604

GAMB* .851 .901 .695

Note: * indicates new construct added

3 RESULTS

Initial descriptive results indicate that the most followed social media are Twitch (37.4% reported using this service), Twitter (35.6%), Facebook (35.1%), messaging services (18.4%), reddit (16.1%), Instagram (14.4%) and Snapchat (6.3%). However, different services were found to be popular in regard to posting content: messaging services (29.9%), Facebook (23.0%), Twitter (21.4%), Snapchat (20.1%), Twitch (17.8%), Instagram (9.2%) and reddit (6.3%). The measured motivations for spectating explained variance among posting to social media as follows: Facebook 4.3%, Instagram 9.4%, messaging services 9.5%, reddit 5.2%, Snapchat 15.6%, Twitch 6.5% and Twitter 7.4%. Regression analysis revealed that for posting to social media (Table 3), appreciation of aggression was pösitively assöciated with Snapchat usage (β = .230**), social motivations positively associated with reddit usage (β = .179**) and escapism negatively associated with Instagram usage (β = -.142*). The 11 motivations accounted for the following amounts of variance for each social media service followed by respondents (Table 3): Facebook 11.4%; Instagram 10.4%; messaging services 8.2%; reddit 8.8%; Snapchat 11.5%; Twitch 7.8%; and, Twitter 5.1%. In regard to following social media, positive associations were found for: aesthetics and Facebook usage (β = .171*); acquisition of knowledge and reddit

(β = .168*); social motivations with messaging services (β = .196**); Snapchat (β = .188*); and, enjoyment of aggressiön with Snapchat (β = .146*). Negative associations were found for: gambling and messaging services (β = -.158*); appreciation of drama and Instagram usage (β = -.193*); social motivations and Twitch usage (β = -.171*); and, skill appreciation with Faceböök usage (β = -.245**).

4 Discussion

The PLS analysis revealed that the motivations for spectating esports do not explain a significant percentage of the usage of the social media services studied in this paper. This was true for both following and posting to social media, but especially for posting, where the variance explained was low for most services. This is unsurprising as the reasons for using social media services are sure to be manifold, and not simply explained by one activity or hobby of the user. On a general level, we can see that deriving large scale conclusions in regard to social media usage during live events simply from the perspective of spectating motivations is a tricky task. As social media usage has become a notable aspect of everyday life, and a primary form of communication among many young people, the importance of social media at live events is bound to be significant, but concurrently also difficult to pinpoint. As is perhaps to be expected, the low levels of variance explained among services also translates to only a handful of significant results, as seen in Tables 3 and 4. These results do, however, give us important food for thought. As Quan-Haase & Young [44] indicate, social media channels often do not replace one another and individuals continue to use multiple channels as they provide them with different types of gratifications. As such, what is interesting is the differences in the variance explained among the services, serving as a way to distinguish between the popularity of social media services among live event attendees, one that does not simply look at the reported popularity of said services. Additionally, these differences can potentially reveal the differing forms of gratification afforded to social media users. Among the results for following social media, the variance explained is slightly higher for Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat, partially following similar trends for posting to social media services, as discussed previously. The difference here is the substitution of Facebook in place of messaging services, perhaps due to the simple reason that pages and events on Facebook are möre easily “föllöwable” than through messaging


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services, where the usage is most often two-way communication between individuals or small groups.


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Table 3. PLS-analysis of spectating motivations and posting to social media (* p < .05, ** p < .001)

Facebook Instagram Messaging reddit Snapchat Twitch Twitter

R2 .043 .094 .095 .052 .156 .065 .074

β p β p β p β p β p β p β p

VA .035 .685 .026 .703 .087 .237 -.044 .503 .052 .376 .042 .546 .129 .082

AES .023 .781 -.043 .635 -.009 .911 -.083 .268 -.093 .176 .067 .366 .063 .446

DRA -.138 .144 -.117 .344 -.042 .599 -.063 .588 -.055 .588 -.056 .547 -.168 .107

ESC .010 .901 -.142* .036 -.030 .668 .001 .987 -.105 .109 -.125 .119 -.074 .376

KNO -.094 .294 .013 .873 .128 .064 .067 .340 .082 .318 .106 .148 .060 .425

SKI .031 .744 .148 .117 .034 .694 .121 .113 .011 .909 -.022 .811 -.025 .798

SOC .014 .854 .132 .070 .082 .265 .179** .001 .077 .235 .089 .182 .131 .075

ATTR .097 .203 .072 .344 -.072 .346 .018 .861 -.015 .839 .033 .705 -.098 .149

NOV .091 .256 .032 .664 .129 .075 -.002 .983 .051 .433 -.036 .623 .048 .513

AGGR -.077 .393 -.029 .699 .034 .672 -.065 .339 .230** .001 -.014 .863 -.027 .771

GAM -.013 .868 .137 .083 .007 .935 .088 .352 .137 .097 .127 .108 -.050 .501

Table 4. PLS-analysis of spectating gratifications and following social media (* p < .05, ** p < .001)

Facebook Instagram Messaging reddit Snapchat Twitch Twitter

R2 .114 .104 .082 .078 .115 .078 .051

β p β p β p β p β p β p β p

VA .016 .839 .035 .582 .081 .275 -.046 .504 .016 .782 .038 .629 .060 .447

AES .171* .005 .084 .239 .051 .503 -.223* .002 .020 .761 .092 .236 -.022 .764

DRA -.077 .338 -.192* .035 -.124 .183 .072 .409 -.146 .168 -.018 .815 -.004 .966

ESC .034 .594 -.087 .174 .003 .969 .034 .605 -.084 .227 -.014 .844 -.047 .580

KNO .121 .135 .117 .087 .005 .953 .168* .009 .109 .074 .080 .334 .153 .062

SKI -.242* .007 -.049 .594 .090 .228 -.034 .681 .002 .980 .096 .243 -.171 .057

SOC .095 .180 .103 .135 .196* .004 .081 .237 .188* .002 -.171* .021 .046 .559

ATTR .052 .423 .080 .254 .007 .923 -.045 .590 .037 .647 .034 .641 .089 .269

NOV -.033 .659 .081 .237 -.054 .507 .035 .662 .014 .835 .113 .131 .087 .261

AGGR .015 .847 -.009 .899 .029 .742 .151 .046 .146* .030 .026 .758 -.003 .973

GAM .090 .262 .048 .515 -.157* .017 -.048 .535 -.011 .885 .135 .093 -.082 .317


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Previous research comparing Facebook and messaging [44] supports this explanation as it has indicated that both methods of communication provide users with similar kinds of gratifications in terms of learning about social events and staying in touch with friends. However, the use of messaging appears to be geared more towards forming and maintaining deeper social connections through e.g., discussion of personal matters, while Facebook is more of a platform for coordinating social outings. As such, the potential gratifications Facebook provides offer its users increased value relative to messaging in the context of attending live events. For posting to social media, three statistically significant associations were found. Enjoyment of aggression was positively associated with usage of Snapchat, and we believe this could to be attributed to a few reasons. First, the ephemeral nature of Snapchat coupled with the focus on sharing and viewing short videos and photographs means that interaction through Snapchat can be very short and intense [2, 54], fitting well with the fast pace that can be seen as a facilitator for aggressive and boisterous behavior in eSports. As there is not much physical aggression present in eSports compared to traditional sports, where aggression is a very significant motivator among many spectators [12, 50, 57], we believe that the general boisterous attitude of players is a major contributing factor to experiencing play as being aggressive. This appreciation of boisterous or aggressive behavior can then easily be shared through Snapchat to enhance existing relationships both between the players and spectators, and amongst the spectators [2, 54]. Interestingly, social aspects, which could be considered one of the primary forces behind using social media, only showed a statistically significant association with one service, namely reddit. Through the usage of a large scale social media such as reddit, users can connect with others that share common interests, via internal niche communities referred to as subreddits. These message board type communities are commonly centered around a particular topic, which in the case of esports can be an individual game title or similar. For example, the popular esports titles League of Legends, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Hearthstone all have substantial presences on reddit, with subreddits having between 600 000 and 1 500 000 subscribers each. The significance of the association between social motivations and reddit use, we believe, lies in the opportunity to connect with the larger esports community. This is particularly interesting when considering live events, as they already afford attendees a heightened possibility to socialize face-to-face with

new acquaintances or people they already[49]. This observed concurrent usage of social media for socialization during live events can, perhaps, be seen as a complimentary social activity. That is, that it does not constitute a primary means of socializing with close friends, but rather a way to connect with a large, global community outside the physical boundaries of the live event. The third statistically significant association was observed between escapism and posting on Instagram. Experiencing escapism during a live event requires the spectator to significantly immerse themselves in the action and atmosphere around them in order to forget about other outside realities. Adversely, using a service such as Instagram, where posting images can require a considerable amount of thought, can lessen the degree of immersion which an individual experiences at a live event. For following social media services, we found a higher number of statistically significant results than for posting to social media services. This is perhaps not unexpected as, despite most social media users being both consumer and producer, simply consuming social media requires less active effort than producing. The positive associations between social motivations and the usage of both messaging services and Snapchat indicate similar tendencies toward the maintenance of social interactions with close friends while attending a live event. As both of these services facilitate one-to-one and one-to-many communication they can serve as a way of connecting both with friends taking part in the event, as well as friends who are not in attendance. Additionally, as viewers might not be able to talk effectively during the event, messaging services can serve as a substitute for verbal communication, a form of back-channel communication. The motivations for using Snapchat as related to enjoyment of aggression follow similar patterns as discussed previously in the context of posting content to Snapchat. Acquisition of knowledge being positively associated with the use of reddit is not surprising, as reddit discussion threads can be focused on very specific things which may be just what is needed when looking to learn more about a particular game or topic of interest. Furthermore, the ability to combine textual comments while simultaneously linking to audiovisual content can be a powerful tool for facilitating information sharing during live events. The positive association of appreciation of aesthetics with the usage of Facebook is interesting, as even though Facebook does present information in a highly visual way, so do many other types of social media. As such, we are unable to extrapolate a clear explanation


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for this association based on the current knowledge of social media and esports live spectating. However, the negative association between aesthetics and reddit is quite naturally explained by the fact that the majority of content produced on reddit is textual, even though many discussions on reddit are based on audiovisual media from other sources. Thus, the content presented on reddit may not be visually pleasing and, as such, people driven by aesthetic motivations are not gratified by using reddit. The negative association between gambling and the usage of messaging services can be explained by gambling being quite an individualistic activity, one in which intrapersonal communication may not be extremely relevant. Important social interaction may instead take place in larger social settings where both positive and negative gambling outcomes could be communicated. The negative association shown between drama and Instagram usage may be a sign that spectators who are driven by drama follow the live action so closely and intensely that using such a service would distract from the dramatic live experience. While Twitch is undoubtedly an important social media platform in the world of esports [7], the social interaction afforded by Twitch does not seem to gratify live attendees of esports events. While Twitch does supply viewers with content, the social aspects of using Twitch are perhaps not relevant while attending a live event. It seems likely that spectators would rather interact with others at the event rather than socialize online, even via a platform that is dedicated to their interests. The negative association shown between appreciation of skill and Facebook usage indicates that esports content on Facebook does not gratify the appreciation of skill. Content on Facebook is in general more closely related to acquaintances and friends, rather than dedicated content on a particular topic in the same way as reddit and subreddits. Thus, Facebook may not serve a relevant role for the appreciation of skill while attending a live esports event but is potentially a distraction in that regard.

5 Limitations

This study focused on sports-related consumption motivations, and as such, may not be applicable in all wider contexts of social media live-usage inquiry. Additionally, it is worth noting that Assembly 2016 is a massive LAN-event rather than a dedicated esports event. Hence, were one to study a purely esports-related event, such as the League of Legends world championships, the results might differ. As with any survey conducted at a particular event, the results are

mainly indicative of spectators and social media users in Finland, and thus cultural difference is something that this study is unable to highlight. Further studies might take this into consideration when examining the subject. We believe that further research into both social media use at live events, as well as general studies into mega-LAN events, should look deeper into the usage patterns of attendees. We approached the topic at a high level of abstraction through the use of a psychometric survey, but other approaches that could be extremely valuable are: tracking the activities and their share of the users’ time during the event, interviewing users, and using screen-tracking when investigating social media and smartphone usage during an event.

6 Conclusions

This study investigated how 255 attendees at the Assembly 2016 LAN-event used social media services, and how this related to spectating motivations measured by the MSSC. Our study aimed to serve as a base for further inquiry into the topic of how people use social media while attending events, or so-called live usage of social media. Our results indicate that this is a complex task to undertake, and our results are not conclusive. However, a simple fact that can be obtained from these results is that a large number of event attendees use social media during the event, and also that a variety of different media services are used. This is something that event organizers are already taking into account, for example in their marketing [46] efforts, but also something that could be further developed to increase attendee engagement with the event itself [3]. As spectating play is a highly social activity, this also reflects on the spectators of said games, showing them to be active users and followers of social media, adding to the broader picture in which gameplay and spectatorship are a reflection of the social self. The results also showed that the usage of social media during events is not purely a positive act, as some relations showed the potential for social media to distract from the event itself. An interesting revelation is that Twitch, a social media that could be perceived as a primary means of engaging those people interested in games, does not rank very highly when considering the motivational factors for spectating. This might be explained by the simple fact that as Twitch is a media form that primarily serves live video, attendees at a live event are already getting their fill of direct game content and would rather use their social media resources to engage with other types of content.


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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The research has been carried out as part of research projects (40009/16 & 40111/14) funded by the Finnish Funding Agency for Innovation (TEKES). In addition, this research was supported by grants from The Finnish Foundation for Alcohol Studies and the Finnish foundation for economic education (10-5562 and 12-6385).

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