Abstract

The rise of live-streaming platforms, and the related surge in popularity of esports, remind us that there is a politics of watching play. This article extends intensified scholarly interest in game spectatorship, offering a materialist consideration of the embodied work involved in spectating competitive game play. Most readily associated with the discursive alignments between competitive gaming and/as sport, the active camera mode used by esports competitors and “shoutcasters” facilitates analyzing the highly kinetic action of team-based combat in first-person shooters and multiplayer online battle arenas. Here, we draw from microanalyses of audio-visual recordings taken as individual participants spectated a Dota 2 match. Examining the cognitive and perceptual competencies they draw from, we argue that participants are incorporated into apparatuses of perception associated with militarized optical media. While at a discursive level esports spectators may be watching sports, at a material level they are playing with the logics of drones.

中文翻译：

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行动之上：观看《 Dota 2》的文化政治

摘要

直播平台的兴起以及电子竞技的普及激增，提醒我们观看比赛是一种政治。本文扩展了学术界对游戏观众的兴趣，为观看竞争性游戏所涉及的具体工作提供了唯物主义的考虑。与竞争性游戏和/或体育运动中的辩论路线最容易相关联的是，电子竞技竞争对手和“大喊大叫”使用的主动摄像头模式有助于分析在第一人称射击和多人在线战斗区域中基于团队的战斗的高度动力学行为。在这里，我们从视听录音的微观分析中得出，这些视听录音是由单个参与者观看Dota 2拍摄的比赛。检查他们从中获得的认知和感知能力，我们认为参与者被纳入了与军事化光学媒体相关的感知设备。尽管在话语层面上，电子竞技观众可能在观看体育比赛，但在物质层面上，他们却在玩无人机的逻辑。