Assembling a Fictive Personality

Game live streams are quickly becoming a primary form of entertainment, and represent assemblages of communities, cultures, and technologies. In streaming, broadcasters become intermediaries between game producers and consumers, and interlocutors for what it means to be someone who plays games. A growing element of live streaming as a cultural practice is the use of digital avatars which stand in for physical presence (often otherwise achieved through webcam captures). These digital avatar streamers are colloquially referred to as ‘VTubers’. Previous work indicates that this can be a form of identity play, allowing individuals to try on assumed personalities which allows streamers to challenge and transform aspects of the self. However, related work indicates that there is often a high degree of sexualization of broadcasters, in part due to the way that these attitudes carry over from the fan communities associated with gaming and fandom. The sociality of VTubing is also changed, since the VTuber is interacting with fans in ways that may depersonalize them, and change the perception of boundaries that their viewers may have with a physical representation of a streamer. Much of the work that’s been done has focused on VTubers who are supported by a studio systems, which will often take care of both the technological and community issues associated with the practice, as well as structuring the production of the stream (e.g. choosing games to play and activities to engage with their community). However, over the past five years independent VTubers who aren’t supported by a studio have become increasingly common. The goal of this work is to understand the perspective of independent VTubers through a grounded study of a support and social forum for VTubers. The paper reports on preliminary results of this work, comprising content analysis and analytic coding of 3 weeks of the forum. The findings indicate three primary themes: The fictive elements of a character are crucial to the practice of a VTuber. This is often epitomized in a “debut” stream, which sets out the individual character of the avatar, embodying their on-screen personality. Finding an audience that matches with the goals of this fictive personification is of high importance. VTubing is seen as a fairly saturated market, even beyond the saturation of streaming itself, and new broadcasters often struggle to find this community. There are technological concerns of how the character is assembled into a pleasing and attractive package that includes not only the avatar, but all elements of the stream and the satellite social sites that support the community. This must align with the vision that the broadcaster has of their fictive personality and their imagined community. The talk will outline these themes, relate them to current theory, and describe next steps as this analysis fits into a multi-study research program. The talk will seek connections with other researchers working on transformative topics in game culture studies, and situate VTubing within this body of scholarship.