Twitch.tv – Live Streaming Between Videogames and Cinematographic Experiences in an Archaeological Media Perspective

Abstract

As several studies have shown (including Taylor, 2018; Gandolfi, 2020), Twitch.tv is a streaming
platform with a strong intermedial connotation, which, recently, has increasingly contributed to
renegotiating the places and practices of consumption of a heterogeneous plethora of content.
Starting from this consideration, in this article we will mainly attempt to analyse live Let’s Play sessions,
a predominant type of game videos on the platform, through the lenses of remediation (Bolter &
Grusin, 1999) and relocation (Casetti, 2015) of cinematic experiences. To this end, the following analysis
will focus on tracing some convergences between the two media practices and the spaces connected
to them, especially delving into the recurrence of a key figure of the cinema of attractions, the barker.
The purpose, therefore, is to highlight, within media-archaeological research, the ability of the digital
age to reintroduce media structures of the past (such as those of the early cinema) under the changed
and intermedial facies of an apparently different phenomena such as the Internet game videos.