3

STREAMING TRANSFORMS DISABILITY IDENTITIES

VIDEO GAMES CHANGE IDENTITIES. THEY CONSTRUCT WAYS OF perceiving the self and others. Ability machines create new abilities, and these abilities alter self-perception of identities. In other words, games magnify players’ abilities in ways not unlike bicycles or even cars. Bicycles and cars influence where people can live, where they can work, or how much energy they must expend to participate in leisure activities. They change what it feels like to be an independent body with the will to move. They allow people to take more with them to any given location. They structure commutes, exercises, and nights out bar hopping. Bicycles and cars require particular abilities to operate, and they increase the scope of abilities once operable. Similarly, the previous chapter discussed how video games gatekeep ability and how games can partially eliminate some of the barriers of entry for players with disabilities. This chapter looks at the other side of the same coin: how video games expand the abilities, and by extension the identities, of people with disabilities. In other words, the identity construct of “disability,” “disabled,” or “person with a disability,” fundamentally shifts when partnered with an identity enhanced through the abilities video games offer. All of this is to say that games change the meaning of the word “disability.”

Nowhere do these magnified abilities become more jaw-dropping than in speedrunning. While most readers should be familiar with e-sports, or head-to-head video game competition, speedrunning is all about the individual facing off against a game and trying to complete that game as quickly as possible. Disabled gamers are not excluded from speedrunning: in fact, there are disabled gamers on speedrunning leaderboards. For example, the preceding interview introduced the accessibility consultant, disabled game streamer, and competitive speedrunner Clinton “halfcoordinated” Lexa. Clinton has a physical disability called “hemiparesis,” which significantly lowers the sense of feeling and coordination on the right side of the body. Therefore, to play video games, Clinton plays with only their left hand using a typical two-handed game controller. Clinton has speedrun several games, appeared on speedrunning leaderboards, and participated in nine Games Done Quick events all while using only their left hand. And if you were to look up a video of one of Clinton’s streams, especially a stream that includes video footage of their left hand controlling the game, I suspect you would be more than impressed. It is amazing to watch any speedrunner. But add to that the difficulty of working around hardware not designed for single-hand use, and what you see is often impossible to describe. It is like watching magic. It is Olympian-level skill on display.

Clinton participated in 2017’s Awesome Games Done Quick as the opening run of the event. After another prominent speedrunner donated to the event’s sponsored charity, Clinton makes what seems to be a throwaway comment but reveals the premise of this chapter in only eight words. With the partial smile that anticipates the lighthearted sarcasm to follow, they comment on that speedrunner’s abilities: “[He] uses two hands, but he’s still really good.” Another streamer’s comment later reemphasized the point: “Shout outs to halfcoordinated and every other disabled streamer out there. You’re proof that, even though it raises the difficulty setting, our dreams are still reachable.” Both statements point to the fact that disabled gamers, especially public-facing gamers who use live game streaming platforms such as Twitch.tv, seem to transcend the ability matrix. Their abilities make them more than just gamers or streamers. Their gaming also alters what their disabilities mean to them and others.

This chapter examines how game streamers with disabilities describe their coalescing identities. In other words, the questions at hand all deal with disability as an identity and how it interacts with ability machines. How do the identities of “game streamer” and “person with a disability” change upon fusing? How do disabled gamers view their abilities differently when games expand their skills, especially when on display while streaming? How does gaming change what a “disabled identity” means? And, conversely, how does a disability change a “gaming identity”? The nature of video games as a physically demanding technology lends it a transformative power when employed by people whose abilities are both challenged and expanded by them.

“Gamers” and Streaming

The term “gamer” is conflicted, contested, iconic, widely used, and evidence of a unique identity that accompanies avid participation in gaming as a hobby. The term, as used, often appears as the punchline of a joke just as often as it is used seriously. “Gamer” exists in the same category as “foodie” or “cinephile.” It denotes snobbery to an extent, but perhaps more salient to the chapter topic is how “gamer” evokes a particular image of which bodies “belong” in gaming culture. If I were to ask one of my classes to describe what they would call a typical “foodie,” they might describe a particularly hip, well-dressed (but not overly formal), relatively young person. If I were to press them on that question in order to tease out some of the implications of their description regarding, say, race, they might admit that the image they conjured might include or exclude particular identities. To be blunt, when the term “foodie” is used, is a person of color what comes to mind? Why or why not? When we use terms like “cinephile,” “foodie,” “gamer,” or other descriptors of avid participants in a hobby, who is included or excluded?

“Gamer” is a tricky term because the image it may conjure in many people’s minds is white, male, young, straight, cisgender, and able-bodied. There is nothing wrong with those identities: I am indeed a straight, white, cisgender person with no disabilities. But there is something wrong with how that term subtly, almost invisibly, excludes people from gaming culture. For instance, not everybody who plays video games would describe themselves as a gamer.¹ My wife destroys me in Mario Kart 8, and she has made it through three recent Tomb Raider games to near 100 percent completion. But she doesn’t call herself a gamer: a violinist, yes; a nurse, yes; a mother, yes. But not a gamer. Unlike an ethnic, racial, career, or even disability-based identity, a gamer identity is “voluntary and less clear-cut,” and “people who use digital games can easily claim they are not gamers.”² However, there are some implicit assumptions that come with the term “gamer”: gaming, as a hobby, has historical associations with masculinity and heterosexuality, and a supposedly “authentic” gamer would be a “young and tech-savvy male” with gaming habits that prove their “true” or “genuine” appreciation of the hobby.³ The image the term “gamer” conjures (in general, young, male, heterosexual, white) does not accurately represent who actually plays games.⁴ The reality is much more boring and reassuring: most people, regardless of race, gender, sexuality, or age, play digital games—whether on a console or simply on their smartphone.

Two key phenomena make video games ability machines for identities. The first phenomenon is how the term “gamer” requires a struggle for authenticity, or the burden it places on players to label themselves as “true” gamers. In other words, the real battle the term “gamer” is fighting is that of authenticity and exclusion. Who is an “authentic” gamer? Who truly “belongs”? While the obvious answer should be “anybody who wants to,” that is not the case with gaming or many other pursuits, be they casual or professional. Pierre Bourdieu targeted this phenomenon with his dissection of taste, authenticity, and what he termed “cultural capital,” and Mia Consalvo extends his arguments with the concept of “gaming capital.”⁵ Put simply, gamers build their authenticity through their performance of the hobby, and it is a site of constant struggle and negotiation. And within it are hierarchies and histories, as well as exclusions and snobbery. A nongaming example might prove useful here. Imagine a large gathering, like a convention, for avid road bike enthusiasts. Their bikes often cost thousands of dollars, and they spend several hours a day riding, racing, and working to become better cyclists. And now imagine entering that convention, and the cyclists ask you questions like “What is your bike?” or “Who designed your bike?” or “What kind of shoes do you use?” or “How long have you been cycling?” If your answers do not prove your authenticity, they might turn their noses up at you, roll their eyes, begin patronizing you, or simply ignore you. That gatekeeping behavior is the process of seeking out or proving authenticity. The TV show Community demonstrates this process when a character somewhat accusingly refers to Dave Matthews Band: “Real fans call him Dave.” Real fans, true cyclists, or authentic gamers, all are demonstrating the same type of identity formation and gatekeeping.

The second phenomenon that suggests that ability machines manufacture identity is how games act as a site for identity formation, negotiation, and transgression. For example, video games are often a place where people can experiment and perform various identities, such as embodying the identities of game avatars.⁶ One interesting study provides evidence to suggest that gender identity may emerge through gameplay choices regardless of the game avatar’s gender, thus making digital games both reflective of players’ identities as well as a place to play and shape identities.⁷ As a personal aside, I play games as a female character if I am given the choice, and my play style often leans toward collaboration and avoiding physical violence (such as in stealthy and nonlethal takedowns of enemies). While I identify as cisgender, male, and straight, I often push against masculine gender norms in other areas of my life. And I ask myself how much of that pushback in the “real” world stems from first playing with gender identity in video games. Single-player games especially are a safe place for many people to liberate themselves from the undesired cultural restrictions of various identities.

Keeping these two phenomena in mind—the first being authenticity or gaming capital and the second being gaming as a site of identity negotiation, formation, and transgression—the recent and meteoric rise of video game live streaming in the last decade has changed what gaming is, how gamers build their gaming capital to prove their authenticity, and how players may negotiate their other identities through streaming. While there are several platforms that support game live streaming, none are as ubiquitous as Twitch.tv. Twitch receives many millions of viewers per day, and millions more streamers provide a seemingly infinite variety of gaming (and recently nongaming) content to watch. The site includes a fair number of disabled streamers, and many disabled streamers rely on streaming as their sole, or at least primary, source of real-world income.⁸ While the barrier of entry is low, consistent live streaming is an intensely demanding form of media production that requires theatricality, performance, and emotional investment from its broadcasters.⁹ Put simply, game streaming combines the connectivity and interaction of social media with the intense demands on time and physicality of more traditional forms of broadcast entertainment.¹⁰

Game streaming is just as physically demanding, if not more so, than gaming without an audience. From my own experience with streaming, there is a lot of physical work that goes into positioning monitors and microphones, framing myself in the camera’s video feed, and managing the streaming software, all before even starting up a game and exhausting myself talking to viewers (typically my students, when I live stream a game for class). Just as with all digital games, these physical demands seem to conflict with the nature of disability. But streamers with disabilities stream and play regardless, often using the platform to discuss how their disabilities affect their identities as gamers, and vice versa.¹¹ The most successful of which appear to be highly skilled at the games they play as well as at navigating the streaming landscape.

Streaming, Disability, and Identity Negotiation

It is therefore reasonable to assume that game streaming is a method of building and maintaining gaming capital, thereby reinforcing a player’s status as a gamer. For groups historically ignored or underserved in gaming culture, including queer players, women, people of color, and—salient to this chapter—players with disabilities, game streaming may be an outlet to legitimize their place in gaming culture. Note that this cultural requirement of legitimization is not ideal, and I am not arguing that it is healthy. Instead, I acknowledge that it simply takes place, just as it does in any hobby built on taste, hierarchies, and exclusion (such as in cycling, mentioned above). As a related example, in a study of gay gamers, one researcher found that in-game representations are far less important than simply having a space where gay gamers could express their identities.¹² Game streaming appears to be one such space for players with disabilities.

These phenomena inspired several questions to which I sought answers through a study I coauthored with Mark R. Johnson.¹³ We wanted to discover how disabled streamers describe the interaction between two of their identities: their gamer identities and their disability identities. We did so by examining recorded video interviews by journalism outlets online. These videos, published on YouTube, featured disabled streamers describing the challenges of gaming with their individual disabilities, the ways that gaming has benefited them, and other topics germane to our study. We located nine such videos that included sufficient ruminations on identity to begin watching, coding, and categorizing our findings. Four of the videos were personal videos, or videos made by the streamers themselves. Four other videos were mini-documentaries that featured interviews with the streamers. One final video was an uncut one-on-one interview with a disabled streamer. The streamers featured in the videos were GoodTimesWithScar, RockyNoHands, Blink, NoHandsKen, Halfcoordinated, BornToAdapt, Handi, and BrolyLegs. To clarify the numbers: one of the streamers appeared in two of the videos, so there are eight streamers in nine videos. The list of videos can be found at https://pastebin.com/SyRwX8y7. The study revealed four themes for how these streamers negotiated their gamer and disability identities.

1.Establishing Gaming Capital. As expected, the streamers made an effort to establish their gaming capital, in essence—I assume unintentionally—proving their credibility as authentic gamers. They accomplish this in several ways. First, six of the eight streamers describe their personal histories regarding video games, with all but one of these explanations appearing near the beginning of their respective videos. For example, Halfcoordinated describes how he had played games since he was four years old and how he played MS-DOS games before getting a Nintendo Entertainment System. He then expands on his history by stating that he did not learn how to play one-handed (due to his disability) until 2001 when he received a PlayStation. This example is typical of the other streamers as well: they spoke about playing games since they were young children. The one exception was NoHandsKen, who admits to his limited experience with games before an injury led to his disability, but he still takes time to mention his gaming history.

Second, a different mix of six streamers draws attention to gaming equipment and paraphernalia. A typical approach found in the videos was to point the camera at the extensive gaming and streaming setups that require large personal computers, several monitors, microphones, and controllers. Some of the streamers take time to talk about their equipment, such as GoodTimesWithScar, who describes equipment like their “stream deck,” or a box with mechanical buttons that opens programs or folders for quickly managing the game stream. Whether spoken about directly or merely highlighted visually in the videos, gaming equipment appears as a consistent method of establishing gaming capital since it represents significant financial commitments to gaming.

Third, seven of the eight streamers describe their gaming capital in terms of accomplishments in gaming culture, such as proficiency at games, being a popular streamer, or winning competitions. For instance, BrolyLegs speaks about being one of the best Street Fighter V (Capcom and Dimps, 2019) players in the world, and the best in his region and state. Halfcoordinated discusses the honor of being the opening event in the largest speedrunning event of the year and raising over USD$50,000 for the charity Doctors without Borders. Blink explains how he learns games quickly, RockyNoHands states he was the best in the world at using a QuadStick controller—a device controlled with the mouth—and GoodTimesWithScar showcases his many event badges and passes for prominent gaming events he had attended. Put simply, gaming capital prominently features in these streamers’ explanations of their gamer identities: after watching these videos, viewers would have no problem with any of these streamers’ credibility as “true” gamers.

2.Acknowledging Disability. Every streamer takes time in the videos to describe their disabilities simply and candidly while also occasionally addressing the challenges their disabilities presented to their lives as gamers. It is as if they recognize the need to address the elephant in the room, to use a metaphor: gaming is physically tough and more so given a physical disability. And so the streamers clarify what gaming means to their disabilities, and vice versa. For example, GoodTimesWithScar describes his medicine routine using a feeding tube, and at one point in the video, he states that he dropped his oxygen cannula on the floor right before starting a stream, so he had to replace it. RockyNoHands describes how he was injured, demonstrates how he uses the QuadStick mouth controller for gaming, and addresses how he works hard to show he can do difficult things even with his disability. Blink speaks about how he was born without hands—while holding his arms up to the camera—and how he uses an Xbox One controller differently than most other players by putting it in his lap and using his legs and arms to input commands. NoHandsKen shows how he uses a Joust controller, a mouth controller similar to a QuadStick, Halfcoordinated describes how their hemiparesis makes it difficult to use their right hand and how they game lefthanded, and BornToAdapt discusses his arthrogryposis, including how he cannot lift his arms above his head and that his hands do not look “normal.” Handi states how gaming is a “full-body workout” for him because he was born without arms or legs, and BrolyLegs addresses how arthrogryposis affects his life, including how he uses his cheek and tongue to input commands with a game controller.

All of the streamers take time to define what their disabilities meant to them, how they perceive their disabilities, and what their disabilities mean to their lives as gamers. Even a cursory look at their usernames demonstrates an explicit demarcation of disability identity. Six of the eight usernames acknowledge disability in some way: RockyNoHands, NoHandsKen, Halfcoordinated, BornToAdapt, Handi, and BrolyLegs. These streamers are highly aware of their complex positionality as gamers and persons with disabilities. The videos portray them as introspective about the marriage of their gamer and disability identities.

3.Gaming to Overcome Challenges. Five of the eight streamers describe how gaming is a tool for them to overcome challenges presented by their disabilities. BrolyLegs speaks extensively about how the competitive aspect of Street Fighter V drives him to push past the mobility limitations presented by his disability. He claims that if it were not for Street Fighter, he would have thought of himself as “another disabled person” who needs help. His parents pushed him to play games to see what he could accomplish, and he describes gaming as a method of demonstrating how he can overcome supposed limitations. Handi states how he does not “feel disabled,” implying that gaming has helped him reach that conclusion. He emphasizes that he competes with some of the best Counter-Strike: Global Offensive players in the world even though he does not have hands. He also explains his appreciation for the relationships gaming has helped him form, and how those relationships motivate him to overcome challenges. Halfcoordinated states that they enjoy speedrunning games because it is one time in their lives when they get to be “as fast, if not faster” than other people. They state that their disability makes them wonder where they belong and that gaming and speedrunning have helped them find their “place.” They also describe how gaming has opened employment opportunities in the form of being an accessibility consultant for a game development company. NoHandsKen speaks about how games gave him the confidence to work through his injury and that his confidence grew quickly when viewers started to respond to him positively. RockyNoHands describes how, despite his initial trepidations, gaming using the QuadStick allowed him to express the competitive side of his personality and how he enjoys showing people that he can excel at gaming. For these streamers, video games and their gaming identities influence how they negotiate their identities as persons with disabilities.

4.Feeling Empowered to Inspire. Six of the eight streamers speak about how their successes in gaming and streaming have empowered them to help inspire others who struggle with challenges presented through disabilities or otherwise. Most streamers explain their hope to inspire other people through a similar formula: if they could excel at gaming in spite of the physical challenges presented by their disabilities then other people can do difficult things as well. For instance, RockyNoHands explains that people should follow his example in finding “a way around” the hard things that stop them from doing what they want to do. Blink describes how he feels that, given his situation, there are no excuses and that there are no true disabilities in life, only bad mindsets. He justifies his claim by stating, “I do things that some people with hands can’t even do.” Halfcoordinated ends their video by saying “whatever you can do, just do your best,” “don’t give up,” and “there’s so much you can accomplish.” Handi states that the idea of him inspiring someone else was “awesome,” and BrolyLegs claims outright that he wanted to be an inspiration, saying, “If I can do it . . . you can do it.” Streamers consistently describe their disability and gaming accomplishments as a way to justify inspiring others to overcome difficulties.

More than Gamers and More than People with Disabilities

What do these four themes tell us about ability machines? In short, they demonstrate how these streamers may navigate their disabilities through gaming, and, conversely, how they may perceive their gamer identities in light of their disabilities. And this interrelated, even interactive, relationship between gaming and disability suggests that there is something inherent in gaming that influences disability identity construction. Ability machines produce an identity extending from disability. The reverse holds true as well: streamers’ disabilities contribute to, and often help legitimize, their gamer identities.

Three of the four themes speak to this point. First, regarding the theme of feeling empowered to inspire, these streamers recognize their positions as disabled gamers and how the seemingly contradictory mix of physically demanding games and the physical challenges of disabilities put them in a position to “inspire” others. Why else would the streamers feel a power to inspire others if not for a recognition of how their disabilities change their gamer identities and how their gamer identities change their conception of their disabilities? Second, for the theme of gaming to overcome challenges, these streamers sought out and used gaming to aid them in addressing various difficulties presented to them, such as isolation, employment issues, missing out on expressing their competitive natures, and so on. Just as accessibility equipment alters the nature of a mobility disability (imagine using a wheelchair and going from a city without curb-cuts or other necessary features to a city with ubiquitous curb-cuts and elevators and ramps), gaming alters the meaning of occupying a disability identity. For these streamers, it solves several practical problems, such as employment or social limitations, as well as alters the psychic dimension to disability. In other words, some disabled streamers in this study state outright that gaming changed how they felt about themselves and their disabilities.

Regarding both inspiration and overcoming challenges, it is important to note that the aura of “inspiration” is both one that circulates around these streamers with highly visible disabilities and one the streamers themselves appear to engage with and talk about when asked about their experiences. The notion of finding “inspiration” in disability—of people with disabilities being in some sense “inspirational”—remains a problematic source of othering those with disabilities. So-called inspiration porn can portray persons with disabilities as “objects of inspiration . . . for the benefit of the nondisabled.”¹⁴ Even seemingly positive portrayals of “overcoming” disability can create an expectation that everybody with disabilities should be an inspiration instead of just regular people, with regular strengths and weaknesses and talents and flaws. My comments here are simply meant as a caution against getting too caught up in the hype of inspiration, and I hope that warning against unintentionally othering people does not undermine my points above.

Third, regarding the theme of establishing gaming capital, the explicit calling out of their credibility in gaming culture points to the understated, or perhaps implied, requirement to lay claim to their part of gaming identity. And this claim may come both because of (and also in spite of) disability. Gaming capital is very much a part of these streamers’ identity construction. Given that persons with disabilities are typically absent from mainstream conceptions of what makes a “gamer”—imagined as being able-bodied, white, male, young—players with disabilities can use streaming as a method of establishing authenticity in the often-contested space of gamer culture. Yet the comments by the streamers in this study move beyond the simple demonstration of gaming ability or know-how: gaming, as a material and corporeal experience, is one way these streamers can “paradigm”—to make it a verb—their disabilities, primarily in terms of providing an ability, both digital and physical, regardless of disability. To make the abstract a bit more concrete, most of the streamers either said (or at least implied) that they cannot successfully participate in a variety of other hobbies or jobs, and, as a result, they play video games. The streamers often speak about the empowerment they felt when mastering difficult game controls and when improving their play to the point where they are competitive or better than other players. Put simply, these streamers describe excelling at the physical demands of gaming as if their own abilities had increased: they became more independent and now have more options for how they could live their lives.

These identities are coconstitutive, meaning that, based on how these streamers talk about it, their gamer identities and their disability identities dissolve into each other and codefine them as a single concept. These two parts of their identity therefore “constitute” each other. These streamers are not just gamers or people with disabilities. The combination of the two takes their identities to a new dimension: disabled streamers and gamers. Allow me to get more literal here with an example: I am a gamer. I have an expensive gaming computer, I maintain a Nintendo console in my home, I own an original gray GameBoy, and I have attended various gaming events. I teach game design. The text tone on my phone is a sound effect from the 1980s game Duck Hunt (Nintendo R&D1 and Intelligent Systems, 1984). I have played Nier: Automata. But I have not played Nier: Automata one-handed. I have not sat through chronic pain to play a game. I did not complete The Last of Us Part II with a vision impairment. Those accomplishments are beyond the scope of my abilities, and I can only barely imagine starting those tasks, much less successfully completing them. I cannot inhabit the identity of a disabled gamer because disabled gamers do things that are unattainable by me.

Put indelicately, participating in the physical challenge of video games with a disability changes the nature of disability, just as having a disability changes the nature of gaming. Gaming augments abilities. Disability provides challenges—it increases a game’s difficulty—thus proving authenticity and augmenting gaming capital. Combined, they make a third thing, a separate identity beyond “gamer” or “disability.” These streamers often communicate that their ability to manage the many physical and emotional challenges presented by their disabilities came through the creation of their streaming and gaming personae. Conversely, their gaming and streaming identities contribute to how they view their capabilities as persons with disabilities, specifically regarding how they define their embodied agency—what they were capable of doing—and their desire to inspire others to overcome personal challenges.

Gaming can do that. It can change how you see yourself. And it is difficult to describe to people with less experience with video games (since it sounds pretty silly and a little melodramatic). Being capable of watching movies certainly does not make me see myself differently. But gaming is a bit more akin to reading/writing literacy. For example, in 2011, I was starting the second and final year of my master’s degree program at Colorado State University when I changed apartments and moved in with two roommates—identical twins actually—who owned an Xbox 360. At that point in my life, I had not played video games since I was nineteen, so it had been six years with no video gaming experience. I wanted to get back into gaming so that I could work with them as part of my graduate studies, so one day I rummaged through my roommates’ games, chose an interesting title, Fallout 3 (Bethesda Game Studios, 2008), and I gave it a go. I almost immediately gave up: the controller felt alien in my hands. I could not play the game comfortably, nor did much of the game’s controls make sense to me. Several days passed, and then I decided to try again. Little by little, my hands learned how to hold the controller, how to manage the diverse button inputs, and how to move, shoot, and interact in the game. I had gained the ability to play the game and other games like it, and I felt different about myself. I felt competent and in control. I felt like I belonged to modern tech and entertainment culture. When I played the game, I felt capable. In my case, the biggest stumbling block had been the controller, a controller that had gone through years of ergonomic redesign and engineered to be used by the widest margin of potential players. Now imagine a similar situation to mine, except the person learning to use the controller can only use one hand. With enough empathy you should be able to understand how becoming literate in gaming alters self-perception. It becomes more than just an ability. It becomes an identity.

Notes

1. Shaw, “Do You Identify as a Gamer?”

2. De Grove, Courtois, and Van Looy, “How to Be a Gamer!,” 347.

3. See Cote, “Writing ‘Gamers’”; Healey, “Proving Grounds”; Kagen, “Walking, Talking and Playing with Masculinities in Firewatch”; and Klevjar and Hoyden, “The Structure of Videogame Preference.”

4. Hayes, “Gendered Identities at Play.”

5. See Bourdieu, “The Forms of Capital”; Consalvo, “Cheating.”

6. See Murphy, “Live in Your World, Play in Ours”; Papacharissi, A Networked Self; Williams, Kennedy, and Moore, “Behind the Avatar”; and Kafai, Fields, and Cook, “Your Second Selves.”

7. See Lehdonvirta, Nagashima, Lehdonvirta, and Baba, “The Stoic Male”; and Searle and Kafai, “Beyond Freedom of Movement.”

8. See Johnson, “Inclusion and Exclusion in the Digital Economy”; and Johnson and Woodcock, “It’s Like the Gold Rush.”

9. See Pellicone and Ahn, “The Game of Performing Play”; Li Gui, Lou, and Li, “Live Streaming as Co-Performance”; Woodcock and Johnson, “The Affective Labor and Performance of Live Streaming on Twitch.tv”; and Guarriello, “Never Give Up, Never Surrender.”

10. See Cunningham and Craig, Social Media Entertainment; and Spilker, Ask, and Hansen, “The New Practices and Infrastructures of Participation.”

11. Johnson, “Inclusion and Exclusion in the Digital Economy.”

12. Shaw, “Talking to Gaymers.”

13. Anderson and Johnson, “Gamer Identities.”

14. See Grue, “The Problem with Inspiration Porn”; Darrow and Hairston, “Inspiration Porn”; and McAskill, “Come and See Our Art of Being Real,” 202.