ABSTRACT
Gaming is one of the most popular leisure activities of our time. More people than ever before are playing games and congregating in gaming-related digital spaces. An estimated 3.2 billion people are playing videogames – a whopping one-third of the world's population – and the forecasts predict that this number will continue to grow in the coming years (Statista, 2021a). Today, millions of fans are filling esports arenas (some as big as soccer stadiums) and even more people use gaming (-adjacent) platforms such as Steam (www.store.steampowered.com), Discord (www.discord.com), Twitch (www.twitch.tv), or DLive (www.dlive.tv) to talk about gaming, stay informed about their favorite videogames, watch livestreams of popular gaming influencers, and connect with other players. In fact, in the first quarter of 2021, an astonishing 8.8 billion hours of streamed content has been watched on the livestreaming platform Twitch alone (Statista, 2021b). Unsurprisingly, the booming gaming industry is expected to continue to increase in size and revenue (World Economic Forum, 2022).
