Frictions and flows in Twitch’s platform economy: viewer spending, platform features and user behaviours

ABSTRACT

In this article we introduce ‘capital flow’ and ‘capital friction’ as terms that characterize features and user behaviours on internet platforms which encourage and discourage spending, respectively. We explore these via leading live streaming platform Twitch, where numerous platform features and normative behaviours both promote and downplay spending. This makes it an ideal site for understanding conflicting economic and social platform dynamics, and the meta-friction between flows and frictions of capital on a platform. We examine these phenomena through three case studies: Channel Points, a non-monetary ‘currency’ exchangeable for in-stream rewards; Bits, a real-money platform currency for donating to streamers; and streamers’ performative and verbal responses to financial support. Through capital flow and capital friction we present Twitch’s platform economy as an ongoing negotiation both among users and between users and platform features, and one where capital friction does not necessarily lead to a reduction of income, but generates new streamer-spectator-platform relations and more circuitous routes for the flow of capital. Our theorization of capital flow and capital friction thus provides new insights into platform features, their uptake or resistance, and the frictions within platform designs and platform cultures.

KEYWORDS:

• Twitch
• platform economies
• live streaming
• platform culture
• capital friction

Introduction

In this paper we introduce the terms capital flow and capital friction to describe internet platform features and normative behaviours that encourage and discourage user spending, respectively. The ‘platform’ has become the dominant term for describing many of the world’s most-used internet sites (Gillespie, 2010) such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. Although many – particularly those relying on user-generated content – are tremendously efficient at extracting value from users (Kenney & Zysman, 2019; Postigo, 2016), not every platform feature smoothly and ‘optimally’ achieves that goal. The structures and cultures of digital platforms are created gradually and piecemeal, and often in contest between changing designer agendas and emergent user practices. We therefore in this paper explore aspects of platforms that at times discourage the movement of capital and how these reject, yet also often enrich, and even serve the platform economy. To do so we define capital flow as the forces that ‘carry’ capital through platforms and capital friction as the forces that resist, challenge, or redirect that flow. We demonstrate the value of these concepts as they emerge from the globally leading ‘live streaming’ site Twitch. Financially-motivated Twitch streamers rely on their ability to produce ‘content’ and attract audiences (Johnson & Woodcock, 2017; Wohn et al., 2019) in order to make money, of which the platform takes a cut. These financial drives manifest in numerous platform features and normative behaviours that encourage viewers to spend money and which characterize user-platform relationships (Ask et al., 2019), yet the same and other features and norms at times seemingly discourage spending.

Twitch is hence an ideal site for understanding such socio-economic tensions (Johnson & Woodcock, 2017; Johnson et al., 2019; Ruberg et al., 2019) and we explore them in depth in this paper through what we term the meta-friction between flows and frictions of capital on the platform. Our analysis is built upon two extensive and independent ethnographies of Twitch which the authors conducted in 2019–2023 and 2015–2021. After summarizing existing research in the area and describing how we have combined the results from these studies, we examine capital flow and capital friction through three case studies: Channel Points, a non-monetary ‘currency’ exchangeable for in-stream rewards awarded to viewers for spending time in channels (Johnson & Woodcock, 2019); ‘Bits’, real-money platform currency for donating to streamers (Partin, 2020); and streamer responses to financial support balancing reliance on viewers’ financial contributions with performances of gratitude (cf. Duffy & Wissinger, 2017) and (denying) expectations of these offerings. Through capital flow and capital friction we present Twitch’s platform economy as an ongoing negotiation both among users and between users and platform features. Our theorization of capital flow and capital friction thus provides new insights into the shifting economic, social, and personal demands that platforms place on users. More broadly it contributes to our understanding of platform features, their uptake and resistance, and the frictions within platform designs and platform cultures.

Existing research

Live streaming (hereafter ‘streaming’) involves broadcasting live video over the internet to (possibly global) audiences from the physical location of the ‘streamer’ who creates the broadcast (Taylor, 2018). A stream might involve any activity such as playing digital games, visiting a restaurant, working on an art or craft project, or simply talking to one’s viewers. In most countries ‘Twitch’ is the dominant streaming platform. Twitch has strongly held the leading market share – now with millions of streamers and over a hundred million viewers – since it was first born as a gaming-focused offshoot of the more general streaming platform Justin.tv (Johnson, 2024; Taylor, 2018). Twitch is notable for a highly-developed digital economy through which users are able to directly give money to streamers whose content they enjoy (Yu & Jia, 2022) – of which the platform takes a portion. This enables ‘entrepreneurial’ users to pursue profitable ‘content creation and distribution’ (Törhönen et al., 2021, p. 1) on the site. Some of Twitch’s most financially successful streamers secure millions of dollars annually (Chan & Gray, 2020, p. 355), while many thousands of others still make a full-time or part-time living from their streaming (Johnson & Woodcock, 2017). Twitch’s size and popularity, as well as its established economy, make it a perfect candidate for the analysis of the frictions and flows of capital through its interwoven culture and economics.

In order to monetize their content, streamers must first attain ‘Affiliate’ status and then receive further benefits by becoming Twitch ‘Partners’. Both require streamers to demonstrate the size of their audience and establishing and maintaining such popularity requires tremendous amounts of both on-camera (Woodcock & Johnson, 2019) and off-camera (Johnson, 2021) labour and time. Earning these statuses ‘requires streamers to prove that they have a consistent viewer base and have been streaming consistently over an extended period of time’ (Catá, 2019, p. 140) through the use of viewership metrics (Alvarez & Chen, 2021, p. 6; cf. Poell et al., 2021). Yet because ‘gaining viewers [i]s highly competitive’ (Pellicone & Ahn, 2017, p. 4871), only a few channels ever become large enough to secure this status – particularly in the case of partnership. Those who do attain these positions are, however, able to ‘earn money through viewers’ paid subscriptions’ (Chan & Gray, 2020, p. 355), and also through the donation of in-site currency known as ‘Bits’ (Catá, 2019, p. 140; Partin, 2020).

Twitch streamers can consequently be understood as yet another type of platform-dependent gig worker. Existing research has demonstrated how contemporary gig workers are often positioned or position themselves against the underlying corporation that facilitates (and to some extent demands) their labour. For example, such research is particularly well-developed in relation to the ridesharing platform Uber. Uber’s ratings system enacts control over how its drivers enact their labour and leads them to employ self-surveillance to play the ‘rating game’ (Chan, 2019b). This notion of platform labour as a labourer-versus-platform game is extended by Manriquez (2019) through the idea of the work-game­ that conceptualizes how Uber drivers make sense of their participation in the platform’s economy, namely the ways that different Uber drivers develop and deploy strategies to maximize revenue. We, in turn, deploy our own concepts of capital flow and capital friction to demonstrate how streamer labour is strategically performed to maximize streamer income. While the Twitch platform facilitates a very different kind of connection between streamer and spectator than Uber does between driver and rider, similar forms of resistance towards what Möhlmann and Zalmanson (2017) refer to as ‘algorithmic management’ nevertheless emerge as algorithms exert control over human workers, especially in relation to money, namely ‘gaming the system’. We show however that, in contrast with Uber drivers, Twitch streamers do not game the system in ways that explicitly and consciously disadvantage the platform.

The key role of gig-work income, as well as associated the gamification present, found on Uber have both already seen some degree of attention in the Twitch context. In the first case, existing research has comprehensively established the central roles of money and income within Twitch culture, including its prominence in streams and various motivations for users to spend their money on the platform. Money is a ‘tangible’ way for viewers to express ‘intangible support’ to a streamer (Wohn et al., 2018, p. 5), to show they ‘like the creators and their content and are willing to pay for it’ (Chou & Lu, 2022, p. 2592). On Twitch very often an ‘economic exchange’ is also a ‘precursor for a more prominent linguistic and social interaction’ (Witkowski et al., 2016, p. 430) between the donor and the streamer, such as a streamer acknowledging and expressing appreciation for their viewers, or even familiarity between the streamer and donor as multiple donations occur over time. After subscribing a viewer also gets access to custom ‘emotes’ – pictures used in a channel for making jokes or expressing emotions – and a badge that denote their status in that stream and act as sought-after cultural artefacts on the platform (Jackson, 2020).

These acts of support can either come in the form of general money, which is to say dollars or another state-backed ‘real world’ currency, or in the form of ‘special monies’ (Elsden et al., 2021; Zelizer, 1993) – channel points, Bits, and the like. Such special monies involve types of currency shaped by particular cultural or social contexts (Zelizer, 1993) such as pocket money, winnings in gambling, and things of this nature, that sit to some extent outside the traditional flow of capital. As Elsden et al. (2021, p. 3) note, much research has been done on the representation of special monies – and Twitch does, indeed, present its currencies as being colourful, fun, interesting, interactive, and so on – but less has been done on the ‘flow and timing of transactions’ for such monies, which as we argue in this paper are mediated by capital flow and capital friction. These sorts of currencies, which of course can only be used on the platform and which have their use encouraged through a range of technologies and techniques, are essential to our analysis. In turn it should also be noted that Twitch is owned by Amazon and offers ‘free’ subscriptions for viewers with (paid) Amazon Prime subscription to use on the streamer of their choice. This incentive further encourages engagement that might later lead to more capital being exchanged, hence perpetuating the platform's economy. Twitch therefore provides the facilities and the infrastructure for the monetization of attention, with those who are more ‘tuned in’ to a live stream having more opportunities to be visible to the streamer, to engage, and to both give and receive different sorts of currency. It sits as a middleman providing intermediation to extract value from both its streamers and its viewers, even if the flow of currencies from viewer to streamer is the most explicit and obvious element here on Twitch, especially as these payments are so heavily highlighted in Twitch streams (Johnson, 2024).

In turn, the roles of both gamification and gamblification as elements of platform design are essential when we consider Twitch. On monetized streams donation buttons are highly visible (Sjöblom et al., 2019, p. 25) and giving money to a streamer is ‘encouraged through game-like, interactive features’ (Carter & Egliston, 2021, p. 14). Many of these can be understood as ‘nudges’, which are design elements built for ‘guiding the behaviour of individuals’ (Weinmann et al., 2016, p. 434) and hence looking to ‘steer beneficiaries towards ‘correct’ choices’ (Brooks, 2021, p. 376) – although the situational definition of ‘correct’, of course, is down to the designer. On Twitch these are many, including audio and visual rewards for donating, permanent additions next to one’s username, the prominence of these buttons and facilities, the prominence they are afforded in streamers’ broadcasts, the connectivity Twitch enjoys to viewers’ Amazon accounts, and many others. In turn, many strategies appeal to spectators as individuals and as members of a collective (Jackson, 2023a). For instance, streamers often set public targets for themselves in terms of income or donations and viewers are sometimes tacitly – and sometimes more explicitly – encouraged to support streamers in reaching these goals to express support for the streamer and their content. Streams will regularly show the numbers of the largest donations, or the names of the most recent subscriber or donor, all of which are designed – successfully – to encourage and promote competition for these sorts of leaderboards, which have often been noted as essential parts of platformized gamification (Leclercq et al., 2018; cf. Mekler et al., 2013). Although gamblification is understudied compared to gamification, and indeed some of the lines between the two blur given many of the overlaps between gaming and gambling (Delfabbro & King, 2023; Schull, 2005), this second element is nevertheless an important and growing part of Twitch’s design logics. Many of the ways viewers interact with streamers are unpredictable, and these elements also thus encourage competition, encourage regular spending, and encourage viewers continually trying to beat other regular viewers to various titles, points of prestige, and the like.

Given all these pieces of Twitch and the user behaviours it encourages, a key relationship present in each of the examples of capital flow and capital friction that we examine is consequently the exchange of symbolic capital for economic capital. The collective investment in the value of platform features and content gives those features and that content its value. This collective investment echoes Bourdieu’s claim that ‘the work of art is an object which exists as such only by virtue of the (collective) belief which knows and acknowledges it as a work of art’ (1983, p. 317). In the case of Twitch, we will demonstrate this dynamic in terms of symbolic capital that is converted into economic capital through gamification strategies and the quantification of symbolic capital through Channel Points. Notably in relation to the labourer-platform power dynamics mentioned above, streamers empower themselves within the platform economy by generating new ways for their viewers to generate symbolic capital, similarly to Uber drivers who present themselves as platform experts through external blogs (Chan, 2019a). Uber drivers also perform emotional labour as part of their ‘work-games’ to develop connections with their riders (Raval & Dourish, 2016), yet another similarity to Twitch streamers whose emotional labour solidifies their relationships with their viewers through the generation of symbolic capital. We will demonstrate how this generation directly affects the ease and willingness with which streamers are able to earn a living from their labour, and how capital flow and capital friction shape these practices and these experiences.

Methodology

This paper utilizes findings from two independently-conducted ethnographies of Twitch, carried out in 2019–2023 and 2015–2021.

In the first case the first author conducted a multi-year ethnography of Twitch that consisted of over one thousand hours of participant and non-participant observation as a stream spectator. This project included an autoethnographic component through six months of streaming part-time. The first author kept comprehensive fieldnotes that were coded and analyzed based on emergent themes that were in turn refined through a reflexive cycle of data collection and analysis. He combined these methods to examine the construction and performance of identity on Twitch through the interactions between streamers, spectators, the platform, and games, and subsequent impacts on the sociality, culture, economics, and politics of Twitch (Jackson, 2023a). Platform use and user interactions have been at the forefront of this research, including the formation of collective identity through memetic media (Jackson, 2020), and the performance of platform culture through emotes (Jackson, 2023b).

In the second case the second author and his co-researcher at the time carried out approximately one hundred interviews with mostly professional Twitch streamers and number of semi-professional streamers, which focused on questions of labour (Johnson, 2021), working conditions, monetization, professionalization (Johnson et al., 2019), and the experiences of being a ‘successful’ Twitch streamer more generally (Johnson & Woodcock, 2017). This remains by quite a margin the largest body of interview data on financially successful or financially motivated Twitch streamers yet collected. These interviews were accompanied by several hundred hours of online observation in Twitch streams across a range of different channel types, channel sizes and streamer demographics, with a particular focus on the dynamics of financial support on Twitch (Johnson & Woodcock, 2019). The project also included in-person observation of Twitch streamers at streaming and gaming events in the United Kingdom, United States, Poland and Brazil in those same years.

These studies both received institutional ethics approvals and while each project had its own suite of ethical considerations relevant to its specific methods, the authors emphasize here how these projects have been brought together to generate the analysis presented in this paper. These two projects were approved independently and occurred during different timeframes, and as such the data from each project was analyzed separately. In the writing of this paper, however, the authors were consequently able to jointly identify a number of trends on Twitch across a longer period of time than either could individually, by comparing and contrasting the findings of the two studies. The points of discussion presented in this paper have been carefully chosen to demonstrate specific ways that Twitch’s platform economy has developed – both in terms of consistency and change – between 2015 and 2023 through its features and user engagement. These findings are primarily presented through general examples and trends with only a small number of more specific demonstrative examples to ensure the most ethical treatment of the individual datasets and the anonymity of interview respondents or observed streamers. The authors in particular draw upon their observational data in this paper to produce a timely and novel examination of platform power, feature design, and platform cultures that uniquely captures aspects of nearly a decade of Twitch’s history. The specific contribution of this paper is framed through its introduction of capital flow and capital friction, to which we now turn.

Discussion

Key terms

As noted above, research on the economies of platforms like Twitch is often concerned with ways users are encouraged to spend money. Yet as we demonstrate through the remainder of this paper, many technical and social aspects of Twitch actually seem to discourage users from spending money. To examine dynamics and the tensions between these encouragements and discouragements, we define the terms capital flow and capital friction. Capital flow describes the paths through which capital is ‘carried’ by platform features and user practices. The typical flow of capital on Twitch is from viewer towards both streamer and platform, facilitated by various donation mechanisms and social dynamics. Capital friction on the other hand captures the forces that slow, resist, or redirect the movement of capital on the platform away from their seemingly intended channels – yet can also be generative of new ones. Our understanding of friction thus extends upon the frictions in interface design examined by Ash et al. (2018). Specifically, they define frictions as:

… blocks or obstacles that interrupt, slow or stop a user from completing a task within an interface … But frictions can also act as sites of grip, encouraging someone to continue using or engaging with that interface because of the contestation faced by the user, such as when learning to play a videogame (p. 1140).

We therefore propose that although many technical and social aspects of Twitch do indeed create capital friction by resisting the seemingly most obvious and direct channels of capital flow, this can in fact bolster the platform economy. Twitch’s platform economy, through capital friction, exemplifies Boudieu’s ‘economy of practice [which] is based … on a systemic inversion of the fundamental principles of all ordinary economics’ (1983, p. 320). This inversion is particularly apparent in the role of symbolic capital in Twitch’s platform economy. Capital friction is generative; by introducing obstacles to the flow of capital, the platform is emphasized as an interface between users rather than purely a site for the exchange of money. Symbolic capital becomes a particularly useful concept in understanding the generative qualities of capital friction as it highlights the sociality that underpins the stream space, and it is often the desire for symbolic capital – for recognition among fellow streamers and viewers – that both motivates the flow of capital and emerges from resistance to that flow.

To unpack these dynamics we examine three case studies over the subsequent discussion sections of this paper – Channel Points, ‘Bits’, and streamer performances of gratitude. The former two case studies are platform features through which we discuss capital flows and frictions enabled and encouraged by the sociotechnical curation of the Twitch platform. The latter is a ‘purely’ social practice that reflects how exchanges of economic and symbols capitals are understood by Twitch users, and in turn reshaped by that understanding. Through these case studies our concepts of capital flow and friction expand previous examinations (Ash et al., 2018) beyond interactions between users and interfaces to interactions between users as facilitated by interfaces. In other words we explicitly link Twitch’s cultures and economy through the paths carved out by the frictions and flows of capital on the platform. As these frictions and flows interact they create new challenges to and complexities in the flow of capital on the platform, which we collectively identify as meta-friction. This meta-friction is further testament to the generative power of capital friction and is indicative of the novel dynamics and features that emerge from clashes and interactions between capital flow and capital friction on a platform, while also emphasizing that capital flow and capital friction are not binary but rather distinct generative forces that interact through platform use.

Channel points

We begin our demonstration of capital flow and capital friction on Twitch with the site’s ‘Channel Points’ feature. Channel Points are customizable currencies introduced in late 2019 that spectators earn by spending time in a streamer’s channel. They may then be redeemed for various rewards such as temporarily unlocking or modifying particular emotes otherwise available only to subscribers, or triggering an audiovisual effect in the stream. Channel Points have been theorized as representing the emergence of a temporal economy on Twitch operating on ‘the commodification of spectator time and the quantification of streamer value’ (Jackson, 2023a, p. 261). Analysing Channel Points in terms of capital flow and capital friction, however, unveils how this time-based currency encourages spectators to spend in particular ways and discourages them from spending in others, often to meet the desire to accrue symbolic capital, demonstrating how a platform’s features affect the social fabrics underpinning its platform economy. Channel Points seemingly encourage spectators to spend their time instead of their money, yet the end result still has financial value to the platform and streamers.

There are two primary dynamics that demonstrate how Channel Points encourage capital flow on Twitch: accumulating (temporal) wealth and using that wealth to compete against other viewers in a stream for symbolic capital. Both are rooted in the impact of Channel Points on Twitch cultures as they contribute towards the complete metricization and gamification of participation on Twitch (Johnson & Woodcock, 2019; Siutila, 2018). Channel Points give numerical value to the time that spectators have spent in a channel (separate from the amount of time itself), and that value has an exchange rate in the form of stream participation. A spectator can save their points for a particularly impactful or expensive redemption, gamble them to predict a future stream occurrence, or spend them in small amounts as they earn them. To have a greater number of Channel Points is to have more freedom in stream participation and to demonstrate one’s commitment to the channel. Channel Points thus have the clear potential to increase the flow of capital: when spectators spend more time in a stream they generate more ad revenue for the platform and streamer and improve the various metrics that determine the streamer’s capacity to earn from the platform. In this sense Channel Points enable capital flow to occur through spectators rather than from spectators. Channel Points enable further capital flow through the capacity to earn more by spending money to subscribe to a stream. As one spends more on a monthly subscription, the number of Channel Points earned is increased up to double. The flow of capital from spectator to streamer and platform is thus incentivized by increased opportunities to participate in the stream through Channel Points.

Channel Points also enable capital flow through their exchange for symbolic capital and a competitive desire to participate in streams. On Twitch any monetized stream shows a leaderboard (Leclercq et al., 2018; Mekler et al., 2013) that displays that week’s and month’s greatest financial contributors to the channel. These can be framed as being towards particular objectives: the first author once witnessed a stream competition in which donors put their money towards a vote to decide whether or not the streamer would play a game with ‘big head mode’ enabled (in which the player character’s head was made comically large to the point of obscuring their in-game vision). In one particular five minute window spectators donated over US$800 to the streamer for this seemingly quite silly and trivial objective. The affordances of Twitch thus allow for specific kinds of expression – in this example encouraging someone towards a silly way of playing a game, which highlights how Twitch’s viewers value the unexpected, the strange, and the humorous (Johnson, 2022; Lybrand, 2019). Such representations, their meanings, and potential for amusement form part of the insider language of gaming culture. Spectators thus spend money because ‘they want to feel that their actions have an effect, and they enjoy the feeling of their actions having an effect in front of an audience’ (Karhulahti, 2016, p. 10, emphases in original) – embodying and demonstrating their understandings of shared forms of entertainment, while also being encouraged by the site’s nudges (Brooks, 2021; Weinmann et al., 2016) towards desired forms of use. The necessity that this effect be visible to other viewers is testament to the symbolic capital a viewer attains (or at least perceives themselves to have attained) in their ability to visibly impact stream content.

Although focused here on a sense of belonging amongst viewers, this desire to have an effect actually fosters competition and that competition is communicated through Channel Points, and in turn capital flow. The first author observed many demonstrations of Channel Point ‘wealth’ in the form of large redemptions, or discussions of the excessive number of Channel Points that particular spectators had. Channel Points become a form of quantified symbolic capital as a large number typically means that one has spent a lot of time in a stream or has been a long-time viewer of the stream. As one demonstrates ‘wealth’ in Channel Points, one demonstrates commitment to and status within the channel. Taken with the competitive nature of stream participation and spectator visibility, those without a long-standing commitment to a channel (and hence few Channel Points) can opt to compete with established spectators by spending money instead of Channel Points – pitting economic capital against non-economic symbolic capital. Enabling stream participation with Channel Points thus also enables capital flow through competitions for symbolic capital, demonstrations of cultural awareness and fluency (Jackson, 2023a, Johnson, 2024), and the capacity to affect stream content. This in turn takes place within a context of the platform’s wider design that is replete with nudges towards spending various forms of currency.

Having now established how capital flow is created by Channel Points, we turn to capital friction. Though Channel Points enable capital flow in numerous ways, their very form as temporal currencies rewards spectators with symbolic capital, which is further developed through the potential to contribute to the stream. That this occurs in exchange for time rather than money (cf. Dantas, 2019) is an example of capital friction, and the generative power of this friction is demonstrated through the uptake of the feature by users. Channel Point redemptions are customizable, meaning that a streamer can reduce or extend the list of possible redemptions and the associated costs. Acts of customization like this create a sense of proximity between streamers and spectators as they affect the same virtual space, a virtual analog to the ‘bodily proximity’ between drivers and riders through which driver-rider intimacy is fostered on Uber (Raval & Dourish, 2016). The larger a streamer’s list of redemptions is, the more ways spectators have to ‘contribute’ to a stream and hence generate symbolic capital in exchange for their time in the stream.

If a spectator can indeed contribute to a stream purely in exchange for time in this way, the need for them to spend money on the stream to participate is reduced – this reduced incentive to spend money on the stream is capital friction. It does not prevent spectators from spending money, this competing currency does however stand to affect a spectator’s understanding of and willingness to spend money by offering an alternative of comparable ‘value’ (in terms of symbolic capital). Capital friction is therefore not simply about reducing the flow of capital, as it is created by the desire to attain symbolic capital through non-economic exchanges. This force generates new opportunities for the accumulation of symbolic capital as the uptake of Channel Points redemptions by viewers in a stream encourages streamers to introduce more (creative) redemptions that in turn leads to new interactions through the platform and new avenues through which viewers can attain their desired symbolic capital. Through this dynamic we begin to see how the very same platform feature can simultaneously generate capital friction and flow predicated upon the potential for individuals to generate symbolic capital from the feature.

When the capital friction produced by the existence of Channel Points is examined alongside the different kinds of capital flow that the feature also enables, the subsequent meta-friction demonstrates the redirection of capital flow involved in capital friction rather than its complete prevention – these new pathways further demonstrate capital friction’s generative nature. In their examination of friction Ash et al. (2018) observe that ‘friction can also be productively introduced to help achieve the completion of a task’ (p. 1138), and they emphasize that designers need not always seek to minimize or eliminate friction but rather to work productively with it to achieve a particular desired goal (p. 1142). Although capital friction might redirect the flow of capital away from the most direct path, we must make room for the possibility that such design choices are highly strategic decisions (cf. Johnson, 2024; Mejtoft et al., 2019; Weinmann et al., 2016) that render capital flow from users to Twitch less visible, thereby making Amazon – the corporation behind the platform (Partin, 2020) – seem less greedy or obscuring the corporation’s financial motivations. To conclude the analysis of Channel Points we therefore emphasize that each of the flows and frictions examined in this section occur simultaneously, characterizing the many different forces operating within Twitch’s platform economy. Channel Points enable capital flow through their status as a currency and a kind of cultural ‘score’ in the gamified stream. The social practices surrounding their use, including redemption options and the display of commitment to a particular channel, reify that cultural value by further distinguishing it from the value of the (un)spent money. Capital flow can be bolstered when symbolic capital is attained by spending money, yet other avenues to attain symbolic capital can introduce capital friction – such is the case when spectators choose to spend time instead of money. These flows, frictions, and their resulting meta-friction, unveil the arising tensions within Twitch’s platform economy introduced by its culture and intensified by user interactions with platform features.

Bits

Our second case study is Twitch’s platform currency for real-world monetary exchange, known as ‘Bits’. Originally Twitch lacked any internal method for viewers to donate money to streamers, and viewers would instead use a PayPal link provided by the streamer. This passed money directly to the streamer but bypassed Twitch’s infrastructure, hence the introduction of a platform feature intended to ‘capture’ this moving capital with the Bit currency (Partin, 2020). While streamers receive one hundred percent of Bit donations made in their channel (100 Bits represents US$1), Twitch charges up to an additional 50% for users to purchase Bits. This integration means that Twitch profits from money that would otherwise be sent via PayPal and benefits from metric insights into donation patterns that might help with the further development of these tools (Jackson, 2023a). We therefore immediately see how Bits would promote capital flow within the confines of the platform’s design (Partin, 2020): they are easy to buy for anyone who has a Twitch account and are even easier to spend on a streamer whose content one enjoys. The visible nature of spending Bits is again a key part of promoting capital flow here, as it gives users ‘the immediate gratification of player reactions or the donor's screen name popping up for everyone to see’ (Yoganathan et al., 2021, p. 1007), reflecting again this gamification of competition over who can donate the most money, donate the most often, and so on. The prominence of Bit-based donations do not only ‘alte[r] the content of streams’ but also intermingle the platform economy with the ‘complex web of relationships between viewers, streamers, and technical tools’ (Partin, 2020, p. 5). Moving capital through Bits has become a ubiquitous part of monetized Twitch channels, being something that is actively foregrounded in broadcasts rather than something secondary or in the background (Johnson, 2024). This is an example of how designers are able to ‘leverage special digital monies to shape users’ experiences of new financial technologies’ (Elsden et al., 2021, p. 3), such as – in this case – donating to live streamers.

A particularly interesting expansion of the Bits program has involved the introduction of so-called ‘Hype Trains’ on the site. In earlier work Taylor (2018) describes ‘donation trains’ which happen after viewers consistently give increasing amounts of money, causing ‘notifications [to] keep flooding in’ on the stream that potentially ‘overwhelm the streamer’ (p.96). This emergent practice has been present on Twitch since its earliest days – demonstrating how the flow of some capital via donations promotes the flow of more capital, with viewers not wanting to feel left out (Johnson & Woodcock, 2019), and hence being another example of the competitive pursuit of symbolic capital on the platform – but more recently this, too, has been captured (Partin, 2020) by the platform. Just as Twitch saw donations being transferred outside the platform and moved to bring those into the fold, the phenomenon of donation trains has in the last few years been integrated explicitly into the platform’s technical architecture. When sufficient ‘Bits and subscriptions’ have been sent to the streamer ‘within a particular timeframe’ (Jackson, 2020, p. 77) that streamers can customize, what is now called a ‘Hype Train’ will activate. During the Hype Train spectators are challenged to financially contribute as much as possible before a timer elapses. There are five ‘levels’, and each requires a greater amount of money than the previous to progress. This sort of ‘levelling up’ technique in gamification (van der Heide & Želinský, 2021) is common, with the idea of levels taken from games and designed, in this case and others, to imply to the user(s) a high degree of autonomy and agency – they are the ones controlling the train, and they are the ones selecting how impressive it becomes.

Once the timer ends and the Hype Train concludes, contributors are rewarded with access to a single permanent emote that is randomly chosen based on the maximum level that the hype train reached. Hype train ‘conductors’ – those who contributed the most bits and subscriptions – are also awarded with badges. Not only do these demonstrate the exchange of economic capital for symbolic capital as higher-value rewards are bestowed upon those who can afford to contribute more during the specified time window, but Twitch actively shames non-contributors with messages like ‘You missed the train’ and ‘Better luck next time!’ suggesting an active loss of symbolic capital. This deploys a psychological phenomenon known as loss aversion, through which ‘people tend to prefer avoiding losses to acquiring gains of the same value’ (Toh, 2021). The phenomenon is heavily exploited in gamification, as ‘the effect of loss aversion is more likely to be observed when people are able to compare gains and losses directly’ (Leclercq et al., 2018, p. 85) as in leaderboards, competitions, and other such gamified elements.

The promotion of capital flow is therefore immediately apparent in the very structure of Hype Trains. The combination of a timer ticking down, the rewards for participation, and the peddling of ‘FOMO’ (‘Fear Of Missing Out’, common vernacular for loss aversion) for non-participation, all encourage capital flow. Moreover they promote concentrated bursts of capital flow before the train concludes. The intensity and transparency of this monetization has led to a mixed reception to Hype Trains (while the non-platform-captured donation trains were seen as ‘authentic’ and generally viewed very positively). Aspirational and financially successful Twitch streamers tend to be innovative and active in pursuing new forms of monetization (Johnson & Woodcock, 2017; Johnson et al., 2019). In fact both authors observed examples of streamers who overtly and indeed enthusiastically integrated the Hype Train into their channel. The level thresholds for and ‘cooldown’ periods between Hype Trains in a channel are customizable, and this flexibility means streamers can use this platform feature to produce capital flow framed as viewer support, participation in the ‘hype’, and a memento in the form of an emote, all of which translate to perceived symbolic capital in exchange for contribution. Other streamers however choose to overlook the feature, and others still actively take stances against it. In the latter cases Hype Trains have attracted the pejorative nickname of ‘Scam Trains’ across the platform, a reference to the transparency with which Hype Trains attempt to extract money from – or ‘scam’ – stream spectators.

We can understand these rejections by Twitch users – the evidence of capital friction resisting and redirecting capital away from Hype Trains and Bits – through three forms of cultural signposting, which rely upon forsaking economic capital and instead accumulating symbolic capital. The first form is of moral superiority. Streamers demonstrate that monetization methods thought to be unpleasant and potentially exploitative will not be deployed in their stream by explicitly rejecting Hype Trains. Through this gesture of solidarity these streamers build rapport with viewers who think the Hype Train is an exploitative practice. The second form of cultural signposting is statements of taste. Though Twitch plays host to an increasingly broad range of content, it continues to be best known for gaming-related content and its culture is therefore interwoven with gaming culture. In recent history, blockbuster and mobile video game companies have sought to extract ever more money from their players (Johnson & Brock, 2020; Van Roessel & Švelch, 2021) through ‘games-as-a-service’ models, ‘loot boxes’, ‘Battle Passes’, and the like. Some game developers reject these practices and are therefore perceived as belonging to an artistic or cultural ‘scene’ that stands apart from the mainstream. Streamers who object to Hype Trains in Twitch’s game-related space are making a similar cultural statement by rejecting the conventional and embracing the alternative, thereby demonstrating their cultural sophistication and authenticity (cf. Sallaz, 2002). The third and final form of cultural signposting posting is the appeal to nostalgia embedded in the anti-Hype Train stance. It is relatively common for streamers to reject Hype Trains in favour of older monetization methods like PayPal (which notably takes its own cut of donations). In doing so streamers suggest a preference for an older, apparently ‘better’ Twitch while also eschewing Twitch’s substantial cut of financial contributions made through the platform – an example of what Möhlmann and Zalmanson (2017) call ‘switching the system’. This preference complements a general discontent brewing around the platform in the past several years (Johnson, 2024). The same can be said of game makers who reject modern monetization methods, drawing an explicit recourse to an ‘earlier’ gaming and a different sort of imagined relationship between the creator and the consumer – one of mutual appreciation, and devoid of exploitation. The capital friction produced by the explicit rejection of Hype Trains therefore occurs in the name of increased symbolic capital, particularly in its connection to game cultures, another way in which capital friction is generative rather than simply erosive.

Yet to reject the idea of a monetization strategy does not necessarily mean that one rejects the practice itself. In fact, despite having the option to turn Hype Trains off on their streams, many streamers keep them active and refer to them exclusively as ‘scam trains’. This simultaneous participation in and rejection of the practice demonstrates a core meta-friction associated with the feature and another way that capital friction is generative through the creation of content and the explicit positioning of the stream(er) in relation to exploitative monetization practices. The first author has previously noted that Hype Trains raise questions about how ‘users perform in exchange for capital’ (Jackson, 2020, p. 78). Such performances reflect the culture of the platform and the tensions between capital flow and capital friction, demonstrated by the Hype Trains feature (as an application of Bits) and the uptake of that feature. While the economic interests of Twitch and its content creators generally leads to capital flow on the platform, as we have demonstrated thus far through Channel Points and Bits, the interaction between platform features and platform culture (Chan, 2019b; Möhlmann & Zalmanson, 2017) also introduce capital friction and meta-friction between the two. The platform culture then becomes instrumental in defining a highly porous and invisible boundary between acceptable and unacceptable monetization practices. This boundary is shaped through various social forces that resist, push back against, and redirect the flow of capital across the site. Bits and Hype Trains, together with Channel Points, therefore demonstrate that Twitch’s platform economy is highly susceptible to its culture, to the point that even features seemingly designed to encourage capital flow encounter resistance through user engagement.

Streamer performance

We now come to address the capital flows, frictions, and meta-friction emerging from social interactions between streamers and viewers. These interactions enable capital flow and create capital friction based on streamer performance and how that performance aligns with spectators’ expectations. They demonstrate how particular acts of emotional labour are necessary for streamers, as has come to be expected of gig workers and platform economies (Raval & Dourish, 2016). This emotional labour is essential for streamers to accumulate and maintain symbolic capital among their viewers, which affects the flow of economic capital in different ways as this section explores. This dynamic can specifically be seen in performances of gratitude by streamers upon receiving financial contributions from spectators.

Our first observation is that Twitch streamers’ performances of gratitude enable capital flow in two different ways. A streamer publicly and enthusiastically thanking a viewer for donating meets a standard Twitch social obligation that aligns with spectator expectations of a streamer’s performance (Partin, 2019, p. 6); viewers who want to receive this gratitude might therefore donate. Financial contributions from spectators also become exchanges rather than donations, as the spectator receives symbolic capital through visibility in the stream (Sheng & Kairam, 2020) and direct attention from the streamer as a result of their donation. This symbolic capital is in part a result of a donor’s demonstrated importance among other viewers (Hou et al., 2020). With a streamer’s performance of gratitude for a financial contribution there also comes an (unspoken) promise of further performances of gratitude upon further contributions. The promise of gratitude and the accompanying symbolic capital is hence another way in which Twitch’s capital flow precedes – and thus is motivated by – spectators’ perceptions of cultural value, following Bourdieu’s assertion that the collective acknowledgement of an object’s or practice’s value is the sole reason for its status (1983). Streamer performances of gratitude hence demonstrate the streamer-spectator-platform interdependence upon which Twitch’s social and economic ecosystem is built. Streamers rely upon spectators’ financial contributions and will adjust their affective performances accordingly, while spectators rely upon streamers to meet their desire for symbolic capital. Streamers thus strike a rather delicate balance of power with their audiences. In an ‘ideal’ state capital flow is motivated by the social and cultural value of symbolic capital, visibility, and belonging received in exchange for money.

The flow of capital on Twitch is again clear – yet while streamer performances of gratitude meet spectator expectations and enable capital flow, streamers are also expected to perform in ways that explicitly discourage spectator donations. Streamers can acceptably be seen to want or need financial contributions from spectators to a degree, and in fact financial incentives are assumed by the platform which maintains a record of metrics (Poell et al., 2021) that define ‘successful’ streams, such as average viewer and subscriber counts. Similarly to Uber’s star rating, these metrics in part work to disempower laborers, but more importantly encourage a form of self-surveillance in an attempt to meet the platform’s definition of success (Chan, 2019b). These metrics assume that all users will want to grow their channel and ‘make money from their interests’ (Ask et al., 2019) although this assumption is actually far from reality (Phelps et al., 2021, p. 2865).

Yet despite the platform’s emphasis on particular metrics for success, even those streamers whose livelihoods rely upon their streams are expected to frame financial goals as secondary or unimportant. Similar to Taylor’s (2018) finding that some streamers ‘prefer to downplay the financial aspects of a stream’ to avoid feeling ‘like a ‘beggar’’ (p.96), the first author (Jackson, 2023a) previously noted that streamers ‘regularly made clear […] that financial contributions were appreciated but not necessary’. It is possible that ‘these comments strategically produce a streamer who is perceived as not greedy and therefore more deserving of financial support’ (p.252-253). Such performances might of course be genuine, but regardless of their precise motivations, streamers’ denials of a desire for donations has become normalized within streamer performance, from which capital friction emerges. In this instance, symbolic capital is accumulated or maintained at the potential (but not guaranteed) cost of economic capital. Capital friction is generative here in the sense that it is the content – the explicit (social) obstacles to financial contributions occupy stream time and define typical streamer-spectator relationships. The choice to reassure spectators that they do not need to contribute financially to the stream redirects the flow of capital, for example to other streamers who might perform greater need, or by introducing resistance that is overcome by their perception as someone deserving rather than in need. If spectators do not see a need to contribute financially however, they simply may not – or may contribute but less frequently or in smaller amounts. This uncertainty is essential to understand the precarious nature of streaming in part resulting directly from purely social factors.

Streamers who perform a need for income thus do not increase the likelihood of receiving that income over those who do not, but denying a need or desire for income can also move the money one might otherwise have gained towards other streamers, or to nobody at all. This social dynamic elicits meta-friction as streamers negotiate between performances of financial need and financial disinterest alongside their relationships with spectators. The meta-friction that then comes from these streamer performances begins in how expectations are negotiated between performances of gratitude (Guarriello, 2019) and need that encourage and discourage spectators from contributing to the stream financially. Like the capital friction discussed above, this meta-friction generates new streamer-spectator interactions in relation to spectators' expectations or streamer performance. Streamers may make financial demands of spectators or, as in the case of ‘scam trains’, joke that spectators have been ‘scammed’ when the streamer receives donations. Such choices might be expected to produce capital friction by removing the gratitude incentive and producing perceptions of a greedy streamer, but exaggerated greed can instead become a source of humor and motivate donations in exchange for associated symbolic capital. This is typical of stream-humour (Johnson, 2022) and returns to the cultural value produced when spectators spend money discussed previously. As a spectator is ‘scammed’ by the streamer, they become part of the joke and therefore a knowing participant in the culture of the stream – inheriting symbolic capital from the streamer. These jokes about being ‘scammed’ subvert the meta-friction between the capital flow and the capital friction we see in performances of financial need, or the lack thereof.

Although these capital flows, frictions, and meta-friction can be understood in the general terms that we have presented so far, platform politics also play a significant role in determining whether money-related streamer performances are considered legitimate and acceptable on the platform. Researchers have explored how particular performances of femininity may be criticized when, for example, women streamers are perceived as successful because of their bodies (Ruberg, 2022; Ruberg et al., 2019), how race can be a barrier to participation on Twitch (Gray, 2017), and how different performances of masculinity can be accepted or rejected (Welch, 2022). Every aspect of a streamer’s performance is open for assessment by spectators and can facilitate capital flow or produce capital friction. This assessment is of a streamer’s symbolic capital within the culture of the platform more broadly, thereby further strengthening the connections between the flows and frictions of economic capital and symbolic capital. Ruberg et al. (2019) identify tensions between financial success and cultural acceptance experienced by women streamers, which Ruberg (2022) extends by arguing that open financial aspirations solidify a relationship between game streaming and webcam modelling that is largely rejected by platform users. The successes of some streamers as measured in terms of capital and platform metrics can hence readily be perceived as failures in terms of Twitch’s social or cultural landscape.

In moving from a focus on interactions between users through platform features (Channel Points and Bits) to a more direct analysis of streamer-spectator interactions facilitated by the platform as interface, this section has examined how complex and contested Twitch’s platform economy is in its reliance on user interactions and desires for symbolic capital. Financial contributions from spectators to streamers (and hence also the platform) are contingent upon a spectator’s desire to be visible – to accrue symbolic capital in the stream – and a streamer’s capacity to meet the expectations of their audience. Streamers enter into a complex balancing act when seeking and receiving financial contributions from spectators, which is achieved by appropriate performances of gratitude that enable capital flow and performances of (a lack of) greed that may produce capital friction through a lack of sufficient symbolic capital. The meta-friction associated with streamer performance demonstrates how tightly interwoven Twitch’s platform economy and its culture are, and yet they make clear a distinction between financial success and cultural success. The constantly tense and debated relationship between streamers and their income produces both capital flow and capital friction on Twitch, with friction taking the form of redirections or delays in capital flow, rather than its complete cessation, while also generating new opportunities for streamers to perform and foster connections with their viewers. This dynamic demonstrates the importance of seeing platform features and users behaviours as always parts of larger – and longer-term – ecosystems that shape the flow, or friction, of capital.

Conclusion

In this paper we have challenged existing understandings of Twitch’s platform economy as highly optimized and efficient by contrasting such aspects against technical and social dynamics that actively discourage user spending. Through our analyses of the Channel Points and Bits platform features, we identified the complicated and sometimes contradictory ways that platform design can affect spectator spending, noting specifically the connections that these platform features foster between economic and symbolic capitals. While Channel Points have financial value for Twitch by acting as a temporal currency that encourages spectator spending through fostering competition and the accrual of (temporal) wealth, we argued that their function as an alternative to money can discourage spectators from spending. Bits, in contrast, are equivalent to real-world money but are platform-specific. As we demonstrated through our analysis of the cultural uptake of Hype Trains, however, transparent attempts to further encourage user spending through platform features can foster resistance among those same users. Nevertheless, in both cases we see how special monies enable capital to be ‘attached to varying sets of social relations’ (Zelizer, 1993, p. 200) and on Twitch, Bits and Channel Points are both deeply entwined with the site’s broader practices and dynamics of sociality. We then continued this socially-driven perspective and expanded our analysis by identifying ways that streamer performance and spectator expectations thereof encouraged and discouraged spectator spending, and how these expectations are also informed by a streamer’s symbolic capital. Our focus in this paper has thus been on understanding key aspects of Twitch’s infrastructure and culture that shape the (non-)movement of economic capital (often in relation to the desire for symbolic capital), yet as we identified in our analysis of streamer performance, Twitch’s platform politics add layers of complexity to this picture. Although detailed analyses of these particular facets is beyond the scope of this paper, future studies would benefit from the groundwork we have laid here.

We introduced the terms capital flow and capital friction to examine these connections between user spending, symbolic capital, and streamer-spectator-platform interactions. Our use of the term ‘friction’ particularly emphasizes that these sociotechnical aspects of Twitch offer forces of resistance, produce moments of hesitation, or simply redirect the flow of capital, all the while generating new and creative ways for users to interact through the platform in pursuit of symbolic capital. On a platform like Twitch where spectators’ financial contributions towards streamers are highly visible and normalized, we argued that although capital friction seems unproductive (in a capitalist sense) it actually often ultimately serves the platform economy. Capital flows and capital frictions not only operate in relation to money but also symbolic capital and the pursuit of cultural value, which breeds loyalty among, and further financial contributions from, spectators. Our chosen case studies demonstrate the diverse range of potential applications of capital flow and capital friction, and one could easily extend our analysis to a range of other Twitch features – or features of other platforms – to demonstrate how pervasive capital flow and friction are and how platforms might consciously introduce capital frictions to ultimately service the platform economy over the longer term.

In order to further demonstrate the complexities of Twitch’s platform economy through capital flows and frictions, we also examined how meta-friction emerges from the interactions between the various flows and frictions. As we identified ways that capital flows bolster and redirect each other through our chosen case studies, we also identified commonalities across them. In particular, we found that while symbolic capital can be a motivator for capital flow – such as in the case of the competition bred by Channel Points – it was surprisingly frequent that the pursuit of symbolic capital served to generate (and was generated by) capital friction. This is of course not to say that the desire for symbolic capital entirely stops spectators from contributing financially to streams, but rather introduces forces that delay or redirect that capital flow. With these commonalities layered together the very culture of the platform is played out in, and defined by, its economy. Our analysis of capital flow, capital friction, and meta-friction on Twitch therefore demonstrates the extent to which user interactions and social behaviours affect a platform economy. Emergent platform features and norms that seemingly diminish the platform’s financial success can, ultimately, be seen to be in service of an active platform economy – both financial and cultural.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Department of Education, Skills and Employment, Australian Government.

Notes on contributors

Nathan J. Jackson

Nathan J. Jackson recently completed his doctorate at the University of New South Wales, Australia. His research involved an ethnography of Twitch and examined the development of streaming persona through the practices and behaviours of Twitch users. His work has been published in journals including ‘Convergence’ and ‘Persona Studies’, and he has chapters on Twitch in the edited collection ‘Real Life in Real Time: Live Streaming Culture’, and forthcoming collections ‘The Routledge Companion to Gender and Celebrity’ and ‘The Post-Gamer Turn’. He is currently a Research Assistant on projects studying Video On Demand television, and gambling live streams. Email: [email protected]

Mark R. Johnson

Mark R. Johnson is a Senior Lecturer in Digital Cultures at the University of Sydney, Australia. He has published extensively on videogame live streaming and Twitch.tv in leading journals including ‘Information, Communication and Society’, ‘New Media and Society’ and ‘Social Media and Society’. He is currently writing a book entitled ‘Twitch’ for Polity’s ‘Digital Media and Society’ series. His research also touches on esports and competitive gaming, gamblification and digital gambling, and procedural content generation. Dr Johnson is also an independent game developer noted for the game Ultima Ratio Regum and a regular games writer, blogger and podcaster. Email: [email protected]