He screams at the top of his throat. “Stop putting -1 on my live stream! The first one to put a -1, gets a ban. [bannissement] straight ! ” The scene is taking place on TikTok, in the tab reserved for live broadcasts, and the 24-year-old who is thus threatening his audience is called Damien. For six months, with two sessions a day, he has been launching a live video game on the Chinese platform. minecraftSo far, nothing extraordinary, but Damien, alias “Damsoff”, is not playing alone: he is up against his spectators, who can influence the course of his game and seek to put him at a disadvantage at all costs.
“We have a bucket that we must fill with other smaller cubes and, once we reach the top, we obtain a victory”explains to World the TikToker from the North. Except, Damien continues, the public can, for its part, hinder his rise, for example “destroying cubes”ultimately lowering its overall score (the famous “-1”). TikTok requires, in order to interact, that viewers do not press the keys on a keyboard or the buttons on a controller: they follow, click “like”, send paid gifts… actions all of which result in the appearance of various disabilities.
This phenomenon, which extends to other video games (grand theft auto, resident Evil…), rated in March as “Collective and addictive gambling games” by specialized media DNA, especially widespread this summer. So much so that, this fall, it is difficult to consult TikTok without coming across one of these “interactive lives” that, at first glance, can seem particularly cryptic.
However, this trend is reminiscent of others. That of “NPCs”, those TikTokers who imitate the simplistic and caricatured actions of video game characters on request, based on the gifts given to them by their subscribers; that of “live matches”, those controversial donation races, organised between TikTok videographers; but also that of automatic streaming such as Twitch Plays Pokémon, during which hundreds of players coordinate, from Amazon’s streaming platform, to play the same video game.
“It’s called inverted mentality”
However, the “interactive lives” of the TikTok video game have their specificities. What is striking is their staging, as overloaded as possible. In his live broadcast, during which he must climb a mountain of video games GTAAdrien, known as “Delbosso33,” doesn’t just highlight his role and face, as most streamers on Twitch do soberly. A large part of the screen is also covered by around thirty icons, each of which corresponds to very specific events in the game and is associated with actions that viewers can trigger.
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