Competition or Collaboration? Exploring Interactive Relationships in Live-Streaming Audience Participation Game

Interactivity is the key to enhancing audience engagement and immersion during the live-streaming process. Viewer-streamer interaction is a research field worth exploring in live streaming. The live-streaming audience participation games break down the boundaries between viewers and streamers, allowing viewers to participate in live streaming using their virtual avatars, which effectively expands the existing ways of interaction in live streaming. To explore the interactive relationships in live streaming, we designed a quiz game that viewers can play by sending comments as answers to questions during live streaming. The game has two different modes. In competitive mode, viewers who answer any question incorrectly will lose the game, and only the last viewer left will win. In collaborative mode, viewers who answer any question correctly will get points, and all viewers will win when their total points reach the target set by streamers in advance. We also incorporated some entertaining elements into the game. We conducted a comparative experiment to investigate how the different modes affected viewers’ experiences. We utilized a mixed-methods approach including semi-structured interviews (N = 7) and questionnaires (N = 30). The results indicated that in the competitive mode, viewers were more focused on answering questions. They also had a stronger sense of participation and were more easily influenced by other viewers and the streamer. In the collaborative mode, viewers were more relaxed and less influenced by other viewers, and the streamer played a smaller role. The findings provide guidelines for the design and further research of games in which viewers participate.