"Chat Has No Chill": A Novel Physiological Interaction For Engaging Live Streaming Audiences

Abstract

Now more than ever, people are using online platforms to communicate. Twitch, the foremost platform for live game streaming, offers many communication modalities. However, the platform lacks representation of social cues and signals of the audience experience, which are innately present in live events. To address this, we present a technology probe that captures the audience energy and response in a game streaming context. We designed a game and integrated a custom-communication modality - Commons Sense - in which the audience members' heart rates are sensed via webcam, averaged, and fed into a video game to affect sound, lighting, and difficulty. We conducted an 'in-the-wild' evaluation with four Twitch streamers and their audience members (N=55) to understand how these groups interacted through Commons Sense. Audience members and streamers indicated high levels of enjoyment and engagement with Commons Sense, suggesting the potential of physiological interaction as a beneficial communication tool in live streaming.