At the Global Perspectives on Platforms and Cultural Production conference (June 1-2, 2022), Daniel Nielsen and Jan Švelch presented their papers on volutneer moderation on gaming subreddits and Critical Role‘s unique position on the live-streaming platform Twitch.tv, respectively.

The conference organized by the Global Digital Cultures research group at University of Amsterdam brought together scholars interested in platforms and working across fields and disciplines, including several game production scholars. The two-day event was preceded by Creator Studies Workshop, which was hosted by editors and authors of the edited collection Creator Culture: An Introduction to Global Social Media Entertainment.

Daniel Nielsen presented a paper based on his recently published article Participatory Cultures of Digital Games: The Double-Edged Sword of Being a Reddit Community Moderator, which you can read more about in this blog post. Jan Švelch talked about the unique position of Critical Role on the live-streaming platform Twitch. This actual play show in which professional voice actors play Dungeons & Dragons every Thursday belongs among the highest earning channels on Twitch despite focusing on an analog game instead of a digital one and rejecting many of Twitch’s platform logics.