Cote Amanda C, Rahman Md Waseq Ur, Foxman Maxwell, Wilson Andrew, Harris Brandon C, Can Onder, Hansen Jared C
Department of Media and Information, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, United States.
Esports and Games Research Lab, School of Journalism and Communication, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR, United States.
Front Sports Act Living. 2024 Sep 11;6:1410929. doi: 10.3389/fspor.2024.1410929. eCollection 2024.
Collegiate esports-organized competitive gaming-has expanded rapidly in the United States, drawing in student players, broadcasters, and support staff, as well as university employees. Universities have invested financially in esports, hoping to capitalize on gaming fandom to attract prospective students and enhance campus community integration. Little research, however, addresses collegiate esports fandom in depth.
Drawing on thirty-one in-depth interviews with collegiate esports players, student workers, program directors, and administrators, this article investigates how collegiate esports participants perceive and discuss their fans.
We identify three central themes related to fans in the dataset: discussions of fans' role in the collegiate esports environment, comparisons between esports and traditional sports fans, and concerns about the underutilization of fans within collegiate esports spaces. Subsequently, we theorize these themes through existing research on professional esports and traditional collegiate sports fandoms, as well as through the concept of "fan labor," or how the productive work of fans provides value to the nascent industry.
This article thus not only specifically explores how collegiate esports programs are normalizing fan labor as an essential part of their practices, but also questions who benefits from this relationship and how. Investigating collegiate esports fans as an under-researched group additionally provides a new perspective on how fan labor integrates with media industries more broadly.
大学电子竞技——有组织的竞争性游戏——在美国迅速发展，吸引了学生玩家、主播、支持人员以及大学员工。大学在电子竞技方面进行了资金投入，希望利用游戏粉丝群体来吸引潜在学生并加强校园社区融合。然而，很少有研究深入探讨大学电子竞技粉丝群体。
本文通过对31名大学电子竞技玩家、学生工作人员、项目主管和管理人员进行深度访谈，调查了大学电子竞技参与者如何看待和谈论他们的粉丝。
我们在数据集中确定了与粉丝相关的三个核心主题：关于粉丝在大学电子竞技环境中作用的讨论、电子竞技粉丝与传统体育粉丝的比较，以及对大学电子竞技领域粉丝未得到充分利用的担忧。随后，我们通过对职业电子竞技和传统大学体育粉丝群体的现有研究，以及通过“粉丝劳动”的概念，即粉丝的生产性工作如何为这个新兴行业提供价值，对这些主题进行了理论化分析。
因此，本文不仅具体探讨了大学电子竞技项目如何将粉丝劳动规范化为其实践的重要组成部分，还质疑了谁从这种关系中受益以及如何受益。将大学电子竞技粉丝作为一个研究不足的群体进行调查，还为粉丝劳动如何更广泛地与媒体行业融合提供了一个新视角。
