Projects

The esports industry is considered, by many, to be in its infancy stage. Researchers from a wide array of disciplines—business, sports science, economics, cognitive science, informatics, law, media studies, and sociology—are pouring into this vastly unexplored landscape. Their projects focus on virtual reality, mixed reality, branding, and emerging technologies. These advancements have had global esports impacts, with the Chinese esports revenue increasing by 18% since 2019 (Cranmer et al., 2021). In an industry with unlimited profit potential, it is not surprising that the focus is around maximizing business gains. The research paper, Esports matrix: Structuring the esports research agenda, "examin[ed] key areas such as impact, acceptance, and barriers to esports to develop a unified framework to capitalize on esports business potential" (Cranmer et al., 2021). 

Due to the explosiveness of the industry, major companies like Amazon have partnered with esports giants to provide AI technology for match analysis, player stats, and audience participation (Amazon Web Services, 2022). Amazon acquired Twitch, one of the largest video game streaming platforms, to further cement its claim in the esports arena. This was a game-changer for the industry. However, as it becomes more influential in the esports community, what other Amazon services will make their way into the esports business and what concerns does that raise? 

Jackson and Orebaugh's A Study of Security and Privacy Issues Associated with the Amazon Echo revealed the device is always passively listening to its users, waiting for the wake word "Alexa." This feature is incredibly convenient since it minimizes the response time; the device is ready to activate, record, and process any request from its users. However, there is one major shortcoming. The Echo cannot distinguish between different voices; even TV or cartoon characters named Alexa can trigger the device to activate (Jackson & Orebaugh, 2018). This raises many privacy concerns since it can record and store private conversations not meant for public consumption. For example, there was a case in an article by The Guardian where Alexa recorded a conversation and sent it to a random contact. They believed the device was activated when it heard a word that sounded like “Alexa." Then, it interpreted the conversation as a "send message" request, in which Alexa determined a recipient with the next spoken name, and it sent the audio to the recipient (Wolfson, 2018). Technology meant for convenience and ease turned against the user.

A 2022 research study by Duffy and Meisner revealed the harmful effects of Tiktok’s algorithms on content creators of color and marginalized communities. Tiktok can ban a user’s content from the platform without their knowledge through a method called shadowbanning. Its algorithms revealed instances of blocking searches with the term "black" and demonetizing the content of LGBTQ+ creators. Users who experienced algorithmic bias believe that “Tiktok is really praying on the downfall of queers, trans, and creators of color” (Duffy & Meisner, 2022). It highlighted that Tiktok did not take ethics into consideration when designing its technology. The problematic and negligent mindset of large entertainment companies persisted in Twitch.

In the early months of 2021, Twitch promoted a sexual genre of streams to raise its popularity. Girls wearing bikinis would stream themselves sitting in hot tubs or pools, drinking, and fulfilling requests for donations (i.e., writing a donor's name on pool toys or their body parts). Aptly named Hot Tub, the streams dominated nearly 80% of the watch hours, surpassing the most streamed video games in the world. That translated into 9.77 million watch hours between March and April of 2021. A streamer could increase their viewership by 20/30-fold by switching to this content. An example of this was Faith, who averaged 378 viewers in February. By the end of March, she averaged 7.4k viewers (Belous, 2021).

As AI technology becomes more prominent within the esports industry, our team believes the gaming community must understand the ethical issues that occur as a result. Our project will build on top of a few projects--“A Study of Security and Privacy Issues Associated with the Amazon Echo” by Jackson and Orebaugh, “Amazon's Alexa Recorded Private Conversation and Sent It to Random Contact” news article by Wolfson, and “Platform Governance at the Margins: Social Media Creators’ Experiences with Algorithmic (in)Visibility” by Duffy and Meisner— and utilize their findings into hypothetical storyboards that cover content moderation and privacy issues regarding Amazon technologies in esports.