The Impact of Streamer’s Commentary on the Emotional Engagement of Horror Game Playthroughs

This research aimed to explore the impact of streamer commentary on the playthrough viewer’s emotional experience in single-player narrative-driven games. This study used quantitative and qualitative approaches by surveying and interviewing 34 people who regularly watch playthroughs. They were asked to watch three different playthroughs of "No Snake Hotel," a 2022 horror game chosen for its brevity and simplicity, with several visual and audio cues containing lore and foreshadowing. The playthroughs were categorized as no commentary, casual commentary, and thorough commentary. The study identified 15 key commentary opportunity points in the game, 6 of which were narrative foreshadowing that can help build suspense. The casual commentary playthrough interacted with 5 out of 15 commentary opportunity points and none of the foreshadowing, while the thorough commentary playthrough interacted with 13 out of 15 commentary opportunity points and all the foreshadowing. No commentary playthrough was deemed scarier by 73.5% of participants. However, 94.1% of participants preferred the two playthroughs with commentary. The minority of participants, 5.9%, who preferred no commentary, wanted to preserve the tone. In contrast, 70.6% of participants who preferred thorough commentary stated that this playthrough provided them with suspense-related emotions such as excitement, apprehension, and anxiety