TY - JOUR AU - Gerber, Hannah R. PY - 2022/07/13 Y2 - 2024/03/29 TI - The literacies of a competitive esports team: Livestreaming, VODS, and Mods JF - L1-Educational Studies in Language and Literature JA - L1-ESLL VL - 22 IS - 2 SE - Articles DO - 10.21248/l1esll.2022.22.2.365 UR - https://l1research.org/article/view/365 SP - 1-25 AB - <p>This article explores a variety of literacy practices that exist with competitive esports, namely livestreaming, moderating/Mods, and VODs/VODcasting. Nearly two decades of research have indicated that videogaming provides rich experiences for developing multifarious and diverse literacy practices, but, to-date, little research examines the literacies born out of the rapidly growing and evolving videogaming market of esports. This study provides insight into the way a team functions to provide meaning-making experiences surrounding livestreaming, moderating, and VODcasting within the burgeoning esports culture. Drawing from a two-year snapshot of a larger five-year ethnographic examination of a competitive collegiate esports team, this study is guided by the theoretical perspective of distributed cognition. Data that inform this study stem from interviews, observations, and artifacts in both face-to-face and digital spaces. Findings indicate that the esports-related literacies of livestreaming, moderating, and VODs/VODcasting, transcend and overlap meaning-making experiences—<em>in-the-moment</em> and <em>in reflectivity</em>—suggesting that the role of the team is vital to the literacies found within the esports ecosystem.</p> ER -