Setting the digital stage: Defining game streaming as an entertainment experience

•We position game streaming as a form of collaborative game play.•We first review the social history of gaming.•Performance, interactions, and synchrony are three core dimensions of game streaming.•We explicate game streaming from both communication and media psychology studies.•We discuss motivation, information processing, sociality, and performance. Game streaming—viewing live or recorded broadcasts of others’ video game play—has become widely popular in recent years due to the emergence of platforms such as Twitch and YouTube Gaming. We position game streaming as a form of collaborative game play, with implications for how we study games and communication. We first review the social history of gaming before explicating game streaming as a gaming activity that involves public performance and varying levels of social interaction and synchrony. The influence of these three core elements on the uses, processes, and effects of game streaming as an entertainment activity are discussed through the twin perspectives of communication and media psychology.