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Max Sjöblom won the university batch in the thesis competition arranged by the Finnish gaming industry with his work “Watching others play: a uses and gratifications approach to video game streaming motives”.

The thesis studies game audiences and the motivation behind watching e-sports.

'Even though these games are far from traditional sports, the reasons for watching them are largely the same. In our research, spectators particularly appreciated the skill of players and the sense of drama. Despite the fact that video games are often considered violent, our results indicate that, on the contrary, spectators do not perceive eSports as an aggressive form of media, even though the experienced aggression of eSports positively correlates with spectating frequency', Sjöblom explains.

'The thesis has a very current topic and the subject is viewed in diverse ways', says the president of the award committee, Assistant Professor Olli Sotamaa from the University of Tampere.

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