From Home to Stage: How Speedrunners Negotiate Performance, Relation to the Audience, and Spectacle in Live-Streaming Speedrun Marathons

This paper explores how speedrunners conceive of performance, negotiate their relationship with the audience, and articulate competitive and mediation objectives within theframework of the spectacle of live-streaming speedrun marathons. Based on seventeen semi-structured interviews with practitioners performing various roles in the French charity event SpeeDons2022 (speedrunners,commentators,entertainers,reviewers), this research will show how they must navigate between competing representations of the practice and contrasting systems of norms.