SAN FRANCISCO, CA – January 14, 2015 – Twitch, the world’s leading social video platform and community for gamers, today announced the “Twitch Plays” directory, providing an easier way for developers to introduce and viewers to discover Twitch Plays games on the site. Popularized by TwitchPlaysPokemon, Twitch Plays allow viewers to directly affect the outcome of games played in live broadcasts.
Twitch Plays games are defined by several parameters: They are autonomously running games that utilize Twitch live broadcasts as the primary mode of content delivery. These interactive experiences also give the audience control over “player” actions in the game by entering command inputs into the chat box or via second screen interfaces. Lastly, they have an uncapped number of simultaneous participants, resulting in a democratic structure where everyone plays a part.
The following new games have recently joined the genre:
City Stream – Team up with the entire Twitch community to build and defend a massive geometric city. Whether you’re a builder, gatherer, or at the frontlines of battle, you’ll find your place in CityStream.
TwitchPlaysZombidle – This PC title is adapted from Berzerk Studio’s mobile game. Level up your very own Twitch character and join forces with the rest of the chat to wreck havoc on the good guys.
Kid Mech – KidMech is a live action Twitch robot arena battle game comprising of two teams and an unlimited number of users controlling each bot. Gameplay will cycle between various competitive games including: Battle Soccer, Last Man Standing and Capture the Flag. The arena features several interactive destructive weapons—such as the saw and flamethrower—that can be utilized to score additional points or weaken the opposition.
TwitchVersusZombies – Communicate and elaborate strategies with peers in order to eradicate the zombies. In this game where each decision of every individual counts, you will mend, defend, attack, scout and build your way back to the top of the food chain.
Other active releases featured in the directory include:
Twitch Plays Robot – Real life robots controlled by Twitch fight for their mechanical lives in a series of games and events set up by Let’s Robot. The first event will be RobogueLike, which is a real life procedurally generated dungeon crawler full of puzzles, traps, surprises, crafting, and enemy robots. How long can Twitch survive?
Twitch Plays Dark Souls – One of the more popular Twitch Plays games, Dark Souls and Dark Souls 2 have already been beaten with the current focus on Demon’s Souls.
TwitchPlaysClawMachine – What could make playing a carnival claw machine more frustrating than normal? How about connecting it to Twitch.
TwitchPlaysPunchClub – When tinyBuild challenged the Twitch community to beat Punch Club before making it available for purchase, viewers bonded together and quickly completed an abridged version of the boxer’s journey. Given the great response, they are bringing it back to Twitch, except this will be the longer full version of the game players have to face.
TwitchPlaysPokemon – This progenitor of the Twitch Plays movement is planning its first run of 2016 on February 14. A heavily modified Pokemon Crystal will be played with the game starting in Kanto and featuring a much more sophisticated AI running external to the game.
“The cascading creation of ideas inspired by TwitchPlaysPokemon has been the most rewarding part of having created the experience,” said TwitchPlaysPokemon creator who has chosen to remain anonymous. “Since the addition of a ‘Twitch Plays’ category will greatly improve their discoverability, I hope this further encourages people to make their own streams inspired by my channel.”
“The Twitch community has consistently rallied behind organically created Twitch Plays games, with the trend growing rather than subsiding,” said Kathy Astromoff, VP of Developer Success, Twitch. “Making it easier for prospective players to find Twitch Plays games drives developer success, and encourages new developers to begin experimenting. Twitch Plays are just one of the myriad ways developers can discover new users and build stronger engagement with the Twitch community.”
For daily updates, visit the Twitch blog, Twitter feed and Facebook page.
