Spectator-Participation: the next step for gaming
The concept of interactive spectatorship is not new to gaming, but in 2019 it has become a buzzword, tipped as the next big thing. With the rise of 5G and cloud gaming, which can facilitate mass, real-time gaming experiences, spectator-participation has the technological infrastructure to propel forwards, and streaming platforms, professional gamers, and developers are already innovating with new experiences. A whole new genre of users that sit somewhere between spectator and gamer will catalyze a new generation of games specifically built for live-streaming and viewer interaction. In this piece, we’ll explore where this concept has emerged from, how it might develop, and the challenges it could pose for game designers.
The emergence of spectator-participation
Watching other people play games is big business and shows no signs of slowing down. A quick glance at Twitch statistics illustrates its popularity. A hub for the live-streaming of games and eSports, it has around 15 million daily users, and on average there are 1,273,000 Twitch viewers at any given moment. An impressive 9.36 billion hours of content was watched in 2018 on Twitch alone, up 25% from 2017. Some of the gamers who broadcast on the platform, like ‘Tfue’ and ‘Shroud’, are very much influencers, with millions of followers. Evidently, there is huge demand for watching games.
Now let’s discuss the roots for the other side of the equation: active participation. According to the media industry expert Matthew Ball, the foundations for spectator-participation have been in place ever since user-generated maps and mods were introduced to games, changing game design fundamentally. Games started off as predetermined creations, every aspect of which the developer created or curated. However, now many developers create merely a guideline of code that builds a flexible system in which the gamer can determine their own course of action. In other words, there’s been a shift to developers relinquishing control to the gamer, which has coincided with the rise in popularity of live-streaming. A new generation of games architected around mass spectator-participation can be seen as a natural extension of these developments.
But, why now? As mentioned, spectator-participation as a concept in gaming has been around for years. “As with any new “thing”, Ball says, “it’s a question of time. Time for the right technology to be available, for consumers to be ready for it, and for the right content to be made. Each of these pieces is starting to fall into place”.
Creating engaging experiences
The industry is certainly on the right track in terms of content. Chat input and polling extensions are offered by most live-streaming platforms and can serve as inspiration for creating collaborative user experiences. We’ll see this concept taken further, with new methods for deeper audience influence on an even larger scale. The entertainment value of this is explained by UX researchers from the University of Ontario Institute of Technology: “the hectic nature of controlling a game through thousands of near-simultaneous inputs has the potential to create a joyful anarchy which drives a shared experience among community members as they strive for a common goal”. In fact, streaming platforms and games are already giving us a glimpse into what is possible.
Twitch released an experiment in 2014 called Twitch Plays Pokemon, in which users collaborated together to control a bot and complete Pokemon Red. Twitch Studios director Marcus “djWHEAT” Graham said it “changed the way that people thought about the impact that a viewer could have on an experience.” Since then, Twitch has encouraged streamers and game designers to experiment with new ways of building viewer engagement by releasing integrations such as the “Twitch Bits” virtual currency and “Twitch Extensions”. These have been tested out predominantly by indie developers.
Landfall is one developer testing the waters with their game Clustertruck: its Twitch integration lets the live-streaming audience vote and insert in-game obstacles for the gamer who’s broadcasting, from making trucks explode to starting earthquakes. Scavengers Studio is another interesting example: the battle royale in The Darwin Project has a feature called ‘Show Director’ that allows viewers to act as the master of each match, controlling the arena with bombs, storms, and zone closures, as well as other extensions such as votes and bets.
Meanwhile, Studio Bean designed their game Choice Chamber specifically for live-streaming, with viewers able to influence which weapons and powers the gamer receives, through real-time chat aggregation mechanics.
The concept of spectator-participation is not limited to traditional gaming formats, also making its way into virtual reality (VR) gaming. LIV, a Prague-based startup established by a former competitive gamer, is aiming to evolve into a “real-time audience interaction platform”. CEO AJ Shewki envisions a future in which VR spectators can take part in the game events beyond the chat features that exist today. For instance, one of his long term goals is to pit the gamer and their “audience army” against other gamers and their audiences. For this to happen, the key will be ensuring effective communication between gamers and their viewers. “We’re working directly with developers to create game loops that meaningfully leverage interactivity as a core mechanic,” Shewki adds.
A stream of challenges
Despite the potential, designing games around streamers’ input poses several challenges, and as this is a relatively new area it will take time to get right.
Viewer motivations
Today, many games are designed based on research of gamer motivations: what makes gamers play and derive enjoyment from games. However, researchers will need to create a new taxonomy to provide the theoretical framework to inform the design and development of games tailored to the emotions of spectator-participants.
Further complexity is added by the assumption that audiences will interact to different degrees with the gameplay, and will float in and out of watching and participating in single sessions. For example, a user might participate briefly in a vote or poll and decide to be passive for the rest of the session. As such, the design of interactive spectator experiences must factor in the needs of players, passive viewers, and spectator-players — in contrast to typical mobile games which only need to factor in players.
What’s important for developers to remember is, as with any content or medium, they don’t just suddenly create brand new experiences, but rather roll out continual, incremental changes. In the words of Ball, “audiences need to learn what to do and how, content companies need to learn what to build and how, [and] the technology needs to support it”.
Monetizing
While games developed specifically for spectator-participation have the potential to be a lucrative revenue stream (all puns intended), creating monetization mechanics inside the core game loop will likely be a case of trial and error.
Chris Stamp, the owner of Earthbound games, a company innovating in this space, is optimistic: “as the relationship between spectators and streamers evolves, it will soon be second nature for spectators to spend money to vote, make micropayments for extra impact features, and earn game-currency from active spectating”.
The spoils will be shared between the gamer (AKA the influencer or broadcaster), the streaming platform, and the game developer, with the latter getting a cut from the transactions made via their extensions (for example interactive mechanics like voting). This mini ecosystem of monetization could grow significantly as more influencers and gamers enter the market.
Looking ahead
Spectator-participation is an exciting area that is set to explode in the next couple years, not just in gaming but in the entertainment industry as a whole. Testament to this is the recent funding of Genvid’s interactive streaming engine, which lets developers create new experiences over streams: they’re targeting media companies and sports broadcasters in addition to games. While we can only speculate what these new gaming experiences might look like, it’s likely they’ll be a boon for retention rates and revenues for game developers and streaming platforms. With the reduction of latency provided by 5G, and the existing huge demand for spectating video games and eSports, the foundations are in place. Now it’s just up to the industry’s maestros to create interactive concepts we wouldn’t have thought were possible just a few years ago.
