You guys remember Twitch Plays Pokemon? You must, it was only earlier this year. The conceit was that by inputting commands into the Twitch chatbox, the streaming audience could directly control the game. It became an internet phenomenon, devolving into an internet meta-culture, with its own communities, lore, and memes. It was also a great example of crowdsourced gaming.
Well, something like that may be coming to the PS4. It’s a game called #Let’sKillZombies, which is set in a future that sees civilians into a sport of survival were a ravenous zombie population is unleashed in the name of sports entertainment with television spectators voting upon how many zombies they want to uncage to make survival all the more harder for you to accomplish with the potential of a collective horde of over 1,000 zombies.
Well, that’s the story conceit anyway. The translation to actual gameplay is allowing the audience to interact with and change how the game is being played.
There are four ways that spectators can affect the game for the broadcaster:
- Every ~80 seconds, the audience gets a choice of two encounters options available to vote via interactions including: encounter spawns and various arena events.
- The perk selection screen has its own voting mechanic in which if the player decides to wait and select the spectator’s most voted perk, the player will be offered extra XP and Health.
- The chat commands are available throughout the broadcast as they are executed in real time, allowing the spectators to affect on a variety of imperative decisions that can significantly increase or decrease your chance of survival. This includes affecting character’s speed or health, changing arena configuration, spawning more zombies and obstacles; and for the most evil of spectators is the opportunity to deliberately change the camera angle to a less effective perspective and reverse the entire control scheme and much more.
It is important to remember that the streaming aspects of the game are not mandatory, and you can definitely play it all by yourself as a regular arena zombie shooter. But it is probably best enjoyed when the community aspect comes into play.