According to a GameSpot report, Twitch streamers who plan to rage against the machine when Rage 2 releases on May 14 will be able to have their viewers help revive them they die in the game. Upon the game's release, a Twitch extension will be enabled that will allow viewers to play a defibrillation minigame that brings the player back from the half-dead. And depending on how many people play the minigame, streamers might even have their full health replenished, which might be pretty handy in those boss fights.
The extension also has another application, which is to pull viewers' Twitch names to be used as the participants in a race in-game. However, Rage 2 is still a strictly single-player first-person shooter, and fans should understand there is no multiplayer element involved.
According to what the Studio Director Tim Willits told GameSpot, they hope the extension will stimulate more streamers to broadcast their playthroughs of Rage 2. And he also confirmed that the game will include "drops," meaning rewards for those who play and watch the game.
We have integrated the Twitch extension into our game to try to encourage streaming. Open world games are not really streamed as much as you would think. But we feel that with both the nature of the gameplay of Rage 2, and some of the fun stuff that we added in, we're hoping to draw some more streamers. [...] We'll also have some drops. We're working on the drops for people who participate, and that will be like weapons skins, wing stick skins, stuff like that. Like I talked about before we just wanted to see what people are gravitating towards, and if we find that streamers are enjoying streaming the game, we'll definitely try to add some of those in with some of our live updates. If it takes off we're going to chase as much as we can. If we can get viewers to participate more, and I do believe this is actually the future of gaming to have viewers participate more in the experience.
The studio's approach to Twitch extensions is partially related to their experience with Quake Champions. Their expectation is that some elements of randomness introduced by the game and the extension will help draw in more viewers than usual for an open-world action game.
You have the whole intro is a great time for streamers to talk about their strategy, and to talk about how they work with their teams, and they jump in. So games need a little bit of downtime, for lack of a better word, that allows people to talk, and to kind of slow the pace down a little bit, so they can explain to the viewers what they're doing. And this action that's different from watching the same thing over and over again. Like normal classic linear first-person games, you know once you watch someone play it once, you're done. So hopefully with the randomness of Rage 2 and some kind of fun extensions--they're not super overly complex extensions--but they should be fun enough to draw some people in.
Rage 2 will release on May 14 for PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4. You might want to read our hands-on preview of Rage 2 at E3 2018. Here you can see the technical requirements on PC, and learn what to expect from the performance on consoles, while here you can learn more about the BFG that will be exclusive to Deluxe and Collector's Editions.
What do you think of this Twitch integration? Does it sound like a fun way for streamers to interact with their audiences or borderline cheating? Let us know in the comments below!
