games That Could Benefit From Chat Integration

Games like Cult of the Lamb, Streets of Rogue, and Party Hard 2 all have really interesting ways for the streamer to allow their viewers to enhance the gameplay. Cult of the Lamb turns viewers into followers whom the streamer can gift, marry, sacrifice, and otherwise interact with in game. Streets of Rogue allows viewers to vote on boons or afflictions. More and more games are finding ways to cater to the streaming community.

This is beneficial in that it makes the game more fun to watch on streaming services. The interaction makes the playthru experience more memorable as the streamer can involve their community.

Let’s take a look at some interesting ways that existing games could benefit from adding a feature like this!

Shadow Of War

The highly acclaimed Shadow of Mordor series has an amazing system that randomizes the sub-bosses throughout the game. These foes battle each other for supremacy in various Mordor strongholds. Occasionally, you even fight against them on the battlefield. Called the Nemesis System, Shadow of War was always a unique experience as the fighting styles, names, and appearances of these foes were always randomized.

Enter the Chat Interaction possibilities and these foes could easily be named after the streamers followers. A randomizer could select which viewer would be selected and then would appear on the various stronghold ‘trees’. The streamer could then try to recruit or slay the viewer in-game! The system could even introduce moments when a hype train or new subscriber could interrupt a battle to assist or interfere with the streamer’s current battle!

Skyrim

Let’s face it. Skyrim will for all time bea favorite with RPG gamers. Imagine if somehow a mod or even a new update provided some kind of addition to the game in the form of chat integration?

For example, there are tons of NPCs in-game. What if there was a mod to strategically placed wanderers, guards, and/or inn patrons that were named after the streamer’s followers? Maybe there could be a tip barrier or something of that sort where only those who’ve subscribed could be entered into the ability to exist in the streamer’s game. Even better, what if that character could become a sidekick in-game that helped you in battles.

Darkest Dungeon, Jagged Alliance (XCOM style games)

Turned based games with randomized characters you recruit are a dime a dozen nowadays. Games like Darkest Dungeon, Jagged Alliance, Phoenix Point, XCOM, and so many others all have you leading a group of characters. With permadeath a thing, there is an expectation that you will constantly have to recruit new characters to help you beat the game.

Games like this are RIPE for chat integration. Oftentimes these characters can be renamed anyways. It would be fun if the game officially made this a feature to entice viewers to come in and stay in. Of course, there would need to be another layer to this feature to make it different than what currently exists.

With so many possibilities, the feature in these games could be that the chat could spend channel points or bits in order to speed up the build queues for the streamer. They could also spend channel points to heal or recover specific characters in between or even during missions. However you spin it, with the difficulty of some of these games, allowing chat viewers to assist their fav streamer could really be a win win situation.

Chivalry II/ FPS games with bots

FPS games are typically filled with other players shooting and slashing their way to glory. However, there are some FPS games that regularly feature bots that assist in the action. Many times these bots are a means to an end much like foot soldiers in a MOBA. In FPS games, though, they are often used to fill out almost empty servers or games. More specifically, this occurs in the single player modes of these games.

Games like For Honor and The Division often have characters that are called upon to assist the main player in certain missions or situations. It would be tons of fun if these characters were named after chat viewers if the streamer decides to enable it. Then chat could vote or entertain themselves wondering how many kills their NPC gets or how long the NPC survives. Maybe a chat hype train could enable the NPC to drop a health pack or some kind of in-game upgrade.

Diablo franchise

Diablo as a franchise is a loot based dungeon crawler. With tons of bosses and sub bosses, chat integration for this franchise (and others in the genre) could be as simple as integrating a chat viewer’s name into the algorithm that names minor bosses. These pop up frequently enough for the streamer’s viewers to get a kick out of seeing themselves as a sub-boss. Then chat could even spend channel points to make that boss harder (and therefore have more valuable loot)!

Mercenaries

The Mercenaries franchise is one that is underappreciated. As you played through the story mode, your character would be tasked with taking down High Value Targets. This was part of the main story mission so introducing chat interaction might spice things up.

In Mercenaries, viewers could be introduced into the game as side mission style HPVs to add more that the usual amount of targets.Maybe the HPV structure of the game could be used to establish endgame objectives or even just additional side objectives.

Then, once on the player’s map, the viewers could vote on what kind of defenses the HPV would have or other variables.

This format could also be used in sandbox destruction based games such as Just Cause, Far Cry, and Red Faction.

Sports Games

Trying to introduce chat interaction into sports games like Madden or NBA 2K seems a little difficult. However, here are a couple of ideas that might work.

Many streamers like making different series where they play a franchise mode. With streamer mode enabled, they could have a system where the random name generator would simply use a set number of chat viewers names in the draft.

State Of Decay

Zombie games tend to have situations where survivors are encountered. In State of Decay, those situations lead to additions to your community to use in game. With chat interaction, this could be enhanced even further.

Viewers could be selected to become survivors in trouble at random moments during gameplay. If saved, they could be added as a non-usable character to the streamer’s community. To up the ante, maybe even some of these survivors would be ‘moles’ from other enemy communities. Then the viewers could all vote on different actions the viewer character would take...good or bad. This would certainly spice up the State of Decay gameplay!

WWE/wrestling game crowd

As probably the easiest viewer interaction for games, wrestling games as a genre would probably be the simplest. Viewers could be entered into a randomized draft in between matches. The winners would be given a chance to become a virtual crowd member in the game with a sign. Then, they would be allowed to put a moderated message on the sign in the crowd complete with an icon that shows their account name in the crowd.

Interaction could go a step further where usage of channel points or bits could provide the streamer additional finishers in game. Also, where the computer has decided upon a match run-in situation, the viewers could be allowed to vote on which wrestler would run-in during the match. Or maybe the viewers could vote and influence the outcome of MyGM matches and individual wrestler popularity ratings.

Developers are clearly looking for ways to appeal to streamers and content creators. Having ways to enhance the bond between streamers and their live crowds in game is a great win win for both the developer and the streamer. It will be interesting to see the inventive ways this feature will evolve in the future!