Bethesda is experimenting, and if it pays off, other id Software games could follow the approach that RAGE 2 tries to experiment with.

There will be an extension on Twitch, where viewers of RAGE 2 streams could help the streamer – if they die, they can participate in a defibrillation minigame to revive them, and if enough viewers do it, the streamer can return to the battlefield with maximum health. Also, the viewers can race against each other, as their names could show up in post-apocalyptic races.

„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,” Тim Willits, the head of id Software said.

He added that Quake Champions has been the inspiration behind the extension: „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.”

Willits also said that after RAGE 2, other id Software games (such as Doom: Eternal) could be getting the Twitch extra: „Yes, we’re definitely looking at all things like that, but we’ll see how it goes for Rage 2. I believe looking at the industry, and even looking at how we approach games and game design, you know game developers will look more at how the game is streamed, what streamers can do, and then how those viewers can participate. So I think we’ve scratched the surface and you’ll see a lot more of that in the coming years.”

RAGE 2 is out on May 14 on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.

Source: GameSpot