VTuber girl_dm_ has shown off an unusual community tool during her first Dark Souls 2 playthrough: backseatNOW 9000 lets a viewer take control of a cloned save for eight minutes and demonstrate what they think the streamer should do. The browser-based tool was created by a member of her community, requires no extra download from the viewer, and was described by girl_dm_ herself as “Temu Google Stadia.”

Anyone who has ever played a FromSoftware game in front of another Souls fan already knows how quickly backseat gaming can become a plague. Someone always knows where you should go, which weapon you should use, which wall hides a secret, and, naturally, what you should have done three seconds earlier during the boss fight. For streamers, the situation can become even stranger, because the advice does not come from one person on a couch, but from thousands of viewers who are all convinced they know better.

girl_dm_ has now shown off a tool that does not silence that phenomenon, but turns it into part of the show. During a Dark Souls 2 stream, the VTuber used an in-browser tool called backseatNOW 9000, which gives one selected chatter a clone of her latest save. The viewer then has eight minutes to show what they want her to do, and the result is broadcast live in a picture-in-picture window for the audience.

The streamer explained on X that the tool “takes a clone of my latest save and gives a chatter eight minutes to show me what they want me to do.” The setup is not conventional cloud gaming, but a more homemade and focused version of it. The tool pulls her save data, puts it onto a host computer running a legal copy of the game, and allows the chatter to remotely play for a limited session.

Temu Google Stadia, But For Souls Fans

girl_dm_ described it neatly: “It’s essentially pulling my save info, putting it to the host computer (which is running a legal copy of the game), and [allows] the chatter to remotely play for their limited session – it’s Temu Google Stadia with a browser source viewer for me as the streamer.” The comparison works because Google Stadia launched in 2019 promising a game streaming revolution: playable games delivered over the internet, without the need for expensive local hardware.

Stadia offered big-budget games, platform exclusives, and limited-time demos, but the service ultimately shut down in 2023. Much of the problem came from the same issue that affects game streaming in general: the experience lives or dies by the user’s internet connection, leaving many of its biggest cloud-gaming promises unrealized. backseatNOW 9000 is not trying to solve that problem at industrial scale. It is a narrower, stream-specific tool built for one very particular use case.

The tool has its own technical quirks. Mouse and keyboard controls are not currently available, the backseat player has to lock their mouse to play, and controller support is somewhat limited, with the PS5 DualSense not currently working well with the tool. The streamer side also requires a fairly involved setup: girl_dm_, for example, uses Streamer.Bot and a Blackmagic streaming encoder for her complex interactive streams. That means backseatNOW 9000 is not a plug-and-play gadget that any streamer can drop into a broadcast with two clicks, but a clever community experiment that needs technical setup, moderation discipline, and an audience that will not immediately try to break it.

There Are Guardrails Against Chaos

A tool like this would be useless without basic community management features. Would-be backseat players can only log in through unique credentials sent by girl_dm_ herself, and those credentials are valid only for their eight-minute session. Anyone who tries to hijack the stream through the tool receives a chat timeout for a week. It is a simple rule, but clear enough to stop the experiment from instantly turning into a live-streamed wreck.

Despite the setup and technical hiccups, the implementation is surprisingly elegant. At first glance, it sounds like a tool built so backseat gamers can finally prove whether they are as good as they claim. In practice, it appears much more positive. Souls games are famously labyrinthine, full of easily missed secrets, side paths, and strange corners, and Dark Souls 2’s Drangleic is especially well suited to experienced players guiding a first-time player toward things she might otherwise never find.

That makes backseatNOW 9000 more than a funny streaming gimmick. It becomes a concrete form of community knowledge. A viewer does not take over the stream permanently, but gets a short, controlled window to demonstrate, guide, or help. Backseat gaming usually appears as annoying noise. Here, it has been turned into a visible, limited, moderated system. For once, the chat is not only shouting where to go. It gets eight minutes to actually try to show it.

Source: PC Gamer