“I do believe this is actually the future of gaming, to have viewers participate more in the experience.”
– id Software studio director Tim Willits explains why the team paired Twitch extentions with the game
id Software’s Rage 2 is launching alongside a Twitch extension that lets viewers revive downed streamers and see their own names show up in-game.
As studio director Tim Willits explains in an interview with GameSpot, one of the goals of creating an extension like that is to encourage players to stream the game, something he says can be difficult with open world games.
“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,” Willits tells GameSpot.
This initial extension allows viewers on Twitch to complete a little defibrillation mini-game to revive players that die while streaming. More participants mean that more health is restored. Willits says that he thinks both the random elements of the game and its pacing lend themselves to an all-around steamtable game, and the team has more extensions planned to hopefully encourage others to think the same.