What began as an intriguing social experiment with Twitch Plays Pokemon has now turned into a new form of communal play that has been adopted by Zombie Studios for their upcoming horror game, Daylight.
"Streaming has been a huge boon to the PS4 community, and the devs want Daylight to have an involved relationship with livestreams," Sony's Ryan Clements said of Zombie studios. While actual details are vague, Sony explains that the "hope" is to allow stream viewers to control the actual scares in Daylight. As we've seen with Twitch Plays Pokemon, this type of gameplay can result in a more interactive dynamic between the player and audience.
At this point it's unclear exactly how Zombie studio is going about the feature, but using Twitch Plays Pokemon as an example, I could see a defined set of commands control certain aspects of a streamer's gameplay. I'm imagining a viewer will type in a "scare" command — something like a sound effect or random scare — and that action will happen in the game shortly after.
In addition to this streamer/audience relationship, Zombie is taking other steps to ensure Daylight is frightening every time you play it. Whereas most horror games feature scripted scares, Daylight uses procedurally generated play, ensuring that no two sessions will be identical.
Daylight is due out on PS4 this April.
