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Hearthmind brings the 'Twitch Plays' phenomenon to Hearthstone
Ever since Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft launched on PC and Mac in March, we've been asking ourselves one question: How would this strategic card game behave if a democratic octopus were in control? That question is now partially answered thanks to Hearthmind, a website that blends Blizzard's CCG with the livestreamed, crowd-play-style of control popularized by Twitch Plays Pokemon. Hearthmind isn't quite controlled the same way Twitch Plays Pokemon is though, as players vote on actions in the game by dragging their mouse cursor over the playing field as opposed to entering commands in the stream's chat. An action is picked by the game every five seconds, so it retains a somewhat brisk pace compared to its Pokemon-based counterpart. As of this writing, the stream, powered by Hitbox as opposed to Twitch, is hovering around 100 participants. Hearthstone just launched on iOS for free this month after Blizzard detailed the game's single player campaign. An Android port of the game is still in the works. [Image: Blizzard Entertainment]
Twitch funds chat-driven game Choice Chamber
Twitch matched funds pledged to Studio Bean's chat-driven Kickstarter project, Choice Chamber. The developer's crowdfunding campaign ends Sunday evening and raised nearly half of its $30,000 goal, and Twitch's contributions put it near the finish line. According to the project's reward tiers, the game is expected to launch in December. Following up the success of Twitch Plays Pokemon, Choice Chamber is a PC and Mac game that is designed to be played while streaming live on Twitch. Described as a "real-time, crowdsourced, procedurally generated game," it allows stream viewers to use Twitch's chat functionality to either aid or hinder the progress of the game's primary player by voting on game-changing polls. The player, who can choose to go the single-player-only route with offline mode, navigates an "endless series of dangerous chambers" while wielding a variety of weaponry with which to defeat enemies. In the prototype version of Choice Chamber, viewers vote on said weapons in addition to powerups, abilities and special maneuvers, though Studio Bean plans to add many more modifiable elements. [Image: Studio Bean]
Twitch Plays Pokemon: Creating an oral history in real-time
When I began my phone call Sunday evening with T.L. Taylor, an associate professor of comparative media studies at MIT, I opted to check her loyalty to the one, true Helix god. "All sensible people are," she joked. Even when observing Twitch Plays Pokemon from an academic standpoint, it's easy to get wrapped up in the emerging community-crafted narrative surrounding the live, always-on event. The crowd-created stories in Twitch Plays Pokemon are enough to fill four seasons of serialized TV drama, complete with the surprising death of characters and the rise of clearly-defined heroes, villains and idolized "gods" like the Helix Fossil, all caught in a religious war. Yet it moves at a pace that can make some accounts of the multiplayer game seem outdated within hours. In fact, by the time I came back to this very paragraph, the Helix Fossil was revived and turned into the Pokemon Omanyte (affectionately called "Lord Helix" by the players). "[The channel] actually takes one of the kernels of what makes Twitch so interesting, which is turning what would otherwise be your private play into public entertainment for others," Taylor said. "What I think is great about this channel and is so fascinating is that the entertainer also becomes the crowd."
