‘Twitch could become a games platform in its own right’

Streaming specialist Twitch says it could become a new platform for games developers following the incredible reaction to ‘Twitch Plays Pokmon’.

The social experiment has seen tens of millions of gamers tune into Twitch to play a single game of Pokmon Red. To play, users simply enter the command they wish to make on the chat stream and it’s replicated in the game. Yet gamers must try and complete the game alongside thousands of others trying to take part at the same time.

It has delivered a huge and sustained audience for days on end and captivated the attention of the entire Twitch community,” said Matthew DiPietro, VP of marketing at Twitch

The incredibly high volume of chat activity has helped us to hone our chat system to deal with massive loads like we’re experiencing. It has also made us all think deeply about creative social experiments that can be done on Twitch. This is one of the most interesting things we’ve seen on Twitch since we launched, and we hope to see more experiments like it.”

When it comes to the prospect of Twitch becoming a games platform, he added: You never know. Twitch Plays Pokmon is an interesting proof-of-concept though. We encourage everyone to think about new ways to leverage Twitch’s platform and community for creative gaming endeavors.

This is unique in the history of Twitch. And when you consider how game developers might capitalise on features and functionality like this, the sky is the limit.”

Twitch has enjoyed a huge influx of gamers since the game started, which is now onto its fourteenth day. It has been viewed almost 30m times.

We’ve also seen many new viewers come in as the result of popular interest generated from the widespread press attention,” added DiPietro.