Stadia has unveiled Crowd Play, a new feature that allows viewers to jump in and play games with their favorite streamers.
Stadia tweeted a demonstration video for the Crowd Play feature Friday and opened the beta program up for YouTube creators who live-stream games with Google's game streaming service to sign up and test it out.
In honor of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games opening (despite the COVID-19 pandemic still raging), Stadia made Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 – The Official Video Game by Sega one of the first nine games to be compatible with Crowd Play and simplified the process in the demo video. To start using the feature, streamers must simply link their YouTube accounts with their Stadia accounts if they haven't already, begin their livestream, activate Crowd Play and let viewers join the party.
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Once Crowd Play is activated, streamers are taken to the Crowd Play Lobby of Olympic Games Tokyo 2020, where they're given a list of 10 Olympic events in which they can compete with their viewers, including baseball, basketball, hammer throw, long jump, 100m dash and 100m freestyle. Each event gives a maximum number of players who can participate in the event. For example, the number of players who can join in the 100m dash is capped at eight. When you select the game you want to play, the top players currently viewing you will start receiving invitations to join in the game. At the end of the session, you can either play the game again with the same viewers who joined or end the session altogether, which will remove everyone from the Crowd Play Lobby.
Crowd Play is the second feature Stadia has publicly introduced to the service this year following State Share, which allows gamers and content creators to share playable snippets of games they played with viewers to try out for themselves.
With Stadia introducing Crowd Play to the wider public and conducting a beta test with YouTube streamers, the Google-led company is certainly living up to its Latin meaning of "stadium." And in the spirit of the Tokyo Olympic Games, their use of Sega's official game is the perfect demonstration for Crowd Play.
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