For years, people have been able to play games, watch gaming videos and connect with fellow gamers on Facebook. But what if we could do more?
Imagine a world where you didn’t just watch a gaming creator stream their play session, but instead, you could jump in and play with them live without needing to buy, download or install the game — or a world where the gaming video you were watching becomes interactive itself.
Today, Facebook Gaming has announced that they’re making the first investments in Play Watch Connect: a new framework that helps deliver more immersive and engaging social experiences that build a community around games on Facebook.
Products in the new Play Watch Connect framework will bridge those three pillars together – playing games, watching gaming videos and connecting with others around games.
Play with Streamer
Facebook Gaming creators are more than entertainers — they’re community builders who bring people together over a shared love of games.
To do that, they engage with and build relationships with their communities. As such Facebook Gaming wants to build tools that help creators do this in new and meaningful ways.
To start, they’re amping up the “gameplay” in gameplay videos. From a button on a live stream, Play with Streamer lets viewers jump into the game and play directly with their favourite Facebook Gaming creators while the stream remains picture-in-picture so they don’t miss a beat.
Facebook Interactives
Facebook Gaming is also making live gaming video an interactive experience with the introduction of Facebook Interactives: new experiences layered on top of live streams.
In the future, these might include trivia questions, audience polls and even playable games on-stream. The limits of these experiences stretch as far as developers’ creativity and won’t necessarily be limited to gaming.
Whether it be minigames, full games, or companion apps, Facebook Gaming hopes that Facebook Interactives will make watching live video’s a more immersive, social and engaging experience for the platform’s viewers.
You can see Facebook Interactives in action in PAC-MAN COMMUNITY’s Watch mode, where viewers of a 24/7 live stream pick a side and power up the AI PAC-MAN™ or Ghosts in competition with each other.
Soon, these features will unlock new community achievements, turning the PAC-MAN interactive live streams into a global arcade in which all viewers play together to win.
Facebook Gaming creators will be featured inside the interactive streams as they play, with viewers able to suggest mazes. Other features unique to the PAC-MAN interactive live streams will be announced in the coming months.
