Capcom’s “Twitch Plays Akuma” event will have thousands of viewers chaotically play Street Fighter 6 at once
Capcom seems to be going all-in with the launch of Street Fighter 6’s Akuma. Not only is Akuma the final playable character in Street Fighter 6’s Year 1 roster, but his arrival also comes with some hefty balance changes to the game and cast.
To commemorate Akuma’s addition to the game, Capcom will be holding a special Twitch event on its CapcomUSA channel this May 21 at 4 PM PT called “Twitch Plays Akuma.” Based on the 2014 Twitch Plays Pokémon social experiment, Twitch Plays Akuma will have viewers using Dynamic controls and commands to pilot Akuma. The event will most likely include fights against both CPU and player-controlled opponents which will put viewers (as well as the game’s controls and netcode) to the test.
Twitch Plays Pokémon was a chaotic good time
For those who haven’t heard of it, the first Twitch Plays Pokémon was a social experiment held on February 12, 2014 on the video game streaming website Twitch. By typing a series of commands into the chat box, viewers were able to control the player character on their journey to become a Pokémon master. The experiment used a system that included an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) bot and a Game Boy emulator called VisualBoyAdvance that played Pokémon Red.
It took 16 days for 1.16 million viewers to complete Pokémon Red due to the inherent chaotic nature of the Internet. A Democracy mode was introduced during the Team Rocket hideout section in Celadon City because of the building’s complex layout. Democracy mode tallied more specific inputs in chat for some time, whereupon the action with the majority vote would be executed by the game. Combined with the default Anarchy mode, the Twitch Plays Pokémon Twitch channel continues to allow viewers all over the globe to participate in hectic social gaming.
Twitch Plays Akuma will bring the social experiment to more competitive heights
Twitch Plays Akuma is interesting mainly because of the type of genre it features. Unlike most of the mainline Pokémon games which are primarily single-player, turn-based RPGs, Street Fighter titles are fast-paced, multiplayer fighting games. Even though the viewers will be using Street Fighter 6’s Dynamic control scheme which is a mix of Modern and Classic controls, there is no way a Democracy mode can be implemented due to the immediacy of the combat. This means that every command given by the chat will be registered and executed as it happens.
Having thousands of viewers controlling a single character is chaotic enough but it should be noted that the stream will be coinciding with Akuma’s launch. Save for the handful of people who got to try him before release, no one knows how the character works. Expect the first few hours of Twitch Plays Akuma to be filled with defeats and people figuring out the character, followed by tons of funny moments as the chat makes a raging demon move like a newborn baby.
