Telltale's Batman series going social with 'crowd play'

Telltale Games' upcoming Batman: The Telltale Series will debut a new crowd play mechanic that allows viewers to influence in-game decisions using their smartphones.

The studio unveiled the new feature at San Diego Comic Con, where it let a crowd of 500 take it for a spin during a live gameplay event.

Attendees were given the chance to weigh in on every choice by visiting a unique URL and accessing crowd play using a short login code

In the retail version crowd play will be optional, but raises a number of interesting possibilities; such as giving Telltale fans more agency and direct influence when watching Batman on streaming sites such as Twitch.

Speaking to Inverse, Telltale's creative communications head Job Stauffer explained crowd play has been in the works for a while, and was inspired by the way people used to turn classic point-and-click games into a group activity.

After hearing stories of The Walking Dead players gathering around screens to play through the episodic series en masse, he started to take the idea of crowd play even more seriously.

"A lot of us grew up playing with friends or family members crowded around one screen, going through the story and talking to the characters, with [everyone] pointing at certain objects or where to click or deciding what to say," Stauffer explained.

"We really started thinking, you know, it’d be great if, instead of just shouting at the screen and at each other, maybe the audience watching the player could weigh in on the decisions and the roleplaying."

For the full interview with Stauffer, head on over to Inverse.