Square Enix lance le Live Interactive Works Game Development Crew, a program that brings gamers, streamers, and developers together to build community games. A first project emerges from this collaboration, Gluttony.
It’s obvious that games are more and more often acting as community platforms: we play online with other players, or even we are content to watch a player play alongside other spectators on the occasion of a stream. Same trend for game development: alphas, betas and other early access are becoming almost the norm to allow players to give an opinion before the launch of the final version of a game.
Square Enix takes the concept one step further and announces the Live Interactive Works Game Development Crew, an initiative to design games collaboratively with gamers and streamers. Interested players can therefore join this fine team within a “community” which will participate closely in the design of games with the development team. And these brainstorming sessions between players and developers are intended to be the subject of community streams: designing a game must therefore become as fun as playing.
Obviously, the operation is not totally altruistic on the part of the Japanese developer, who intends to recruit streamers who already have a certain audience (at least 3000 subscribers) and who will therefore be able to contribute to the notoriety of the project itself and of the games that will emerge. However, a first community game already emanates from the reflections of the Live Interactive Works Game Development Crewbaptized Project Gluttony.
Players embody groups of defenseless or almost defenseless humans, tracked by a huge monster that seeks to devour them. Players will have to mobilize to try to survive the onslaught of the beast (by cooperating or by ensuring that others are devoured before you are), all in a colorful and good-natured environment. The future will tell if the fruit of this community collaboration will be successful with the greatest number, but Square Enix is already showing its ambitions: to ensure that Gluttony be a game that is as fun to play as it is to watch, in a community setting.