Twitch Interactive Inc has announced the creation of a new game category for its livestreaming site that will make it easier for users to find viewer-controlled games similar to the ever popular Twitch Plays Pokemon.

“Calling all game devs! The Twitch Plays game category is officially open for business,” Twitch Business Development Director Brooke Van Dusen wrote on the site’s official blog. “Ever since the infamous [Twitch Plays Pokemon] event shook the world back in February 2014, we’ve had tons of fascinating adaptations of the Twitch Plays concept, and we’re now excited to (finally) feature them all in one place.”

Van Dusen listed three requirements for games to be streamed under the new Twitch Plays category (via Twitch.tv):

1. Autonomously running games that utilize Twitch live streams as the primary mode of content delivery.
2. Interactive experiences that gives the Twitch audience control over “player” actions in the game.
3. Uncapped number of simultaneous participants. No picking and choosing.

Van Dusen noted that only automatically controlled games can be considered for Twitch Plays, so users can’t stream under the new category simply because they do what the audience tells them to. Games that are only partially controlled by viewers are also out, so mechanics like Rise of the Tomb Raider’s Expedition Cards will not count as a Twitch Plays game.

The growth of Twitch Plays games

The original Twitch Plays Pokemon allowed viewers to issue commands to the game by typing them into the chat, but with thousands of users participating at any one time, the result was often nothing but pure anarchy. Even the simplest tasks like walking in one direction or opening the game menu became exercises in frustration, but that was also part of the fun.

Usually, the group would fail in the most hilarious ways possible, and seemingly minor accomplishments like using an ability to cut down a tree became cause for celebration.

After the success of Twitch Plays Pokemon, numerous other games popped up using similar control schemes, and there are even a few real-world Twitch Plays games like Twitch Plays Claw Machine.

Recently, indie developer Lazy Bear Games used a Twitch Plays event to promote its new boxing tycoon game, Punch Club, which would not be released on Steam until the Twitch community beat it together.

Rather than using the old anarchy mode of early Twitch Plays Pokemon, however, Punch Club tallied votes for commands in the chat and executed the highest one after a set time limit. This made the gameplay much less chaotic, but it was also not quite as entertaining.

Because the game was not dealing with thousands of contradictory commands at once, Twitch managed to beat the game in less than two days, about four times faster than the devs had predicted.

Screenshot via TwitchPlaysPunchClub | Twitch.tv