Hyper Scape’s Twitch integration is what battle royales needed

Hyper Scape is Ubisoft’s attempt at joining the battle royalecraze, and it features a nifty little feature new to the genre. While the game is a bit late to the party, Hyper Scape’s Twitch integration is exactly what it needed in order to fully integrate its lore.

Hyper Scape is set in a simulation where 100 players battle it out solo or in squads of three for the entertainment of the masses. Standard fare there, but that’s not what we’re focused on now.

Twitch integration in games is nothing new, but it is a foreign concept to battle royales – or it was, anyway. Twitch viewers can vote on a variety of map-wide effects to shake up the game and keep things fresh. This is the general idea behind most Twitch integration, though some games favor destroying players over helping them.

A game that fleshes out its viewer-based lore

This kind of interactivity between audience and players really makes sense in-universe. Many battle royales have lore in which the games being played are for people’s entertainment. The titular legends of Apex Legends are celebrities, SOS is a reality show gone wrong, and Radical Heights is entirely based around a murderous game show similar to The Running Man.

None of these games really show off the fact that there is meant to be an audience though. Which is a shame really. The closest we got in Apex was the Forge fake-out, with his on-screen interview before his untimely departure. The best other candidate would be the aforementioned Radical Heights, but it’s not really around anymore.

The whole reality show bit feels like it’s meant to be a bit of disposable lore in most games which use it. But Hyper Scape takes that concept and runs with it to great effect.

Allowing audiences to interact with a live game is a great way to keep everyone involved as well. Rather than just watching a game unfold, viewers have an active role in keeping it going. This effectively has both players and viewers having fun, rather than viewers sitting idly by.

My hope is that Ubisoft keeps this theme going. Hyper Scape’s Twitch integration has a lot of potential, and hopefully the concept can be expanded in new ways over the game’s lifetime.