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Beam Theme Week on Xbox Wire: Beam Interactivity

Perhaps the single coolest thing about Beam’s interactivity is that it’s only limited by your imagination! To date, we’ve shared lots about the fact that Beam hosts interactive streaming, but what does Beam interactivity mean for gamers and streamers today, and what could it mean in the future? Today, we’re getting into interactivity!

When we talk about Beam interactivity, it’s important to remember that interactive magic only happens in tandem with FTL and Beam’s sub-second latency. This means the streaming to viewing experience is so quick (sub-second, in fact!) that both streamers AND viewers gain new ways to engage with one-another, never before experienced in the streaming world. Interactivity on Beam is that new magic.

For the viewer, the interactive experience begins with buttons below the stream’s video feed. These experiences are custom-designed by the streamer depending on the needs or wants of the cast. They can range from activating sounds, creating on-screen effects, in-game events, or even control real-life applications for streamers. We’ll dive deeper into this below.

So how does interactivity work? Say no more – we have quite a few fun and quirky examples that help paint the picture for Beam’s interactive functionality:

  • In one of our #LevelUp casts, the Beam Team’s weekly update on the newest Beam news, we set up interactive buttons that enabled viewers to create and order a pizza for us.

  • One of the most common uses of interactive controls is to set up a soundboard the audience can trigger. The sound bites often include humorous quotes from the streamer, music clips, and more.
  • Some streamers get very creative with their interactive experiences, making buttons trigger on-screen events like boss battles, camera changes, confetti cannons, and more!
  • One streamer has a button that triggers a countdown timer, complete with intense music, where he is challenged to solve a Rubix cube.

Archonaut Puzzle

  • Ever wanted to control jousting robots? One of our streamers enables viewers to control robotic vehicles driving around the streamer’s room. Sometimes he attaches balloons and needles to the robots, which allows the audience to make the robots joust by attempting to pop the other robot’s balloon. It’s pretty awesome.
  • Streamers can even set up interactive controls that allows viewers to directly impact their gameplay! Viewers can see the impact of their decisions in near real-time thanks to FTL, our sub-second streaming protocol.

Has all of this made you want to add interactivity into your own streams? You’re in luck – we’ve made it super easy with Beam Interactive 2.0, the first groundbreaking step in bringing exciting and unique interactive integrations to every streamer tomorrow. Beam Interactive 2.0 paves the way for a flexible, extensible system that will drive interactive experiences with Beam into the future. Visit our Beam Developers page for more information and to get started.

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Don’t forget – today’s theme for Beam Theme Week is Onesie Wednesday! If you want to join in on the festivities as a streamer, simply change the game played field to one of the theme week titles so other viewers can find you. You can find all the participating streamers here.

Lastly, be sure to check out all of our Beam Theme Week on Xbox Wire posts: