Welcome one and all to 2021! It promises to be an exciting one for Outcasters as we continue to build an awesome game and community together.

If you were around for the launch of Outcasters you might have seen streams from some titans of YouTube like Yammy, VEGETTA777, and ItsFunneh, or some of our favourite creators like Big Eddie Bear, Gem, and Sammy. It was so awesome to see all of these folks playing the game, and showing off Crowd Play and Crowd Choice.

Over the next few weeks we’re going to kick off livestreams for Outcasters, but first we wanted to talk about those two key features of Stadia that will help you make the most of it!

For a quick overview on setting up Crowd Play & Crowd Choice as a streamer or using them as a viewer, check out this fantastic video from Google:

CROWD PLAY

Do you want to play with your favourite streamers or have your audience be a part of your stream? Crowd Play is for you!

Jump into the game by hitting the link underneath the chat window and when the streamer’s ready, the first seven people will be added to their game. You might be teamed up with the streamer to help them on their way to victory, or playing against them to show off your own skills on their stream.

Didn’t make it into the first batch of players? After someone’s played three rounds of Outcasters with the streamer, Crowd Play will automatically cycle them out for a player waiting in the queue so if you’re the streamer, you don’t need to worry about doing this manually!

CROWD CHOICE

Crowd Choice, on the other hand, allows the audience to pick the streamer’s ability for the next round of Outcasters.

While watching, before the round starts, you’ll see a poll pop up in the chat with four Abilities chosen at random. Pick the one that you think will help the streamer to victory or, if you’re feeling mischievous, pick the one they don’t want!

That’s right: if you’re the streamer, Crowd Choice may just throw up some Abilities which you’ve not unlocked yet, so be on your toes. You might even find your new favourite Ability to work towards unlocking.

If you’re a streamer who wants to use Crowd Choice or you’re part of the Crowd Play beta (more on that below), all you need to do is turn these features on in your Stadia stream settings. It’s as simple as that!

If you need a little more detail, you can head to Stadia’s Help pages for Crowd Play or Crowd Choice.

The next time you’re watching a streamer on YouTube, keep an eye out for these awesome Stadia features or, if you’re the streamer, turn them on and you might even get one of the Outcasters team jumping into your game or picking the best Ability for you!

As ever, keep in touch with us on Twitter, Instagram, or Discord!

As an FYI for Crowd Play:

• You can only interact with Crowd Play if you’re watching YouTube on Google Chrome on a PC or laptop. Crowd Choice however does work on both PC and the YouTube iOS & Android apps.
• Also, Crowd Play is currently still in its beta phase, so only certain streamers will have access to this feature. Google & YouTube are rolling out beta access to more and more streamers every single day, and you can apply for access here.