Telltale’s Batman is going social. Just beware the trolls.

Have you ever heard of “Twitch Plays?” It’s actually a pretty brilliant concept. What happens is this: I log in to Twitch to play a great single-player game like Dark Souls or Pokemon. Loads of people cram into my chat room to play with me. Every single time I have to press a button or make any kind of decision, a lightning poll goes out to all of the viewers watching, and they all vote on what I should do while the game is frozen. Whatever action or decision gets the most votes wins, and I take that action in the game. In this way, huge groups of people can come together to play single-player games together, and it can actually be loads of fun!

Telltale thinks that this concept would work perfect with its games, and the upcoming Batman series will be its first attempt at crowd play. Telltale confirmed multiplayer for the game during Comic-Con. “Now, from 2 to 2,000-plus people can help the player make decisions,” Telltale’s communications boss Job Stauffer said (via Gamespot). “We are now turning all of Telltale’s games into a live interactive multiplayer experience.”

Players will have two choices: they can either set the game up to tally the votes and then make the decisions themselves, or they can set everything up so that the actions voted upon by the majority are taken automatically. It sounds very democratic, and potentially disastrous if you get a bunch of trolls in your stream. Either way it will make for a much more social and interactive experience for players, and I can’t wait to see how it works out. Who knows, maybe if things go really well they’ll patch in the crowd play mode into earlier releases?