Instagram Wants You to Live-Stream Games and Play with Viewers

 Hosting live sessions on Instagram can help you get to know your audience better and is a good way to garner followers. However, some influencers may find it difficult to keep their audience engaged for a long duration. This is why Instagram is currently testing the ability to live stream games, but it is different from Twitch or YouTube as your viewers can play with you.

As first reported by social media expert, Ahmad Ghanem on Threads, Instagram has added a new “Games” option that you can select before you go live on the app. There seem to be two types of games available as of now.

These include “This or That,” which sees you pick what you prefer from two options, while the other is “Trivia.” The host can play these games with their viewers during a live session on the platform.

From the screenshot above, it looks like Instagram will provide you with questions and choices for both games, which will be refreshed daily. Probably you or your viewers can suggest their questions as well. You can ask the people in chat to choose what they like or help you guess the answer to the trivia question. I can already see the chat going wild, thanks to these little additions. However, a lot of this sounds similar to the now-defunct HQ, which was a breakout success back in the day.

The feature is live for only a small set of users and might roll out soon to others in the upcoming days or weeks. The move to add games looks like something straight out of Twitch, but I understand why the brand did so. It has been struggling in the live video section for a while. Not to forget the stiff competition that it has been facing from the likes of TikTok and YouTube.

Having games as an activity can make live sessions on Instagram a bit more engaging. However, let us not forget, that audiences these days have a short attention span. So keeping them all hooked has become difficult for creators, influencers, and broadcasters. The addition of these activities might help a bit but not by a long shot. It would be exciting to see what other fun activities get added over time.

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