The move makes a lot of sense for gamers interested in brushing up their technique with various decks, or seeing how more prominent gamers fight with a particular hero. Similarly, it means gamers who only wish to watch top-notch Hearthstone players now have a filter to weed out other streams that may have been popular, but centered on lower-ranked play. Twitch had previously introduced this feature for League of Legends, where players can already sort by Champion.
Twitch is using technology from a company it recently acquired, ClipMine, to determine what Overwatch hero or Hearthstone deck is in play. The company designed a specialized technology to scourge for on-screen items - like a player’s HUD - and translate this into usable information for Twitch to automatically detect. While it’s not clear how quickly ClipMine’s technology will update once a player switches a hero, card deck, or even ranks up, it’s evidently something Twitch engineer and ClipMine co-founder Zia Syed thinks will have a significant impact:
Twitch and Blizzard agreed on a two-year partnership a couple of months ago, which grants Twitch all third party streaming rights to Blizzard’s e-sports content. With such a significant deal already on the books, it’s no surprise to see the two companies coming up with new ways to further integrate Blizzard’s library of games with the Twitch platform.
The new Twitch features are already live on the Twitch platform.
Overwatch is available now on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One, while Hearthstone is available for Android, iOS, and PC.
Source: EuroGamer
