Discord have announced the newest addition to their platform in the shape of Activities. This will allow users to play games and watch YouTube together.
These Activities will be available to all Discord users but those who have Discord Nitro will able to access a wider range of games to play with their friends.
Activities will be available to anyone in a voice channel and can be accessed through either the Discord app or Discord in your browser.
In their announcement, Discord calls the new feature: “a way to instantly enjoy shared experiences with friends, such as games and media, on Discord itself.
“We started Discord because we are all about bringing people together around gaming. As Discord has grown, we’ve seen more and more people use Discord to come together around games.
How to use Activities
Using Activities is simple. When you join a voice call in Discord, there will be a new rocket ship icon next to the screen share button. Clicking this will start an Activity for the voice call.
If someone in the call has already begun an Activity and you want to join in, just hover over the voice channel and you will be able to see a button encouraging you to join in.
Not everyone in the call will need to be taking part in the Activity, multiple different Activities can be hosted in the same voice channel. Some Activities will have participant caps, meaning that in some instances it may be first come, first served.
Starting a YouTube video is as simple as clicking the Activities button and entering a YouTube link. Everyone in the call who joins the Activity will be able to watch along with the host.
What games are available?
The only free game available at launch will be Putt Party. It is a game for 1-8 players but any extra people in the voice channel can join the game as a spectator.
Putt Party is the first free-to-play game in the new Discord Activities feature.
Putt Party is a mini-golf party game with themed courses. Power ups are littered across the course with the goal being the same as traditional golf – to get your ball in the hole in as few strokes as possible.
Additional Nitro games
Other than that, there are seven more games that are available to Nitro users. Not everyone in the call needs to have Nitro to take part in Activities, just the user that starts it.
Poker Night – Texas hold ’em style poker for up to eight players. Sketch Heads – Pictionary in Discord, take turns drawing and guessing for points. Chess in the Park – Classic chess, limited to two players per game of chess.Checkers in the Park – Classic checkers, limited to two players per game of Checkers. Letter League – Just like Scrabble, take letters and play them in words on the board for points. Land-io – As with most .io games, players will compete with each other Blazing 8s – First to clear their hand wins. A card game where players discard cards of the same value or suit as the last card played.
Note that there is an age requirement for the Poker Night Activity. Participants will need to be 18 years old in order to play.
Sketch Heads has two game modes – Classic and Blitz.
The six other Nitro exclusive Activities all have no age restriction to play. All users can take part in them. In the Sketch Heads game, Discord warns to be careful who you play with as drawings made in the game cannot be moderated.
More to come
Discord have also hinted at more games to come to the Activities feature. They’ve shown off eight games but it appears more are to come.
Know What I Meme and Bobble League are both shown in this image from the Discord website. More is on the way from the feature with Discord building a Jackbox-style catalogue of games to play in the Activities feature.
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