Telltale has recently gone on record by saying that all of their future games, starting with the upcoming Batman series, will sport local multiplayer in an effort to help bring players together. While that is a nifty idea on its own, they took things a bit further by saying that the system would allow for a couple of thousand people to simultaneously vote on in-game decisions!
If you think that sounds a bit too ridiculous, you are unfortunately correct as Telltale has recently updated their FAQ to bring that massive number down to a more manageable and realistic 4-12. Or in other words, the amount of players you'd be comfortable inviting to sit alongside you while you play as the caped crusader.
By default this new system will allow the crowd to decide on in-game decisions through a popular vote, though there will also be a special game mode that allows you to override the crowd's decisions, just in case they decide to rebel against you and throw you off a building. In game, naturally, as otherwise you'd have more pressing matters to attend to rather than puzzle between the two game modes.
As far as streaming is concerned, I have a bit of bad news as this system is simply not designed with latency in mind given that some decisions are time sensitive. On the positive side, Telltale is currently working with Twitch in order to address this problem, but for the time being there doesn't appear to be an easy solution, so Batman is definitely off the streaming table.
However, if you really want see Telltale's games played with thousands of players voting on each decision simultaneously, the team will try to incorporate this feature into future events to really make each new announcement that much more exciting. I just hope the audience will be a lot more sensible than the Twitch Plays Pokemon one, or we might just see a lot of Batman fumbling around a crime scene and getting beaten up by generic thugs... then again, that does sound pretty damn hilarious!
Since Telltale's Batman series is set to arrive later today, here's the most recent trailer to give you an idea of what to expect: