Last week, we talked about Dual Lives. This feature allows you to go Live with another creator and connect with them (and their audience)! But there’s more than one way to go Live with another Clapper creator. Today, we’re talking about PK Battles. What are they, how do you start one, and what exactly can you do in them? It’s all here!

What is a PK Battle? 🧡🏆

A PK (“Player Knockout”) Battle is a kind of Livestream unique to Clapper. 2 creators hosting individual Livestreams come together in 5 minute rounds. The goal is to see who’s community is stronger (or to have the viewers judge the creators’ performances) based on how many gifts they’re sent during the round. Gifts are tracked throughout the stream with dueling orange and blue bars above each creator. Your goal is to have your bar or the bar of your preferred creator overtake the other. There can only be 2 creators in each PK battle, but you can battle with that person as many times as you want.

One of the main differences between PK Battles and Dual Lives is that PK Battles are individual Livestreams, meaning one creator is not in charge of the entire thing. This means that each creator gets to keep the gifts they’re given, regardless of if they win or not. And that viewers can switch from one Livestream to the other and show their support for both creators. To put this into more clear terms…

Let’s say @ClapperAcademy and @ClapperTalks are PK Battling. If a viewer clicks into @ClapperAcademy’s stream, all of the gifts they send will go to @ClapperAcademy. If they want to send gifts to @ClapperTalks instead, the viewer would just need to click into their stream by tapping their name. They’ll even be taken to a whole new chat!

How to PK Battle 📱🆚📱

The first few steps are a lot like going Live. We’ve covered them in our Livestreams 101 article, but we’ll break down the whole process in case you’re new here!

Starting a Live 🎬

1. Open Clapper. You should immediately be on your For You Page. At the bottom of the screen, there will be a plus sign icon.
2. Click the plus sign. A menu will pop up with three buttons: one for Radio, one for Video, and on the right, one for Live. Select it.
3. Once you select “Live”, you’ll be taken to another menu page. There are several settings you can adjust here, which we’ll get into in a minute. Once everything is to your liking and you’re ready to go, just hit “Start Live”.
4. A final menu will come up, going over the basic community guidelines for Lives. You’ll be prompted to agree to three rules: you won’t be nude, you’re over 18 years old, and you’ve reviewed the community guidelines. Once you agree to all three, there’ll be a quick countdown, and boom, you’re live!

Starting a PK Battle ⚔️

1. On your Live, there will be settings along the bottom of the screen. The second from the left will be a blue and orange “PK”. This is the PK Battle button.
2. Once you click the PK Battle button, you’ll be shown a list of eligible people to PK Battle with. This will be from your list of friends and followers that are currently Live. If you don’t see the person you want to PK Battle with, you can search and send them a request. In order to PK Battle, a request must be sent.
3. If they accept the request, you’ll be taken into PK mode! The two of you will appear on screen (a lot like a Dual Live) along with a progress bar above each viewer. One will be orange, the other will be blue, and these will track the gifts each host receives. A timer will also appear at the top of the screen and will start counting down immediately.
4. You and the other creator will have 5 minutes to get as many gifts from your viewers as you can. The bars will shift depending on who’s winning or losing, and your goal is for your color to overtake the other host’s.
5. Once time is up, a graphic will display telling you (and your audience) whether you won or lost. Game over, you can either rematch, or leave the battle altogether.

Live Settings 🧰🔐

Before you start your PK Battle, there are a couple of settings you can adjust. We won’t run through all of them again (you can find them in our Livestreams 101 article!) but we wanted to touch on them anyway.

When you first open the Live camera, you can select if you’ll use the front or back camera. You’ll also see the option to select (and adjust!) Beauty Filters, give your Livestream a title, and make your Live a Shop Live. And, when you first go Live, you’ll be asked if you’d like to notify your followers. We recommend notifying your followers to make sure you get as many people in your life as possible! Once both hosts are in the Livestream together, they can choose to go DnD. This would lock the Livestream and keep new people from entering.

What Do I Do in a PK Battle? 🎙️🤔

There are a ton of activities you can do in a PK Battle. Seriously, we’d go blue in the face from trying to list all of them. PK Battles are one of the Clapper Team’s favorite features to use during campaigns and challenges, and we’ve done a variety of activities in them. We hosted a Spooky Fashion Show during Halloween 2022, where creators PK Battled with @ClapperCreator to see who had the best costume of all. For our Luck of the Irish challenge, creators were asked to dance an Irish jig and let the audience decide who did better. And in our fan favorite Rocktoberfest bracket challenge, we used the timer to see which competitor held their beer stein the longest and the gift tracker to see who was given the most gifts overall.

You can also host karaoke battles, dance competitions, art shows, (respectful) debates, speed dating, and anything that asks viewers to weigh in. We’ve even seen creators taking part in a…unique PK Battle challenge. Some Clapper men are getting their partners to wax or shave their chest or back on camera.

Like we said, the options are limitless.

For Our Visual Learners… 👀

@ClapperAcademy has created a fantastic tutorial for PK Battles!