Twitch Plays Pokémon

Commands identified by the game engine shown on screen (right side) are applied to the player-character in Pokémon Red (left)

Twitch Plays Pokémon is a "social experiment" and channel on the video streaming website Twitch, consisting of a crowdsourced attempt to play Game Freak's and Nintendo's 1996 role-playing video game Pokémon Red, by parsing commands sent by users through the channel's chat room.

Developed by an anonymous Australian programmer and launched on 12 February 2014, the stream became unexpectedly popular, reaching an average concurrent viewership of over 80,000 viewers (with at least 10% participating). By 22 February, the stream had reached a total of over 26 million views overall, peaking at 120,000 concurrent viewers, and an estimated 658,000 users having participated. The experiment was met with attention by media outlets (and even staff members of the website itself) for its interactivity, its erratic and chaotic nature, the unique challenges faced by players due to the mechanics of its system, along with the community and memes that had been developed by participants.

Premise

Inspired by another Twitch-based interactive game, SaltyBet (a website where users could wager on the outcome of randomized M.U.G.E.N. matches) and described as a social experiment, the system used by the stream was coded by an anonymous Australian programmer using Python and the Game Boy emulator VisualBoyAdvance. The script captures specific messages (directional commands, "B", "A", "select", and "start") sent into the stream's chat room by users, and sends them to the emulator as button input, thus controlling the game. An additional web app coded using JavaScript is used to display a live tally of moves that are shown within the stream. The author chose Pokémon Red and Blue for the project, citing nostalgia for the early games, and because its current control structure "[wouldn't] work with any genre that isn't a JRPG" (particularly targeting its "forgiving" turn-based structure and lack of reaction-based gameplay, compensating for the large amount of input lag between the game and the stream). The author used an edited version of the game, which claims to make all the original 151 Pokémon accessible, in hopes of making completion of the Pokédex a possibility, however, the edited version was unfinished and doesn't affect gameplay compared to the original game.

The erratic nature of the control scheme has made the game longer and harder to play than under normal circumstances; an Ars Technica writer commented that "(Red) gets stuck in corners. He walks in circles, compulsively checking his Pokédex and saving over and over again. Commands stream in from the chat channel faster than the game can possibly process them, making progress difficult-to-impossible even without the lag factor or the 'help' of gleeful trolls." Recurring difficulties have occurred with areas of the game involving mazes and ledges (areas with the latter taking as long as several hours to navigate due to users intentionally sending "down" commands to jump off the ledges), the accidental release of several Pokémon, and users repeatedly sending "start" commands to open the pause menu, often followed by opening the player-character's inventory to select items of questionable relevance such as the Helix Fossil (used to revive the ancient Pokémon Omanyte later in the game, but otherwise functionless), so much so that it became an inside joke among players. A system to throttle inputs on the Start button was added to mitigate this particular effect.

Despite the seemingly erratic process of playing the game, players have attempted to collaborate and strategize through various means, including graphics and a user script which hides command messages from the chat window to allow conversation. In essence, the majority of players have attempted to counter-act trolls trying to impede progress. In order to travel on water using the Surf move, players had considered obtaining a Water Stone to evolve their Eevee into Vaporeon, or obtaining a Lapras; however, players accidentally bought a Fire Stone and evolved Eevee into Flareon instead, and also accidentally released the player-character's Charmeleon and Rattata in the process.

On 18 February 2014, after encountering major difficulties with a puzzle in the Team Rocket hideout, a new mechanic was introduced in an effort to make the game more "beatable"; initially, all movements became subject to a vote; users could also append their movements with numbers to specify the length of the motion (e.g. "right3"). After the new system was panned by players, a system was established where users could vote to switch between two modes: "Anarchy", the previous default, and "Democracy". However, a change to Democracy mode requires a supermajority vote, while a change to Anarchy mode requires only a majority vote, as indicated by an on-screen meter.

Viewership and reception

Launching on 12 February 2014 as a "proof of concept", the stream went viral, reaching a total viewership of around 175,000 by 14 February (when players managed to beat the first of eight Gym leaders). By 17 February, the channel had reached over 6.5 million total views; By 20 February, the channel had over 17 million total views, and was averaging concurrent viewership between 60 to 70 thousand viewers with at least 10% participating. By then, the players had managed to catch 12 different species of Pokémon, and made it past the fourth gym. As of 19 February 2014, the channel has reached 16 million total views, with a peak concurrent viewership of 120,000, and an estimated 658,000 have participated. The large amount of activity on the stream resulted in "enormous (and unforeseen) stress" on Twitch's chat system, requiring the site's engineers to move the stream's chat to a higher-capacity server normally used during major e-sports events, while working on improving the infrastructure's scalability. By 24 February, the seventh gym had been cleared, and the legendary Pokémon Zapdos was captured.

An active community of players also emerged on communities and social networks such as Reddit, who have liveblogged the proceedings and developed memes and other works around occurrences in the game, such as the aforementioned Helix Fossil, which players jokingly considered to be a deity that the player-character was constantly consulting for advice, and dubbing the team's Pidgeot "Bird Jesus" due to its frequent success in battle. The stream has also inspired imitators with other video games, such as Pokémon Crystal, Pokémon Blue, QWOP, Tetris (including one which used the actual command inputs from the original Twitch Plays Pokémon stream) and Street Fighter II.

Media outlets have described the proceedings of the game as being "mesmerizing", "miraculous" and "beautiful chaos", with one viewer comparing it to "watching a car crash in slow motion". Ars Technica felt that it encapsulated "the best and worst qualities of our user-driven, novelty-hungry age", providing hours of arguable time-wasting entertainment through a word-of-mouth viral distribution. The game has been compared to the infinite monkey theorem, that effectively random input to a game still ultimately comes out with forward progress in the game. Twitch vice president of marketing Matthew DiPietro praised the stream, considering it "one more example of how video games have become a platform for entertainment and creativity that extends WAY beyond the original intent of the game creator. By merging a video game, live video and a participatory experience, the broadcaster has created an entertainment hybrid custom made for the Twitch community. This is a wonderful proof on concept that we hope to see more of in the future." At the current rate of progression, Nick Statt of CNET estimated that the game will likely take 10–14 days to complete. Despite this, the creator has little hope of seeing the game completed.

External links

• Twitch Plays Pokemon on Twitch
• Rice, Carolyn (February 18, 2014). "Thousands play Pokemon on Twitch simultaneously". BBC. BBC.
• Frum, Larry (February 18, 2014). "Can 80,000 people play this video game together?". CNN. CNN.