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Twitch Plays Pokémon

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Commands identified by the game engine shown on screen (right side) are applied to the player-character in Pokémon Red Version (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 and Nintendo's Pokémon video games by parsing commands sent by users through the channel's chat room.

The concept was developed by an anonymous Australian programmer and launched on 12 February 2014, starting with the game Pokémon Red. The stream became unexpectedly popular, reaching an average concurrent viewership of over 80,000 viewers (with at least 10% participating). On 1 March 2014, the game was completed after more than 16 continuous days of gameplay; Twitch estimated that over 1.16 million people participated, with peak simultaneous participation at 121,000, and with a total of 55 million views during the experiment.[1]

The experiment was met with attention by media outlets and staff members of Twitch for its interactivity, its erratic and chaotic nature, the unique challenges faced by players due to the mechanics of its system, and the community and memes developed by participants. Following the completion of Red, the developer continued the channel with Pokémon Crystal, Pokémon Emerald and Pokémon FireRed, which spawned their own memes, and has plans to continue with other Pokémon games as long as there remains interest in the channel.

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)[2] and described as a social experiment, the system used by the stream was coded by an anonymous Australian programmer, consisting of an IRC bot written in 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,[3] the fact that "Even when played very poorly it is difficult not to make progress in Pokémon",[4] 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 used was unfinished and has no gameplay differences when compared to the original game.[3][5][6][7][8][9]

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 (including an incident referred to as "Bloody Sunday", where a total of twelve Pokémon were accidentally released whilst trying to manipulate the character's party),[10] and users repeatedly sending "start" commands to open the pause menu, often followed by opening the player-character's inventory to select random items.[2][11][12] A system to throttle inputs on the Start button was added to mitigate this particular effect.[13]

Despite the seemingly erratic process of playing the game, players have attempted to collaborate and strategize through various means, including infographics and a user script which hides command messages from the chat window to allow conversation. This was necessary for the players to progress as several areas of the game require coordinated actions to gain Pokémon with a specific skill needed to clear obstacles in Red's way, and earlier attempts without such coordination results in missing out on specific opportunities early on in the playthrough. In essence, the majority of players have attempted to counter-act trolls trying to impede progress.[2][11][14]

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: all inputs received over a period of time (usually 30 seconds) were quantified, and the winning command would be executed at the end of that time. Users could also append their movements with numbers to specify the length of the motion, such as "right3" as three consecutive "right" inputs. Users could vote to switch between two modes: "Anarchy", the previous default, and this new mode "Democracy".[15][16] 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. This change was considered divisive by players, who believed that the Democracy mode conflicted with the original concept of the stream, and eliminated the potential for randomness which had helped to drive the elaborate narrative and mythology that had built up around the playthrough.[16] Some users protested this new Democracy mode by attempting to send commands such as "start9" (which would open and close the pause menu repeatedly).[2][3][13][17][18]

Following the completion of Red, a new game began on 2 March 2014, this time with the second generation game Pokémon Crystal.[19] The developer set a deadline for the completion of Crystal with the plan to start Pokémon Emerald on a fixed date, though the players were able to complete Crystal well before this point.[20] With the change to Crystal also came a change to the voting system; the Democracy mode was automatically activated at the top of each hour.[21] By 14 March 2014, players had reached a major battle on Mt. Silver against Red, a trainer representing the player-character from Red and Blue; however, the game was also modified so that Red's team would consist of the same Pokémon that were used to beat the Elite Four in Pokémon Red earlier.[22] The developer stated that he intentionally changed the game data of Crystal to behave in this way, as it was Game Freak's original intent when creating the game that the player would face Red in Crystal using the Pokémon they had finished Red with.[20] Crystal was beaten on 15 March, with more than 13 days of playtime.[23][24]

Emerald was started on 21 March 2014. With the shift to Emerald, the Democracy mode was initially disabled entirely.[25] Emerald was repeatedly restarted due to its soft reset ability, but was later fixed by the streamer.[26]

The developer stated that even though fewer viewers watched Crystal compared to Red, he will continue the stream with other Pokémon games as long as there remains interest in the experiment.[20][27]

Viewership and reception

Launched on 12 February 2014 as a "proof of concept", the stream was relatively inactive for the first day and a half of playing.[4] However, the stream quickly went viral after that, reaching a total viewership of around 175,000 by 14 February (when players managed to beat the first of eight Gym leaders).[28] 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.[7][8][9] On the completion of Red, the channel had reached 36 million total views, with a peak concurrent viewership of 120,000, and an estimated 658,000 had participated.[29][30] 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.[31] The developer himself said, "I didn't think it was going to be this popular, I thought it would gain only a small group of dedicated viewers and many others would check it out briefly before moving on to other things. It's overwhelming how popular it has become."[4]

An active community of players also emerged on communities and social networks such as Reddit, which have liveblogged the proceedings and developed memes and other works around occurrences in the game. One item in Red's inventory from the start of the game was the Helix Fossil, which was used later in the game to revive Omanyte, but is otherwise functionless. The Helix Fossil was selected so frequently that it became an inside joke among players, and at times humorously calling it a deity which the player-character was constantly consulting for advice. Players went as far as treating the fossil as a symbol representing a sect which supports Anarchy mode, while treating its counterpart, the Dome Fossil (which revives Kabuto), as a deity to those who support Democracy mode.[2][11][18][29] Certain Pokémon captured by Red during the gameplay have also gained fan followings. Two Pokémon that were obtained early in the game, and then later accidentally released were the Charmeleon and Rattata, "ABBBBBBK (" is and "JLVWNNOOOO", further nicknamed "Abby" and "Jay Leno".[2][11] The team's Pidgeot, one of the highest level Pokémon in the group and often successful in battles, was named "Bird Jesus" by the community; concurrently, the team's Zapdos was nicknamed "Battery Jesus".[2][11][32] Their Flareon was dubbed the "false prophet", as players had accidentally obtained it instead of Vaporeon, which was needed so they could teach it the "Surf" move needed to travel on water.[33] During the eleventh day of the event (February 23), which fell on a Sunday, the players inadvertently released a dozen of the captured Pokémon, effectively deleting the creatures from the game, an event that later became known as "Bloody Sunday".[34] The practice of nicknames continued into Crystal, which included a new Pidgeot nicknamed "Brian", and a Feraligatr nicknamed "Lazorgator".[32]

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".[2][11][12] 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.[2] The stream has been compared to the infinite monkey theorem in that effectively random input to a game still ultimately comes out with forward progress in the game.[35][36] 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."[7]

The stream has also inspired imitators with other video games, such as Pokémon Blue, QWOP, Tetris (including one which used the actual command inputs from the original Twitch Plays Pokémon stream)[4][37] and Street Fighter II.[7][8][11][17][38]

Game completion

Game Start Completed Completion time
Pokémon Red February 12, 2014 March 1, 2014 16 days, 7 hours, 45 minutes, 30 seconds
Pokémon Crystal March 2, 2014 March 15, 2014 13 days, 2 hours, 2 minutes, 55 seconds
Pokémon Emerald March 21, 2014 April 11, 2014 20 days, 22 hours, 1 minutes, 5 seconds
Pokémon FireRed1 April 11, 2014 April 27, 2014 15 days, 18 hours, 52 minutes, ?? seconds
Pokémon Platinum May 2, 2014 Not yet started

See also


References

  1. ^ Chase (2014-03-01). "Victory! The Thundershock Heard Around the World". Twitch. Retrieved 2014-03-01.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i "The bizarre, mind-numbing, mesmerizing beauty of "Twitch Plays Pokémon"". Ars Technica. Condé Nast Publications. Retrieved 18 February 2014.
  3. ^ a b c "Twitch Plays Pokemon conquers Elite Four, beating game after 390 hours". CNET. CBS Interactive. Retrieved 1 March 2014.
  4. ^ a b c d Xav de Matos (February 20, 2014). "Twitch Plays Pokemon, but can Twitch beat Pokemon?". Joystiq. AOL. Retrieved March 25, 2014.
  5. ^ O'Mara, Matthew. "Twitch Plays Pokémon a wild experiment in crowd sourced gameplay". Financial Post. Postmedia Network.
  6. ^ M0D3Rn. "An interview with the creator of TwitchPlaysPokémon!". BADatVIDEOGAMES.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  7. ^ a b c d "Over 60k people watching Twitch play Pokémon [UPDATE]". GameSpot. CBS Interactive. Retrieved 18 February 2014.
  8. ^ a b c "How Twitch is crowd-sourcing an amazing Pokémon multiplayer game". Polygon. Vox Media. Retrieved 18 February 2014.
  9. ^ a b "Twitch Plays Pokémon captivates with more than 6.5M total views". Polygon. Retrieved 18 February 2014.
  10. ^ "Bloody Sunday in Kanto – This weekend in Twitch Plays Pokemon". GameZone. GameZone Online. Retrieved 1 March 2014.
  11. ^ a b c d e f g "The Miraculous Progress of 'Twitch Plays Pokémon'". Kotaku. Gawker Media. Retrieved 18 February 2014.
  12. ^ a b "Twitch Plays Pokémon is 'like watching a car crash in slow motion'". The Independent. Retrieved 18 February 2014.
  13. ^ a b "Twitch Plays Pokémon creator tweaks channel to make game more 'beatable'". Polygon. Vox Media. Retrieved 20 February 2014.
  14. ^ "How Players Actually Make Progress in 'Twitch Plays Pokémon'". Kotaku. Gawker Media. Retrieved 25 February 2014.
  15. ^ Niall Whitehead (February 27, 2014). "Twitch Plays Pokémon". Nouse. {{cite web}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); Missing or empty |url= (help)
  16. ^ a b Nick Statt (February 21, 2014). "'Twitch Plays Pokemon' is now a fight for the soul of the Internet". CNET. CBS Interactive. Retrieved March 25, 2014.
  17. ^ a b "Twitch Plays Pokémon levels up to 75k concurrent viewers, learns democracy". Joystiq. AOL. Retrieved 20 February 2014.
  18. ^ a b "How a Week-Long Game of Pokémon Became a War of Religion". Mashable. Retrieved 26 February 2014.
  19. ^ "Twitch Plays Pokemon Crystal after beating Pokemon Red". GameSpot. CBS Interactive. Retrieved 2 March 2014.
  20. ^ a b c Farokhmanesh, Megan (2014-03-25). "Twitch Plays Pokemon will continue as long as it has an active following". Polygon. Vox Media. Retrieved 2014-03-25.
  21. ^ "Twitch Plays Pokemon Starts Pokemon Crystal". IGN.com. IGN Entertainment. Retrieved 4 March 2014.
  22. ^ "Lord Helix Makes A Most Unexpected Return In 'Twitch Plays Pokémon'". Kotaku. Gawker Media. Retrieved 14 March 2014.
  23. ^ Hillard, Kyle (15 March 2014). "Twitch Plays Pokémon Defeats Crystal, Countdown Timer Starts For Emerald". Game Informer. Retrieved 15 March 2014.
  24. ^ Bogos, Steven (2014-03-13). "Twitch Plays Pokemon Interview: TPP Will Continue on to Emerald". The Escapist. Retrieved 2014-03-14. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |work= (help)
  25. ^ "Twitch Plays Pokemon Starts Pokemon Emerald, Plays as a Girl". The Escapist. Retrieved 22 March 2014.
  26. ^ James, Dean (22 March 2014). "Twitch Plays Pokemon Starts Anew In The Hoenn Region". JustPushStart. Retrieved 23 March 2014.
  27. ^ Grubb, Jeffrey (1 March 2014). "Twitch Plays Pokémon continues with second-gen game — will keep going as long as people care". VentureBeat. Retrieved 2 March 2014.
  28. ^ Gopal Sathe (March 24, 2014). "The hive mind at work: Twitch Plays Pokemon". NDTV Convergence Limited. Retrieved March 25, 2014.
  29. ^ a b Johnson, Eric. "Viral Video; Nostalgia, Memes and Anarchy Collide in Twitch Plays Pokémon". Re/code. Retrieved 19 February 2014.
  30. ^ Magdaleno, Alex. "How a Week-Long Game of Pokémon Became a War of Religion". Mashable. Retrieved 19 February 2014.
  31. ^ "Recent Chat Issues and TwitchPlaysPokémon". Twitch.tv Official Blog. Retrieved 20 February 2014.
  32. ^ a b "Twitch Plays Pokemon Beats Pokemon Crystal". The Escapist. Retrieved 22 March 2014.
  33. ^ "Twitch Plays Pokemon: Its history, highlights and Bird Jesus". Joystiq. AOL. Retrieved 1 March 2014.
  34. ^ Barsanti, Sam (11 March 2014). "Praise Helix: The strange mythology of a crowdsourced Pokémon game". A.V. Club. Retrieved 11 March 2014.
  35. ^ Suprak, Nikola (17 February 2014). "Twitch Plays Pokémon Wasted Our Entire Weekend; Was It Worth It?". Hardcore Gamer. Retrieved 17 February 2014.
  36. ^ Murano, Pashford (18 February 2014). "Twitch Plays Pokémon: Infinite Mankey Theorem Follows Suit". Gamersyndrome. Retrieved 18 February 2014.
  37. ^ "Thousands of People Are Playing Tetris Without Realizing It". Kotaku. Gawker Media. Retrieved 19 February 2014.
  38. ^ "Rejoice, For 'Twitch Plays Pokémon' Has Revived The Helix Fossil". Kotaku. Gawker Media. Retrieved 25 February 2014.
  1. ^ To differentiate itself from the original Pokémon Red run, FireRed was randomized. Here, randomization indicates using a pseudorandom number generator to change the predetermined Pokemon, items, and moves in the game.
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