Twitch Plays Pokemon

Well if anyone has been following the latest news over the weekend, you should know that there is a unique way to play such a simple game called Pokemon Red/Blue. But what is different is that no one is playing the game, at least no single person however. Over at twitchplayspokemon you can view and participate on something that may go on for the next month, depending on if the helix fossil is generous or not.

The unique way of playing such a simple game is that no single person is in control of the game. You, one of probably at least 20,000 viewers, can guide Red through the wonderful world of Pokemon by simply typing in chat what button you want the computer to press. A bot picks up on what users say and  translates them into actions for the emulator which does the actions/button presses. Something as simple as cutting down a tree may prove to be a difficult challenge if 10,000 others are deciding to press the other buttons while you  are trying to do so.

The person who is doing the steaming of this game also apparently knows a lot about the game’s rom(Which also apparently isn’t original blue/red) and probably will need to tweak a few things (Safari Zone) to ensure the bot and twitch users can actually complete the game within the next year. It isn’t clear how the streamer/host is going to patch such things into the rom, but as the story unfolds, the trainer Red must be forever in the control of the users of Twitch.tv.

Anyway, how do you guys think this will play out? Will the bot finish the game this month? Will people lose interest in the game over the next weeks? What other games might be a good test for this type of system of playing?

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3 Responses to Twitch Plays Pokemon

  1. blw5180 says:

    The social experiment Twitch Plays Pokemon is doing some interesting things with the ability to have hundreds of players controlling the same player at once. The first being that the game has progressed a lot further than I would have ever guessed and have done things that I didn’t think was possible. They currently have six badges and it only took them 11 days. At this pace it is well within reason to suspect that they players will beat the game within a month. They have also gotten past some challenging puzzles that seemed would have killed the progress and ended the popularity of the stream. Of course it was done with the Democracy mechanic but it is still impressive none the less. The players even managed to collaborate and catch a pokemon that you only get one try at.
    This collaboration has made some interesting ‘game plans’. For example, in order to get a pokemon from the pc, instead of trying to deposit a pokemon and risk releasing a lot of pokemon (which they have already done) the plan is give a pokemon to the daycare so all they would have to do is withdraw from the pc instead of depositing and withdrawing with the risk of depositing the wrong pokemon. This way of thinking comes from how hard it is to completely control the player and thinking of what is the least ‘risky’ approach to a problem or what has the highest probability of succeeding.

  2. jot5146 says:

    As mentioned, I found it interesting how it flip flops between Anarchy and Democracy. It goes to show that even thought they managed to make it a certain distance in the game chaotically they still needed some order in order to complete certain parts of the game. What interests me more is how this will affect the future of gaming. If you haven’t heard, Atlus, the developer of upcoming PS4 game Daylight, is going to implement a system similar to that foudn in TwitchPlaysPokemon where for example if a player types in “meow” in the twitch chat something will happen in game. The idea is cool (despite all the things that could go wrong but I’m sure they’re smart enough to fix some of those) and it’d be cool to see if and how other games implement twitch into their game.

    Source: http://venturebeat.com/2014/02/20/ps4-horror-game-daylight-will-enable-twitch-viewers-to-control-the-scares/

  3. Vera Abaimova says:

    Twitch Plays Pokemon is an interesting social experiment. The fact that after a few days some 90,000 players have been able to actually make some sort of progress through the game seems to suggest that people are generally “good”. Of course you’ve got those people who are looking to mess with the game, but for the most part, the players have been trying to progress through the game.
    One interesting aspect is the anarchy/democracy system. When a part of the game is too difficult to be conquered with the chaotic efforts of thousands of players, democracy can be voted in. As soon as democracy has served its purpose of getting Red through a difficult puzzle, anarchy takes over once again.
    I think it’s pretty funny how there are already memes and fan art taking over the internet. One particular meme certainly holds true for me: I haven’t been this invested in a pokemon battle in over a decade.

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