My
roommate Wil introduced me to a new phenomena. On the surface, it seems to be a
basic emulator of a classic game, Pokémon Red. But delve inside, and you find a story of civilizations of
order and anarchy, betrayal, torture, and triumph. A hundred thousand souls
fighting gladiatorial battle under the cruel gaze of the goddess called Chance.
Twitch.tv is a
channel where, if you're tired of playing video games yourself, you can watch other people play video games in real time.
They play and sometimes talk while they play, and you watch them play and
sometimes write a comment in the side chat bar.
I know. I'd put it
beneath "sorting uno cards by closest prime number" on my to-do list
as well.
But
somebody got innovative, and Python'd up our beloved Pokémon Red so that the chat window is
routed directly to the game's
controls. I type "left" in the chat window,
Red takes a step to the left. Problem is, if any one of the several thousand
people also watching this game type "right" he takes a step to the
right.
So
what was once the story of a spunky up-and-coming Pokemon master becomes the
tale of a child possessed by a hundred thousand souls all desperately clawing
for control over his mind and body. This is Twitch Plays
Pokémon.
Sounds fun!
When I looked up
this stat, TPP had:
120,000 Simultaneous
participants.
19 million unique
views.
Although the
emulator mimics the game perfectly, the opensource control mechanics transform
the game into something wildly different. There are only a few controls (D-Pad,
A, B, Start, Select) but since there are thousands
and thousands of people entering them simultaneously, our little
protagonist Red looks like a seizure ward's annual disco ball and strobe light
festival. He goes up, down, start menu,
tries to use an unusable item, tries to use an unusable item , tries to use an
unusable item, goes left, goes down, goes right, ad infinitum.
Every
command entered is streamed in a queue into the emulator. The number of
commands and a 40 second delay before your typed command hits the screen makes
trying to consciously control Red comparable to trying to type an article by
throwing paper airplanes at a keyboard in
30 mile an hour winds. But if you have
enough paper airplanes… Indeed, perhaps the most common metaphor applied to
Twitch Plays Pokémon is the infinite
Shakespeare monkeys and their literary designs.
It's interesting to
see the difficulty of various tasks be inverted. Finding the time to level up
your Pokemon becomes irrelevant when there are thousands of people playing,
literally 24/7. Conversely, incredibly trivial tasks became insanely difficult obstacles. With the chaos of inputs, just getting Red
to go in the right direction was difficult. If the right direction includes
more than one turn or a path along a ledge, insanely difficult becomes
nigh-impossible. For example, in front
of one gym right above a ledge, TPP spent 24 consecutive hours trying to walk into a building.
They spent so much
time accidentally jumping down ledges that they had just spent 6 hours climbing
up, that some began to wonder if Red had found a new life purpose. As one fan
wrote in a parody letter to Prof Oak:
“Dear Oak, Its been 3 days since i
started this journey. And you know what? Screw becoming a pokemon master. I am
going to be ledge jumping master. I been training 8 hour a day. send my love to
mom. signed Red Ledge jumper.”
To counteract the
randomness, the amassed thousands organized themselves. They made websites with
strawpolls about major decisions, made a google-doc[1] to announce the current goal and record their stats,
outlining plans for navigating the complex challenges of walking, fighting
battles, and catching pokemon[2].
They even made their own subreddit. The
spontaneous order had a surprising effect on the game.
Not only did they
make significant-- and frankly astounding-- progress, the quirks and oddities
of the game took on a life of their own in the memes of the fan pages. Their
starter, a charmeleon named "ABBBBBBK (" they affectionately
nicknamed "Abby" while a rattata named "JLVWNNOOOO" was
dubbed "Jay Leno". The start
menu opened and closed constantly, and one random item, the Helix Fossil, was
checked so much that players decided Red must be consulting the Helix for
guidance. Soon they were convinced that Red was on a quest to resurrect the
fossilized god Helix, and to triumph over the evil dark Dome fossil.
But this being the
internet, not everyone wanted Red to progress. On top of the randomness
element, TPP had to fight against trolls who would willingly sabotage any
current goal. So if Red had to walk along a long edge for 10 or 15 steps, all
it took was for one troll to manage a "down" command, and a hundred
thousand people would scream in agony as they watched Red jump a ledge and
destroy hours of effort. To a troll, enraging an audience of thousands on a
livestream game with a single button input is the scent of sweet lamb's blood
on the morning breeze. Some people just want to watch the world burn.
But as bad as the
trolls were, the pure randomness was worse. At the PC, the players accidentally
released Abby, their starter pokemon, and Jay Leno, never to return (releasing
your starter pokemon is something you should never EVER do). This past Sunday
was named "Bloody Sunday" when they accidentally released 12 pokemon, several of them high-leveled.
At one point, they
had reached a section of the game where they could not progress without
precision movement, and the designer introduced a new mechanic
"Democracy", where the responses would be summed up every 10 seconds
or so, and the most popular would be followed. Many players rebelled at this
mid-game change, interfering with the goal or typing "start9" which
would open the start menu nine times in a row.
So the designer tweaked
the game again, allowing players to type in the chat to vote for
"anarchy" (the original setup) or "democracy". When there
was a 75% majority of one, it switched the control method.
As time went on, the
mythos and politics became more complicated, and the stakes higher. Anarchists
fought to uphold the purity of their traditional gameplay, and reviled against the new democracy, calling it
"Dome-ocracy" (i.e. pertaining to the evil Dome fossil). Democracists
maintained that slow and steady was necessary for sections requiring delicate
control. But it was
so slow and a good deal more boring.
Factions divided by Anarchy/Democracy or different paths and game
choices got pretty riled up at times. Epics of governments
and rebellion, religion and destiny were enacted in the following of the Helix
fossil. Here is one of my favorites: the story false prophet Eevee, as told by a player:
In order to
progress we needed a Pokémon that can learn surf. We had 5 of our 6 Pokémon
slots full, so if we bought, caught, or obtained a Pokémon, it would go into
that sixth slot. Eevee if evolved into Vaporeon works. Or we could be given
Lapras which works. Or they could catch a Pokémon which is super hard to
coordinate with 70k users. If eevee evolved into a non surf learning pokemon,
we'd have to go to the pokemon PC to get a surf pokemon out of storage. We
picked Eevee, evolved it into the flareon, tried to go to the box, and released
two of our pokemon, including a starter, and deposited the helix fossil, which
is being revered as a sort of God. If we didn't go with Eevee, we may still
have our two released pokemon and our God. Instead, the false prophet killed
them.
Wow. Just wow.
Saturday morning,
around 5am,
after 16d 7h 45m 30s, the collective hive mind
finally defeated the Final Four, and beat the game.
[2]
