Twitch Plays Pokemon: Pokemon vs the World
After the death of Flappy Bird came Flapmmo, a nauseating incarnation of Flappy Bird that required you to navigate your bird through the pipes with the distraction of thousands of others playing at the same time. Next up in the category of single player-turned MMO games is Twitch Plays Pokemon, a social experiment run by an anonymous Australian programmer. Essentially, they wanted to find out what would happen if multiple people tried to play the nostalgic RPG at the same time. The answer? Pretty much exactly what you’d expect.
The game, which is played by typing commands into a chat box, originally started out with just a few players. Any command inserted simply happened, which led to a lot of walking in circles and opening up the start menu. A plethora of commands meant that actions could be delayed, meaning that your helpful input could be a nuisance by the time it got through. This problem only worsened as the game became more popular. Eventually the creator introduced a new ‘democracy’ mode, which allowed players to vote on which command should be played next. Although this slowed down regular gameplay, it was immensely helpful for things like cutting trees or depositing items, which could otherwise lead to hours of frustrated attempts.
Anarchy vs Democracy: A typically manic Twitch screenshot (photo: http://www.twitch.tv/twitchplayspokemon)
One such situation occurred on what has been dubbed ‘Bloody Sunday’. The Twitch players have caught a grand total of 29 pokemon throughout their adventures, but managed to release 12 of them in just 7 hours. A sample of the carnage can be viewed here but beware, it’s not for the fainthearted. This led players to realise that whilst the democracy mode can slow play down, it is very useful for delicate situations.
Some interesting artefacts have cropped up which will certainly be of interest for the creator’s social experiment. A few religion-esque cults have cropped up over the course of the game, notably the cult of Omanyte, a pokemon revived from the helix fossil on day 12 of the game. Players of Pokemon will know that the fossils are picked up from Mount Moon, relatively early in the game, but cannot be revived until much later. During the course of the game, the helix fossil was selected several times in battle, thanks to clunky controls. This came to be known as ‘consulting the helix’, a paragon of wisdom and guidance. The helix fossil, and by extension, Omanyte, represents anarchy, the chaotic yet effective form of play. Whilst the democracy players preferred the dome fossil (which would have given rise to Kabuto). Democracy was ultimately overpowered in this case, anarchy won.
Twitch has spawned a cult following, and with that comes a lot of fan art (photo: http://bit.ly/1hZFYBx)
However, the game has not been completely lost to anarchy. Several puzzles which stump the best of Pokemon players have been completed by the Twitch team. Tricky situations like the Safari Zone (it must be completed in a certain number of steps), and the Rocket Game Corner with complex directional tiles were all conquered by players en masse. Now, after over a fortnight of gaming, the team have their final badge and are heading to Victory Road, a pretty impressive feat considering the limitations of their controls. With the difficult boulder puzzle of Victory Road ahead, I would imagine that this particular incarnation of Pokemon still has a couple of days more to go.
With 50 million hits, I would hazard a guess that Twitch Plays Pokemon is more than a fad. With spin-offs like Twitch Plays Pokemon Crystal and Twitch Plays Super Mario Brothers, it looks as though people are excited at the prospect of playing their favourite retro games with others, even if the controls are less than adequate. Do I think that single player-turned MMO games will be the next big thing? Maybe for a month or two. However, anything that brings the gaming community together is a good idea in my book, so I suggest that you head over to Twitch Plays Pokemon and see what all the fuss is about. [divider_top]
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