Twitch Plays Pokemon - Four Years Later

I'm cheating this week. I fully intended to finish and publish the next chapter of Wilred's story today, but I woke up this morning feeling awful. Instead I've been on the couch watching Man in the High Castle and staring at Reddit, and I have learned two things. First: Man in the High Castle is pretty cool and you should check it out. Second: It's been four years to the day since Twitch Plays Pokemon sent a tiny corner of the internet into a mad, almost cult-like frenzy.


Perfect! Thinks me. I wrote an essay on that very topic for uni.


So I'm going to post it here as filler because, as far as I can remember, it was a pretty good essay.


Also I believe that it was a really incredible, unique internet phenomenon that deserves to be talked about a lot more. So if you haven't heard about Twitch Plays Pokemon, I hope you find this little bit of internet history interesting. And if, like me, you followed it everyday while it was happening and got a wee bit obsessed: Happy Anniversary and Praise Helix.

You are tasked to write an essay, which explores one aspect of the history of communication technologies. We expect this history to be a critical evaluation of how the technology developed referencing the complex relationships it has with the society in which it was deployed. 

As the internet continues to become a part of daily life in the modern world, small online communities are given a chance to grow as people discover that they are never alone in their interests and passions. Twitch.tv is an online streaming service specifically designed for video-game players to share their game sessions live to viewers around the world. Much like YouTube, viewers can connect with content creators, subscribe to their channels for regular updates and even give them live feedback via a simple chat room window to the left of the video screen. Websites like Twitch give those who are passionate about video-gaming an opportunity to connect with like-minded people and share their experiences with one another.

When Nintendo released the video-game Pokémon for their handheld console Gameboy in 1996, it became an instant phenomenon all over the world as gamers everywhere began their journey to become the Pokémon master.

It was a modified version of this game which gave life to a peculiar event on the 12th of February 2014. An anonymous Australian programmer created a program that ‘listens for buttons being said in chat and then simulates the press of a keyboard key in the OS which in turn presses the corresponding button in the emulator.’ (Joystiq, 2014) For example if a user typed “up” into the chat room, the command would be sent to the program and the character would move up and if another user typed “start”, a menu would appear.

A screenshot from the Twitch Plays Pokémon project, showing the players' commands entered to the left of the live feed. 

It was intended as a social experiment to see if multiple players could co-operate to complete a single player game and it proved so popular and chaotic that it became a perfect example of how a sub-culture is formed when thousands of like-minded individuals come together under one common goal. Twitch Plays Pokémon has inspired artwork, music and even a religious scripture: “The Book of Helix”.

One item in particular became a symbol of hope for the players of Twitch Plays Pokémon: the Helix Fossil. This item is acquired early in the game and can be turned into the rare, but somewhat unpopular Pokémon Omanyte. After picking up the Helix Fossil, many items in the players’ inventory were accidentally thrown away due to the sheer volume of commands being typed into the chat room. Thus the item found its way to the top of the player’s item list, causing them to repeatedly attempt to use it in the heat of battle. 'That was interpreted as "turning to the Helix fossil for guidance."' (The Guardian, 2014)

Almost as if to make sense of the chaos of the live-stream, the community quickly created a mythology that evolved as the game progressed, spawning prophets, disciples and even false prophets from among the ranks of the Pokémon they had collected. Most popular among these characters was a Pokémon called Pidgey, who became known as Bird Jesus thanks to its ability to win battles that seemed almost impossible to the players.

A typical example of the artwork that fans of the project have created, this piece by DeviantArt user Throughspaceandtime shows the Helix Fossil sitting on an altar being watched over by Pidgey, or "Bird Jesus".

Chaos versus Democracy

In an attempt to help the community progress through the game, the creator of the program added a feature which allowed players to vote on which move the games' protagonist Red would make next. However this was met with some resistance from players who felt that the project’s charm and appeal came from the erratic nature of the gameplay, so in order to appease both parties, a new system was introduced. Players would still vote on how the game was played, but now they could simply type either “Chaos” or “Democracy” into the chat in order to fill a meter at the top of the window. If the majority vote was for Chaos, then the game would continue as normal, but if Democracy was chosen then every 20 seconds, players would vote on how to progress. ‘Democracy mode made progress possible again, and Twitch was able to use it to navigate the particularly tough mazes toward the end of the game.’ (ArsTechnica, 2014) However most of the time the game was in Anarchy mode and it can be argued that this is what helped to expand the mythology of the game.

A good example of this is a day the players dubbed - perhaps somewhat insensitively - “Bloody Sunday”, a particularly eventful few hours of game-play that occurred ten days into the project. After capturing Zapdos – one of the game’s “Legendary Pokémon” – the community decided to add it to their party of six. To do so, they would have to take Red to a PC, which is where Pokémon get sent automatically when you already have a full party. As the game was in Anarchy mode at this stage, it proved to be a very difficult task and the community ended up “releasing” twelve Pokémon into the wild – which means they essentially deleted them from the game’s memory – before eventually, and very carefully, selecting Zapdos from the menu and adding him to the party. This loss of characters was seen as a great sacrifice to the community and resulted in many people creating artwork to commemorate the event.

A depiction of "Bloody Sunday" by Reddit user Aeuma. It shows the PC "releasing" caught Pokémon whilst being watched over by the Dome Fossil, which the community saw as the antithesis to the Helix Fossil.

Conclusion 

I have attempted to show in this essay how the 'Twitch Plays Pokemon' project has led to the development of a virtual community with a shared sub-culture of artwork and literature. The creator of the project is quoted as saying:

"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." (Joystiq, 2014) 

It can be argued that Pokemon holds a special place in our cultural history for a generation of young people who engaged with it when it was first released. perhaps it was the chance to rekindle their love for the game that contributed to the success of the project. However, it can be argued that the success of the project is largely due to advances in communication technologies and in this case the ability to broadcast a twenty four hour live feed of a video-game.