Twitch Plays Pokémon

Twitch Plays Pokémon

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One of the most incredible scenes I witnessed on Twitch was when Twitch viewers played Pokémon through the chat channel or IRC by inputting words which translated to actions on the screen.

This social experiment had over 50 million views and over 80,000 concurrent viewers trying to move the character. Twitch estimated that over 1 million different viewers participated. The channel was chaotic, yet somehow it was addictive to try and see if the game could be completed. On March the 1st, the game was completed after 2 weeks (with a few tweaks).

This was an incredible feat and I myself, tried to help and give input into the game for a good few hours. I believe this experiment gave way for new interactions and a new original way to use live streaming than just spectating. It shows that even through chaos, that order can appear through the midst and still complete something through crowdsourcing. It shows crowdsourcing is a valuable way of working. Furthermore, It gave way to new games catered towards viewership and live streaming such as Choice Chamber as well as Quiplash. I further believe that while this experiment was not the first of its kind, it was the first in its type to really become popular and viral. This then gave popularity to more interactive games for spectators of Twitch. Recently Twitch has tried to complete the game Dark souls and eventually succeeded after 43 days. 

There is certainly potential for more interactive games for live viewership and I believe that developers are considering and taking this into account when developing games. Even if they do not, they cannot ignore the popularity that is Twitch as well as the importance of live-streaming. The input of viewers can produce important crowdsourcing material as well as paving an alternative way for games to be played, but still enjoyed.

Source: http://www.twitch.tv/twitchplayspokemon 

Other Reading:  

Ramirez, D., Saucerman, J., & Dietmeier, J. (2014). Twitch plays pokémon: a case study in big G games. In Proceedings of DiGRA (pp. 3-6).

Margel, M. Twitch Plays Pokemon: An Analysis of Social Dynamics in Crowdsourced Games.