STACK #136 Feb 2016

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TWITCH PLAYS POKÉMON

Pokémon Red Pitching towards the interaction between players and viewers, what happens when there is no player, and viewers must work together to complete the game themselves? Welcome to the beautiful chaos that is Twitch Plays Pokémon. The Internet is a magical place. For something like this to happen, there’s a lot of hard work and preparation that goes into it. So, you’d think whoever was at the helm would want to take credit - however the reality is quite the contrary. The mastermind behind Twitch Plays Pokémon has chosen to remain anonymous, although we do know that he’s an Aussie. What a bloody rippa. When people talk about TPP, most are referring to the inaugural event, Twitch Plays Pokémon Red . Launched back in 2014, it began when this said anonymous legend launched an emulated version of Pokémon Red on PC as a Twitch stream. Using the chat, you could input the game’s controls – up, down, left, right, B, A, Start – and the character would do what you asked. It sounds simple enough, maybe when one person is doing it. Two is a little more tricky, and thousands upon thousands is borderline insane. Insanity, funnily enough, is what ensued, as 70,000 individuals attempted to control the one player to simply move in a given direction. Of course, there will always be three types of people; those who merely spectate, those who want the story to progress correctly and become the very best, and those who will do anything within their power to disrupt the course of nature. From the chaos sprung religion. The first Pokémon TPP managed to successfully catch was a Pidgey, that eventually evolved to its final form of Pidgeot. Said pocket monster became known as Bird Jesus, as he was the only really useful team member and the only one strong enough to dish out any real damage. Next came the Helix Fossil. What is supposed to be turned into a Pokémon and made a useful member of your team,

the Helix Fossil became the game’s magic 8 ball. Since pressing start was an easy way to disrupt the game, TPP on Pokémon Red was comprised wholly of menu navigation, which often ended up with the community in the Items section of their bag. The Helix Fossil was somewhat lucky it existed in the way that it did, as it couldn’t be dropped or discarded in any way – the option chosen instead was “Use”, which didn’t actually do anything. So, of course, being inherently useless, the TPP community deemed it a prophet and would consult the Helix Fossil whenever they were in doubt or needed help. And yes, there’s even a website (askhelixfossil.com) that lets you yourself consult the almighty conch. The Internet is an interesting place. The whole thing is blatantly hilarious – which is to be expected from a community-based Pokémon playthrough. Of course, Pokémon requires certain moves to move using a Water Stone, they instead bought a Fire Stone and evolved it into Flareon. Therefore, obviously, Flareon was an agent sent by the Dome Fossil (the Helix’s counterpart) to unseat them from their quest and disrupt all that is good and holy. A blasphemer, if you will. An enemy of the state. Going back to captured Pokémon, it’s been noted just how difficult to catch the creatures were, let alone assigning them nicknames. Charmander got the name “ABBBBBBK(“. Rattata was “JLVWNNOOOO”. Naturally, neither of these are particularly easy to pronounce, so the duo instead became known as Abby and Jay Leno respectively. Sadly, they were both released into the wild after about 100 hours of play. May their memories rest in peace. This doesn’t even touch on the Farfetch’d that learnt Cut – after six hours – and became known as the “Slayer of Trees”. And a Venomoth that progress through the world – one of which being Surf. When the TPP community decided to evolve their Eevee into a Vaporeon to learn the

was captured and deemed “AATTVVV” – All Terrain Venomoth. Sigh. And so we come to the introduction of a Democracy. Up ‘til now, TPP would simply take the input of chat commands as they came and do as it deemed fit; this came to be known as Anarchy mode. The anonymous creator decided enough anarchy was enough, and presumably, if you ask the TPP community, was under the control of the Dome Fossil

as he implemented the new Democracy mode. This took the majority

of input “votes” over a period of time and implemented a majority command. The two modes were switched between dependent on viewer input, with the anarchic being the preferable one. Despite all the odds, after 16 consecutive days of play, the Elite Four was beaten, and the game considered completed. TPP had done the impossible. The infinite monkeys on infinite keyboards had done what was highly unlikely – but ultimately inevitable – and taken over ten times the normal playthrough time to complete Pokémon Red . And so the saga continued, with TPP going on to tackle the rest of the Pokémon games, even those on Gamecube and 3DS. Described by some as a “car crash in slow motion”, the social experiment is one that has no end in sight. Hail Helix.

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