It all ended on March 1, 2014, which will forever be known as National Helix Day. The chaos and hilarity that was known as Twitch Plays Pokémon, came to a halt with the defeat of Pokémon Champion Blue.
For the uninitiated, Twitch is a website that streams live gameplay to viewers. Twitch Plays Pokémon (TPP) is a stream of Pokémon Red, but instead of streaming just one person playing Pokémon (because, you know, that would be boring) TPP uses inputs from Twitch’s chat function to play the game. What this means is that you have tens of thousands of people controlling one character by typing Gameboy commands (Left, Right, Up, Down, A, B, Start) into the chat window. The results: pure and utter chaos. The fact that the emulator has to process every single command causing an approximately 40 second delay between the time a user’s command is entered in the chat to the time it is inputted into the game further added to the madness.
Having that many people trying to play a single game was both incredibly frustrating to watch but also quite entertaining. For example, let’s look at the dreaded ledge. To get from Vermillion City to Lavender Town the player must go through Route 9, which has a long narrow path over a ledge at the beginning. Normally it would take two seconds for an 8 year-old to get past this ledge. For TPP it took over 14 hours. That’s because out of the 50 000 – 100 000 people watching at a given time, it takes only one troll to type the word “down” which would cause the player to jump over the ledge and have to go back to the beginning and try again.
This slow progression prompted the creation of the Democracy/Anarchy mode. If enough players entered the “democracy” command, the game would enter democracy mode. Instead of using every input, democracy mode aggregates every input over five seconds and then uses the command that was entered the most. Democracy mode was heavily criticised as it got rid of the most fun and interesting aspects of TPP, and was therefore used sparingly when absolutely required.
Things like the dreaded ledge combined with the constant walking in circles and opening and closing the menu made it incredibly frustrating to watch, but it also made the most minor things feel like accomplishments. Using the PC without accidently releasing any Pokemon, using a TM without tossing it and using an attack move that wasn’t leer or whirlwind were, however minor, feats in themselves.
In addition to the minor feats there were some actually impressive accomplishments that TPP achieved that I would have even struggled with playing by myself. For example, we solved the Lt. Surge trash can puzzle first try! I used to struggle with that as a kid and was expecting the player to be fumbling around for hours, but instead TPP solved it in less time than I probably would have by myself.
Probably the most impressive moment of the stream was when we were battling against Lance of The Elite Four. He sent out his level 62 Dragonite and all we had left was a level 36 Venomoth named “AATTVVV” (since writing a coherent nickname in TPP is impossible), that was only in the party because we were too afraid of accidentally releasing a Pokémon, to use the PC to switch him out. Venomoth’s only damaging ability was Leech Life which did only one damage to the Dragonite. Lance’s AI though, would always choose moves super effective against our pokemon. This meant that Dragonite just used Barrier and Agility over and over again; both moves that do not deal any damage. After using poison powder, ATV was able to defeat a pokemon he had no business beating by slowing poisoning him. When we won that impossible battle the chat exploded with cheers of triumph and from then on Venomoth was dubbed “Dragonslayer.”
The nicknames were all part of the greatest and most interesting aspect of TPP: the lore. It all started when the helix fossil was acquired. The helix fossil was a key item and therefore it was one of the few items we didn’t accidently toss since it’s “too important to toss.” It was also at the top of the item list so every time we opened up the item menu it would be the first thing we looked at. Due to the chaos of 50 000 people entering commands all at once, we did that a lot. It happened so much that people started saying the player was consulting the fossil for guidance, because of the player’s fixation with the fossil it was dubbed the player’s deity. And thus, the Church of Helix was born. Soon the chat became filled with phrases such as “All praise the mighty Helix!” and “We must consult the Helix fossil for guidance!” It was awesome.
Of course, with a religion comes its disciples and enemies. Since the Helix fossil was equivalent to God, the Dome fossil became the obvious choice as the equivalent Satan. Our Pidgeot named “aaabaaajss” became known as “Bird Jesus” and was the champion of Helix. The chat became split into two factions: followers of Helix and followers of Dome.
About five days in the lore grew when our Charmeleon “ABBBBBBK” and our Rattata “JLVWNNOOOO” (AKA Abby and Jay Leno) were accidentally released. Soon after, we accidentally bought a fire stone and evolved Eevee into Flareon even though we really needed a Vaporeon because we had no one who could learn surf. That Flareon became known as the False Prophet of Dome and was accused of being responsible for Abby and Jay Leno’s release.
A few days after the Great Exodus was Bloody Sunday causing the lore to expand further. Bloody Sunday started off when we used the masterball to capture Zapdos and nicknamed him “AA-j” or “Archangel of Justice”. Then when we went to the PC to withdraw him, we proceeded to release 12 Pokémon, including our only one who could learn cut! Some say that the PC demanded blood sacrifice for the withdrawal of the Archangel. Others say he is actually Dome’s new prophet who caused Bloody Sunday as revenge for the release of Flareon.
It was amazing how people could take these events, born out of the mayhem that is 50 000 people simultaneously controlling one character, and create intricate back-stories for them. And not only did people create these back-stories, but they also made amazing fan art to go along. There’s tonnes of beautiful artwork out there depicting these events happening. The lore truly was what made TPP so awesome and so unique.
The anonymous Australian creator made TPP as a “social experiment” and boy did he get one. Surprisingly, for the most part, people wanted to progress and complete the game, while only a handful of participants were trying to hinder progress. I would say probably 85 percent of the people were actually trying to advance and the other 15 percent were trolling. Despite the trolling, progress was made! I like the analogy that TPP was like a message in a bottle that gets pushed various different ways by the ocean waves, but eventually it reaches land, and that progress was very satisfying. You might have noticed that I have used the term “we” when referring to what happened. That is because there was an incredible sense of community and teamwork when playing the game. It was always we solved the puzzle, we beat the gym leader, we successfully used cut on that tree (after hours of trying). It just goes to show that you can throw a bunch of people together and they can actively work together despite how easy it is for a minority to disrupt the progress. It did take us 14 hours to take 8 steps along that ledge but we eventually did it. And it took 16 days, 7 hours and 45 minutes to beat a game that normally takes 27 hours, but we still did it!
The development of lore and the factions is another reason why this “sociological experiment” is so intriguing. Players divided into two factions and intricate back-stories were created for religions that were formed out of seemingly random events.
Twitch Plays Pokemon is now over and I doubt there will be anything like it anytime soon. They started playing the next generation of Pokemon games but it hasn’t picked up as much traction as the original. There are way fewer players, the lore is lacking and the way they changed the Democracy system really makes it less enjoyable. The chaos and hilarity that is TPP is now over but boy was it fun while it lasted.
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