It was the best of times it was the blurst of times.

The internet is currently in one of its weirder moments. Someone had the brilliant idea to take the text output from a chat room conversation, and program it into the controller input for a Gameboy emulator. Then all they needed to do was to set up a video to stream the game, and presto: you have a chatroom of people playing the Pokemon. And they're not playing their own separate instances of the game- no, everyone is controlling the same character, Red, as he battles across the world. This may end up being a novel phenomenon in the history of the internet and forgotten in a matter of weeks, but I have a hunch it may be remembered as one of the tube's more bizarre social experiments.

As I write this, over 75,00 people are in the Twitch Plays Pokemon chat room, most typing "up" "left" "a" "b" "start" into the chat to control Red. There is about a thirty second delay before any one person's input manages to reach the game, past the long queue of processing previous commands by other players across the planet. Thus, Red isn't very direct in his actions. He bumbles over the map in what can only be likened to an extremely drunken stupor- meandering every which way, dropping things everywhere, and endlessly repeating the same conversation with strangers. Watching the game can become aggravating if you are expecting anything significant to happen in the near future. Yet, somehow, after nearly seven days of continuous game time, the internet has managed to make significant progress through the game's story.



This journey has not been without its trials though. Due to the nearly random actions of the protagonist, skill and strategy have been thrown out the window. The starter Pokemon (a charmander named ABBBBBBK or Abby)- usually one of your strongest team members- was rendered almost immediately useless after learning a terrible move list of supporting techniques. Catching Pokemon- a task which requires a bit of planning and luck on a good day- became nearly impossible after the first few areas; so the remainder of the team was made up of the a pidgey and rattata, for the first few days. If you've never played pokemon, these are the equivalent of a pigeon and a rat and are not very exciting or strong, but they would end up becoming notorious in spite of that.

Pokemon battles which are the core challenge in the game traditionally have taken a backseat in cooperative Pokemon to the much more difficult task of walking a straight line. There is a route (9) in the game that takes about 30 seconds to cross if you know what your doing. However, there is a ledge in the middle of this path, and if you happen to walk one space too far, you will fall of the ledge and have to start over. It took over six hours for the internet to cross this route . Another difficulty unique to cooperative Pokemon is the simple action of cutting down a tree. For those who have never played, there are certain trees in the game which must be cut down by a Pokemon in order to progress further in the game. This requires a concerted action of walking to the tree and facing it, opening the menu, opening the Pokemon screen, picking the correct Pokemon and choosing to use the cut technique. It took three hours to cut a tree before the fourth badge. People joked that that tree was the hardest boss in the game. But, that was before Team Rocket's game corner.

Team Rocket's game corner has a maze in the basement. This maze consists of several tiles on the floor that, once stepped on, move the character in the certain direction. The maze isn't extraordinarily complicated, but there is only one path through and many wrong turns. The internet was stuck in this maze for over a full day. Many people had made strategies for tackling the maze, with specific commands to type depending on Red's location, but no progress was being made. In the end, the steamer intervened and introduced an additional game feature called democracy. If enough users voted for "democracy" by typing it in the chat, then Red's actions would change and instead be directed by the most popular command voted, over a 30 second period. Conversely, you could vote for "anarchy" to change the game back to it's initial state. Many people protested this alteration to the games mechanics feeling that it damaged the significance of their achievement so far. In order to stall the game from proceeding further under the democracy conditions, many users entered the command "start9" which would pause the game multiple times, interrupting any progress. The game is currently still using this democracy vs anarchy voting structure, though anarchy tends to be in effect.


A micro-culture has developed around the game due to the popularity of Pokemon and the nostalgia of playing through the original game. Fan-art and memes have been created regularly through the journey, and much of the fan-art can be found on the subreddit /r/twitchplayspokemon The biggest meme has been the rise of the helix fossil. This item is 99% useless in the game, but because it is useless it sticks around in the player's inventory, while useful items get used up in the chaos. It been one of the few items in Red's possession for nearly the entire game*, and it gets used often triggering the computer response, "This isn't the time to use that, Red!". Many viewers have imagined Red is turning to the helix fossil for guidance at these points. So "Praise Helix" and other testaments to the helix fossil as a deity can be found. Conversely, and for reasons I don't begin to understand, the S. S. ticket, another of the games more useless items, has been labeled a false idol, and it's followers as heretics.

There is a whole history of events that have happened along the way; every Pokemon in Red possession has developed a unique nickname because of this. Pidgeot (our thankfully evolved pidgey) has become the strongest Pokemon on the team and the backbone for gym battles, defeating Erika single-handedly. He's now known as Bird Jesus. The first rattata that was caught was named  JLVWNNOOOO or Jay Leno and many mourn his accidental release. Another rattata learned the move dig, which can be used outside of a battle to return you to the last city you visited. This happened on accident way too often so -Digrat. Eevee/flareon became known as the false prophet of the dome fossil- which has a very detailed explanation, but I don't want to open that can of worms so I just encourage you to look it up if you're interested.


For me though, the most interesting part of this experiment is not the random nature of the game-play, but how the character has somehow remained focused through the game. There is currently a simulation going, inspired by this setup, to run pokemon using a random input from a random number generator. The results are wildly different from those in cooperative pokemon. Cooperative pokemon has made much more progress. The intention of the many people collaborating experiences some interference, but it still comes through. You could probably just chalk it up to the average input still having a clear intention being dicussed by the players, in much the same way the democracy function allows for even less interference. But, to me, it still seems a little spooky, like the ghost in the machine or something. (I secretly think that one day the internet will become wake up and become an AI. Maybe, it will thank us for making one of it's first memories playing Pokemon.)

*The helix fossil was twice accidentally deposited in the PC. Using the PC presents unqiue challenges to cooperative Pokemon which you will discover if you read about eevee. But due to the signficance of the fossil to the players, twice it was rescued from the PC.
(Also, I really wanted to add photos, but I don't know how to deal with copyright business till next week; so you'll just have to make due till then)