Twitch Plays Pokemon: Tens of thousands of people playing Pokemon Red together

["Alvin"]

The largest amount of people playing a single player game simultaneously is happening right now on twitch.

http://www.twitch.tv/twitchplayspokemon

People input commands in the chat: a, b, start, select, up, right, down, left, and then it happens in the game (though there is some delay), so you've basically got a ton of people working towards one goal. We reached a peak of 75k people or so playing at the same time but it's around 50k now that it's late. Thousands more are playing every day, which is making it more difficult. We have 4 badges so far, but have been stuck in the Team Rocket HQ for 15 hours or so because the maze requires a lot of precision and it's near impossible to navigate it when thousands are playing at the same time. Hell, it took us 8 hours to cross the ledge in route 9 because people kept saying "down." :s

It has been running for over 5 days now and it has been a great experience. The players want to work towards different goals sometimes (e.g. whether or not to get Eevee), items are tossed all the time, trees are insanely hard to cut, ledges cause a lot of backtracking, the S.S. Ticket and Helix Fossil are used all the time during battle and battles are down to luck. Everyone has grown attached to the Pokemon in the party. Everyone shed a tear when we accidentally released our starter, Abby the Charmeleon as well as Jay Leno the Rattata. Everyone praises Based Pidgeot for being OP and sweeping teams when given the chance.

Thoughts everyone? Where do you guys see this going over the course of the next few days? Weeks?

[Richard and Blaziken]

I tried watching, it's a mess. I appreciate that it is spawning all kinds of memes and fun for many people, but after seeing them stuck on the route before Rock Tunnel for 9 hours, I was pretty much done.

["Alvin"]

Yes, parts like that I prefer to check on occasionally. I'm about to sleep through the mess we're in now. :s

[Mew King]

Last I heard they're in Silph Co.

Also, all glory to the Helix Fossil.

[Spriter]

It's a bit ridiculous to be honest, with all of them struggling to get anywhere quickly...but what do you expect from an army of people trying to "press" buttons at the same time.

[Awkward Squirtle]

I just tuned in and anarchy has happened. In the middle of a battle. Oh dear.

[Delicious_Scout]

(I don't consider it publicity)

This can help you understanding the process, old men people. http://cheezburger.com/196869

[SirBlaziken]

Sounds like pure chaos. Why aren't I causing it?!

[Del]

zzzz the new Democracy/Anarchy system has completely ruined any entertainment value this stream had. voting for 20 seconds on what button to press isn't fun at all, we're basically watching a boring, slow Let's Play at this point.

sure we've been in this maze for 26~ hours, but using Democracy to beat it is so boring and cheap. we got past the ledge to get into Rock Tunnel, we cut the tree to get into the fourth gym, why do we need to use Democracy to get through some dumb maze?

i can't imagine playing Pokémon only pressing one button every twenty seconds, i dunno why anyone would want to watch it like that. at least with the 70k inputs at once it was entertaining.

[Awkward Squirtle]

I don't know, I'm quite enjoying this. Its still going catastrophically wrong.

[Del]

It was far far far more entertaining when Anarchy was the only setting. Everything that's happened, all the funny jokes about the Ledge, the whole Helix Fossil meme, the accidental releasing of Charmeleon/Rattata, digging out of Rock Tunnel however many times that happened; all of that wouldn't have happened if Democracy had been enforced the entire time.

To have Democracy come in now just because we've been stuck for a while ruins the entire feel of the run. If we're just gonna turn Democracy on every time we're stuck for ten minutes, where is the opportunity for funny stuff to occur? It won't happen. So what if we'd gotten stuck in this maze for another 12 or so hours? EVENTUALLY we're gonna make it through, and we'd know that we didn't do it through some cheap democracy method.

And again, 20 seconds for each input is so boring to watch. I understand that you might be able to enjoy it but it baffles me how you could be in the majority when nothing is happening for 20 seconds at a time.

[Awkward Squirtle]

I can imagine. Anarchy went on for a while in a battle, and that was interesting. Lots of sand attacks, lots of uses of TMs. Maybe they'll turn it off when rocket HQ is done.

[Trainer Dave]

I've actually been watching it somewhat, it's quite an interesting little experiment.

The democracy system was necessary in my opinion. It may be boring to watch when in that mode, but as the stream got popular it's become inundated with people deliberately trying to obstruct progress. At one point the entire thing was being flooded with bots throwing the 'start' command and other random buttons, although they seem to have resolved that somewhat for now.

Anarchy is the better mode of play, but is being hindered by the large numbers of trolls. The chaos should come from poor coordination, not people trying to push the character down off a ledge over and over. As such, I don't mind democracy being used when hours are needed just to pass a small obstacle.

[MonsterMon64]

A friend linked it to me... and I think at that point they were in Cerulean City still. It was both painful and amusing to watch, so I couldn't watch it more than a few minutes.

I just don't get the subculture/memes/whatever that's spawned from it, though. Are people that suggestible? It's times like this where I question my association with the Pokemon fandom. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to draw some Pokemon gijinkas.

[Richard and Blaziken]

I think the memes are the most fun part of all of this, heh. Watching the stream for more than 15 minutes is insufferable for me, but seeing all of the things spawning as a result of a now 16 year-old game is pretty amazing.