Twitch plays Pokemon

SeantheMan

I don't know what forum/sub to put this under...

As it's not just about Pokemon, I don't know the point of the social experiment but....it's weird...

FAQ
What is this?

TwitchPlaysPokemon is a social experiment, it is a stream of the Gameboy version of Pokemon Red (151 romhack) running on an emulator. An IRC bot translates buttons said in chat into keypresses (simulated in software, no fancy typist robots).

Basically for the last 5 days people have been playing Pokemon Red.
But...they are all playing the same character...inputting commands via chat.

As I type this there are 70,000 + people trying to get the character to move

http://nl.twitch.tv/twitchplayspokemon

Apparently they have 4 badges so far.
It also took 4 hours to 'cut' a tree

Kirby

The bottom line is that out of 70,000 people, at least 10k are going to troll. You have people pressing start to try and force a quit and other intentionally giving bad directional input.

It's entertaining for about 60 seconds....then it's just frustrating as he walks in circles. They will complete it in the end though.

Canis Lupus

That was a waste of 10 seconds.

saidinmilamber

Omg, Flareon just got released!!!!!!! This is so compelling!!!

VinLieger

There are some great moments coming out of it.

I cant wait for this

Vicxas

I watched about 5 minutes and that was my max. The anarchy is hilarious.

SeantheMan

It's all you can really watch for at a time.

I tune in every now and again. I think I checked 3 or 4 times today over the space of 5 hours...they were still in the same building :P

I remember the list of the 6 pokemon they had popped up..and god...it was awful

Something like 2 Rattatas , a Pidgey, a Drowzey , Farfetchd, and Oddish

Apparently they lost their Charmeleon (let it go), as well as Flareon (which they were actually trying to make a Vaporeon out of ....to 'surf' )


Watching it now, trying to fight a trainer...Ghastly destroyin all pokemons :P

Fawk Nin

It's going to take them months to get through Victory Road.

The Flareon/Vaporean debacle was brilliant.

2smiggy

i never played pokemon , so watching is difficult for me. Why is it so hard for them, can someone give me a quick idea of what is happening. I know the pokemon cartoons from years back, just never had a gameboy or any of the games

SeantheMan

2smiggy wrote: »

i never played pokemon , so watching is difficult for me. Why is it so hard for them, can someone give me a quick idea of what is happening. I know the pokemon cartoons from years back, just never had a gameboy or any of the games

Basically the commands are being done via text input
So imagine a gameboy controller ... UP DOWN LEFT RIGHT A B START

Now, if you type UP in chat, the character moves up

Now imagine 50,000-90,000 typing at the same time...for the 1 game !

This is why it's mental and impossible for them :P

Also, atm..they are fighting a ghastly, 4 pokemon dead. Last one left is a Pidgeot.....but....pidgeot can't harm ghastly.
So , they'll lose in a few mins. And be back at a Pokecentre or something again

2smiggy

ah , i was wondering why on earth the were making no progress !! and that's what all the anarchy chat is about !!

mayordenis

It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.

Kirby

They moved to a "democracy" system yesterday which will make things a little smoother. Before, people just spammed their choices and the character spazzed out.

Now, people vote for a few seconds and the most popular direction or button is chosen. It's "slower" but much more efficient.

Angron

The thing is, the lag between the vid and chat is making things worse, causing doublemoves and such. Safari Zone will be fun, as will Silph Co.

Fawk Nin

SeantheMan wrote: »

Basically the commands are being done via text input
So imagine a gameboy controller ... UP DOWN LEFT RIGHT A B START

Now, if you type UP in chat, the character moves up

Now imagine 50,000-90,000 typing at the same time...for the 1 game !

This is why it's mental and impossible for them :P

Also, atm..they are fighting a ghastly, 4 pokemon dead. Last one left is a Pidgeot.....but....pidgeot can't harm ghastly.
So , they'll lose in a few mins. And be back at a Pokecentre or something again

Please, refer to Bird Jesus by his proper name.

A Brad Maddox Guy

Have they fought Sabrina yet? I'd imagine it would take an age to get through that gym

Angron

MitchKoobski

Half the fun of this is the religious stuff, images and fan art coming from it.

http://www.reddit.com/r/twitchplayspokemon

pablomakaveli

I went on it a little earlier. Whats the democracy and anarchy thing about?

MitchKoobski

pablomakaveli wrote: »

I went on it a little earlier. Whats the democracy and anarchy thing about?

http://www.reddit.com/r/twitchplayspokemon/comments/1y90kl/explanation_of_everything_thus_far/

New Systems: Democracy Vs Anarchy
With the chaos, and the seemingly insurmountable Rocket Hideout rooms, the Game Host has instituted a method of voting on the system of player input. They have been termed Democracy and Anarchy.

Anarchy - The way the game started. Nothing more than the IRC parsing for command input, and when all previous action frames are complete, the next input is used.

Democracy - The new system where commands are tallied by the parser for twenty seconds, then the most-voted on command is used for the next action. The Anarchy/Democracy Bar - The system itself is constantly being voted on in a tug-of-war running tally. If the votes for one crosses the threshold (indicated by a line on the bar) then the system will change until it is pushed the other direction.

saidinmilamber

For those just joining, here's a history of what's happened so far, and here's our current party, objectives, and scripts so you can read the chat.

EDIT: Though here's a super-quick summary





Praise the Helix!

spiralism

Finally getting to the end of the Rocket hideout and actually beating Giovanni before using Dig to exit without the Silph Scope...i cracked up, must admit:pac:

Vicxas

Whens the last time they were in democracy?

Every time I log on red is rolling around like an epileptic victim.

saidinmilamber

Vicxas wrote: »

Whens the last time they were in democracy?

Every time I log on red is rolling around like an epileptic victim.

Not since The Descent into Hell (Team Rocket HQ)

TheDoc

Only watched it for two minutes before declaring it ****e logged off

Now have a hankering to get an emulator and play original pokemon

copeyhagen

only sound working for me, pic just frozen....

funny idea alright though.

hots

TheDoc wrote: »

Only watched it for two minutes before declaring it ****e logged off

Now have a hankering to get an emulator and play original pokemon

I did exactly that, I'd say ROM downloads are going through the roof!

shruikan2553

http://www.reddit.com/live/sw7bubeycai6hey4ciytwamw3a
This is great for explaining whats going on.

I have a look at whats going on now and again but no idea where people come up with these names. The only time I saw people talking in chat was to yell about using dig in the tower.

deathrider

Watched some of it tonight, as they fumbled round the Lavender Town tower. It's a bizzarre idea.

VinLieger

So they are through the Safari Zone thanks to democracy, there was no way anarchy could ever do it.

Now to add surf to a pokemon and hope to god that pokemon doesn't get tossed for whatever reason

saidinmilamber

VinLieger wrote: »

So they are through the Safari Zone thanks to democracy, there was no way anarchy could ever do it.

Now to add surf to a pokemon and hope to god that pokemon doesn't get tossed for whatever reason

That was just incredible to watch! I really think we need to get Lapras, teach it surf, then head back to the safari zone and catch a bunch of pokemon in the water and teach them surf too.