The Great and Almighty Helix Fossil

Technology and Gaming
#1

OR

Twitch Plays Pokemon.

So this is a thing that has been going on for about a week now (and I myself have discovered about a couple days ago). It’s a livestream that involves tens of thousands of people trying to play the same game of Pokemon Red at once.

It’s just as crazy as it sounds.

The stream uses an IRC bot that takes what’s entered into the stream chat and translates them into in-game commands. The bot has two states: “anarchy” is where it accepts all commands, even if there are more than the game can execute, and there is “democracy” where everyone votes on a button-push over a period of twenty seconds.

Already it’s spawned a few memes, such as the aforementioned Helix Fossil, streams of commands and randomness, and this almost irrational fear of the PC, as well as at least a dozen more.

You can see it for yourself here: https://www.twitch.tv/twitchplayspokemon

live recap here: https://www.reddit.com/live/sw7bubeycai6hey4ciytwamw3a

History here: https://imgur.com/gallery/71xMQ06

#2

How is that even done?

#3

Lol forgot to talk about that. Editing first post, obviously.

#4

That’s very crazy… I didn’t even know so many people still play Gen I. Pokemon.

#5

It’s been a week! A freaking week!

How does this already have its own memes and gag sites and fervent cult following?!

#6

People feel like they have nothing to do these days.

#7

So that’s what this is about…I’ve been seeing references to it everywhere but I just assumed it was one person called Twitch playing, and I was really confused as to why anyone cared that much. Now it makes more sense, that’s actually kind of cool.

#8

a week in internet time is pretty wild

#9

Probably not, but I’m wondering if there’s a recording of that? That would be pretty cool to watch at 100x speed or something.

#10

There’s recordings on Twitch for some of the most impressive feats, like navigating the cliffs area or solving the Team Rocket dash pad area.

#11

Sliph co. lol

#12

Instead of playing Pokemon, I’d love to see them try to write the works of Shakespeare.

https://tinyurl.com/3pu9j

#13

I wanna see them try to beat half life like this.

#14

I think Doom would be better suited, as it does not need mouse input.

#15

I think they really need to stick to turn-based RPGs. They wouldn’t survive any sort of action-oriented game. Imagine them just trying to beat the first level of Super Mario Bros. YIKES.

Also, most of those games require that buttons be held down for actions to take place. Pokemon only requires button taps.

#16

I kinda want to hook up a PS2 emulator to something like that to see if Twitch would play Persona 4…

#17

you can assign keys to camera movement in HL :bulb: would love to see that :smiley:

#18

In half life we can make toggles for all the controls so that, for example, if you press W the player will walk forward until you press W again

#19

I read that there were some bots playing with the Pokemon Twich stream, some people… Why would you do that? My illusions were shattered…

Founded in 2004, Leakfree.org became one of the first online communities dedicated to Valve’s Source engine development. It is more famously known for the formation of Black Mesa: Source under the 'Leakfree Modification Team' handle in September 2004.