Opinion Columnist
A long time ago, someone said that 1,000 monkeys typing words on 1,000 typewriters could eventually type the complete works of Shakespeare.
Today, 100,000 monkeys typing commands on a single Game Boy are attempting to beat Pokémon.
Called a “social experiment” by its anonymous Australian progenitor, Twitch Plays Pokémon is one of those special internet phenomena, much like… Well, honestly, I’ve sat here and thought about it for a solid 15 minutes, and I can’t find anything to compare TPP to.
TPP is not a meme, occupying an interactive space exclusive from clichéd, instantly communicable image macros. Rather TPP fits the definition of social media only in the strictest sense, but it lacks the self-promoting narcissism of platforms like Twitter. It’s probably more helpful to describe what TPP is rather than what it isn’t.
Essentially, TPP is the classic Game Boy version of Pokémon, a turn-based RPG adventure that puts players in the universe of Japanese manga/anime where young “pocket monster” enthusiasts travel the world to capture and train a wide variety of fantasy animals from the lovable (Pikachu, a diminutive, electrically charged rodent) to the terrifying (Gyarados, a massive, serpentine dragon).
Pokémon crossed the Pacific to the US in the late 90s, when millions of kids, myself included, were captivated by the Game Boy version of this fantasy world. Today, the original black-and-white portable video game lives on in the hearts of many millenials as a nostalgic throwback to their youth.
And TPP allows us all to play it together, all at the same time.
Through a clever bit of programming, TPP has been designed to take commands from an internet chatroom accessible to the public. When players type a command found on a Game Boy console (up, down, left, right, a, b, start, or select) into the chatroom message field, the emulator running TPP recognizes the input and relays it to the game, causing RED, the game’s protagonist, to move about the world, interact with non-player characters and battle wild Pokémon.
The situation is complicated by the fact that, at times, there have been as many as 100,000 individual players submitting commands to the chatroom.
For the stream, which can be watched live at a gaming website called Twitch.tv, this means chaos. RED is constantly hamstrung by the most basic of tasks. One memorable event early in the campaign tasked players with navigating a narrow stretch of road bounded on the lower side by a stretch of ledges.
The mechanics of the game dictate that ledges can be jumped by pressing the ‘down’ key on the gamepad. If RED is walking above a ledge and a single player inputs the ‘down’ key, he will hop over the ledge, and the stream must task itself with walking all the way around to the top of the ledge before attempting the task again.
Details like this, which turn mundanities into Herculean collaborative efforts, are what gave TPP its charm and appeal. I remember as a child being constantly frustrated by the difficulty of Pokémon. Without ubiquitous access to internet guides, the game was quite a painstaking, if enjoyable, experience that no game has since replicated.
These days, beating a video game doesn’t feel so much like an achievement as it does a precursor to an online multiplayer component.
TPP, with its agonizing pace and entirely unique gameplay system, has managed to replicate the feeling of accomplishment that I felt when I finally felled the Elite Four as a first grader.
It only took 391 hours, 45 minutes and 30 seconds.
crclark2@mavs.coloradomesa.edu
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