- Joined
- Oct 7, 2007
- Messages
- 896
- Reaction score
- 112
- Age
- 56
- Location
- Midwest
- Website
- remus-shepherd.livejournal.com
(I'm not sure where to post about this on AbWrite. It could go into one of the writing subforums, but I'm going to hedge my bets and put it in Games.)
Have you all heard about TwitchPlaysPokemon?
There's a site called twitch.tv, where people show videos of other people playing video games. Often it's used for competitive games like Starcraft or LoL, so that fans can watch famous teams playing for prizes. Well, someone put a game of Pokemon Red in the video and hooked up the chat inputs so that anyone could type commands and control the game.
It went nuts.
At its peak, there were 180,000 players simultaneously trying to control Red, the protagonist. The game created an insane amount of lore and artwork. Because of events in the game the 'Helix Fossil' was worshipped as a god by the players, and a plotline arose where Red -- touched by the god and hearing the players as voices in his head -- was becoming pokemon master to lift up a new set of gods in the game world. The team ended with every pokemon having their own mythical identity -- 'Helix' (Omastar), the God; 'Bird Jesus' (Pidgeotto), the messiah; Zapdos, the Angel; 'Fonz' (Nidoran) the King; Air Jordan (Lapras) the Prince; and All-Terrain Venomoth, the Dragonslayer.
When Pokemon Red ended, the mysterious person responsible for it put the next game up, and he's continued to do it with every game version. Each game has not only constructed its own narrative, but they are coming together like a common series:
In Pokemon Red, the gods saved the world.
In Pokemon Crystal, the gods were torn down by Lazorgator, the Godslayer. The motto of this run was, 'No Gods, no Kings; only Mon'.
In Pokemon Emerald, the players controlled an anarchist who brought evil back to the world.
In Pokemon FireRed, the protagonist wrestled over how to save the world -- Democracy, Anarchy, or Communism.
Pokemon Platinum was a little different and much more intimate. Instead of a grand quest, the protagonist 'Napoleon' was a stuffed shirt unable to do anything because of his hangups and fears. The story of Platinum was how Napoleon's pokemon taught him to loosen up and have fun.
And now we're in Pokemon HeartGold, in which a werewolf girl has summoned forth the gods to bring them back to the world.
Six stories, all with deep casts of characters, fan artworks, and near novel-length plotlines and complexities.
And all this has taken place in the past four months.
The participation has waned so that there are only one or two thousand people involved at any time. But they're still generating their own folklore at an incredible rate. I'm not sure what to make of this except as an experiment in accelerated community-created storytelling. It might end soon. The next game will be the last pokemon game released; nobody's sure if they're going to go back and replay older games after that. I thought AbWrite might find it interesting before it disappeared.
If you're interested, the subReddit is probably the best place to start. Check out the 'Useful Links' sidebar for links to the stream (where you can play or watch), the FAQs, the wiki that stores everything, and so on.
Have you all heard about TwitchPlaysPokemon?
There's a site called twitch.tv, where people show videos of other people playing video games. Often it's used for competitive games like Starcraft or LoL, so that fans can watch famous teams playing for prizes. Well, someone put a game of Pokemon Red in the video and hooked up the chat inputs so that anyone could type commands and control the game.
It went nuts.
At its peak, there were 180,000 players simultaneously trying to control Red, the protagonist. The game created an insane amount of lore and artwork. Because of events in the game the 'Helix Fossil' was worshipped as a god by the players, and a plotline arose where Red -- touched by the god and hearing the players as voices in his head -- was becoming pokemon master to lift up a new set of gods in the game world. The team ended with every pokemon having their own mythical identity -- 'Helix' (Omastar), the God; 'Bird Jesus' (Pidgeotto), the messiah; Zapdos, the Angel; 'Fonz' (Nidoran) the King; Air Jordan (Lapras) the Prince; and All-Terrain Venomoth, the Dragonslayer.
When Pokemon Red ended, the mysterious person responsible for it put the next game up, and he's continued to do it with every game version. Each game has not only constructed its own narrative, but they are coming together like a common series:
In Pokemon Red, the gods saved the world.
In Pokemon Crystal, the gods were torn down by Lazorgator, the Godslayer. The motto of this run was, 'No Gods, no Kings; only Mon'.
In Pokemon Emerald, the players controlled an anarchist who brought evil back to the world.
In Pokemon FireRed, the protagonist wrestled over how to save the world -- Democracy, Anarchy, or Communism.
Pokemon Platinum was a little different and much more intimate. Instead of a grand quest, the protagonist 'Napoleon' was a stuffed shirt unable to do anything because of his hangups and fears. The story of Platinum was how Napoleon's pokemon taught him to loosen up and have fun.
And now we're in Pokemon HeartGold, in which a werewolf girl has summoned forth the gods to bring them back to the world.
Six stories, all with deep casts of characters, fan artworks, and near novel-length plotlines and complexities.
And all this has taken place in the past four months.
The participation has waned so that there are only one or two thousand people involved at any time. But they're still generating their own folklore at an incredible rate. I'm not sure what to make of this except as an experiment in accelerated community-created storytelling. It might end soon. The next game will be the last pokemon game released; nobody's sure if they're going to go back and replay older games after that. I thought AbWrite might find it interesting before it disappeared.
If you're interested, the subReddit is probably the best place to start. Check out the 'Useful Links' sidebar for links to the stream (where you can play or watch), the FAQs, the wiki that stores everything, and so on.
