Twitch Plays Pokemon breaking bad, now on Crystal
Twitch Plays Pokemon's romp through the Kanto region concluded with Pokemon Champion status yesterday, freeing protagonist Red from the playerbase's rule via thousands of button prompts. Dominating one region with a Pidgeot, Zapdos and Venemoth isn't enough for Twitch, though - it wants to be the very best, and continuing its campaign for glory this morning in Pokemon Crystal's Johto region seems like the next logical step.
Progression will bear similarity to the jumbled process used for Pokemon Red, with many simultaneously guiding the journey of one. Previously, players voted whether the game would be played in Democracy mode, where players vote on every action, or Anarchy mode, where the game interpreted every command. This time, a countdown timer that marks the arrival of Democracy mode has been added. At the time of this writing, the stream also has over 80,000 concurrent viewers.
The communal journey through Pokemon Red was made possible by the work of an anonymous programmer and has inspired a wealth of memes, religious themes and political debates. We've explored the social elements of the phenomenon, getting MIT associate professor T.L. Taylor's thoughts on why the project has connected with so many.
It remains to be seen whether Pokemon Crystal will inspire its own installment of Pokelore, or if the previous campaign's highlights and Helix deity will keep the second adventure's direction from being as fresh as the first's bizarre, player-created story.
[Image: The Pokemon Company]
