Pokemon is a series that most people around the world know about.  Starting as a handheld game for the Nintendo Game Boy in 1996, the franchise has spawned several sequel games, shows, and literally tons of merchandise.  Pokemon is a worldwide sensation, so it was only natural that Twitch Plays Pokemon would become an instant internet sensation.  Twitch is a live streaming site that many internet figures use to play video games live for their viewers and fans.  An anonymous person from Australia has used this to try what he/she calls a “social experiment.”  They modded one of the original 1996 games, “Pokemon Red” to be specific, so that anyone viewing the stream could play.  All you had to do was enter one of the usable button commands to make the character perform that action.  The available commands are a,b,up,down,left,right, and start.  It sounds simple at first, but when you have close to a 100,000 people trying to control one game at the same time, it gets hectic.

The project was launched on Feb. 13  and has been currently going for 11 days 17 hours and 45 minutes.

The biggest difficulty of this experiment is that half of the viewers just want to mess with the game, impede progression, or ruin the chance of winning altogether.  This kind of attitude is not uncommon on the internet, but it makes some of the simplest tasks harder.  The controller of the project has implanted some features as the experiment goes on, one being the anarchy and diplomacy system where by typing in anarchy or diplomacy, the viewers can change how the game is played.  Anarchy is the original way: input a command and the character does it, and diplomacy is where the viewers get twenty seconds to vote on a command before the character does it.  Diplomacy is much slower, but it gets the players through tougher areas much more easily.

After almost twelve days, they have been able to get six of the eight gym badges in the game, which leaves them two more plus the Elite Four.  The creator has little hope of the game ever getting finished, but only time will be able to tell us that.