CODEX
“Twitch Plays” and Other Stream Games are Positioned to Grow on Youtube and Beyond
“Games as a Service” is having its start on Youtube and Twitch, but there is much more under the surface of true distributed gaming
The Beginning of an Era
The year was 2014, the place was Twitch.tv. The popular Amazon-owned video game streaming website had a very unique channel: “Twitch Plays Pokemon”. TPP, as it came to be known, had a very simple premise — the chat was to play the classic GameBoy game Pokemon Red. Yes — all the viewers of the Twitch channel had to play through Pokemon Red collectively, typing in their desired inputs one button at a time.
And after 16 consecutive days of gameplay, they won. Not only did they win the game, but they also won a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records for the “most participants in a single-player online video game” at about 1.16 million unique players.
The playthrough of Pokemon was very special, in that it bred a sense of community with its players. In-game happenings were revered and some Pokemon were elevated to mythological levels. One of the most popular “memes” to come out of Twitch Plays Pokemon focuses around the Helix Fossil. In-game…
