Twitch Plays

Each of us played a video game. But what happens if the character is controlled not by one person, but simultaneously by many users around the world? Join the walkthrough by entering commands into the chat, and you will see on the broadcast screen how the character performs the selected action. Feel like a part of the collective mind!

Twitch Plays Play Styles

If there are a lot of people in the stream, the avatar's actions can be terribly chaotic, as commands will be entered at a tremendous speed, and it will be difficult to predict what the character will do.

Therefore, there are two modes for entering commands:

• Anarchy - in this mode, the avatar will sequentially execute each command entered by users. All players will have an equal influence on the actions and movement of the character. This mode makes the game very vulnerable to trolls who can open the menu at unnecessary moments, try to remove items from the inventory, or otherwise sabotage the passage. However, people do not play Twitch Plays for perfect storytelling, but for hanging out together, and bad moments are often the funniest part of the experience. In addition, the anarchy mode is necessary in episodes that require quick passage and reaction.
• Democracy - in this mode, teams will be assembled within a set period (usually a few seconds). The entered commands are counted, and the avatar will only execute the one entered by the most players. Democracy mode is great at keeping trolls out of the game, and works very well in episodes that require strategy and planning.

How did it all begin?

The first project in the Twitch Plays format was Twitch Plays Pokemon. In February 2014, an anonymous programmer in Australia posed a crazy question: What if a streamed single-player game was controlled by viewers using text commands? Will they be able to conquer a challenging game like Pokemon Red?

An experimental stream was launched on February 12. The first day and a half the chat was practically empty. However, after that, the stream quickly went viral, and on the 14th, when users were able to defeat the first leader of the stadium, there were already about 175 thousand spectators. On February 17, the channel had a million views. The Twitch Plays Pokemon community has made it into the Guinness Book of Records for the “Most Membership in a Single-player Online Video Game,” reaching 1,165,140 users. At its peak, 121,000 users entered commands simultaneously.

The project turned out to be interactive, chaotic and presented players with unique difficulties related to the peculiarities of the system's mechanics. He quickly found himself in the spotlight of the media and was noticed by the platform staff. As a company, Twitch researched an experiment to see how streaming could be made more interactive for viewers. It is thanks to this that various plugins have appeared on the platform.

The channel has formed a community with its own lore and memes. Broadcasts on it continue to this day, and the streamer plans to continue them as long as users have interest. The channel has already passed all the official Pokemon games and many unofficial "hacks". To mark the channel's sixth anniversary, the team hosted a Gauntlet event in which players replayed the first six official games played on Twitch Plays Pokemon.

Twitch plays other games

The success of the project has led to the emergence of a number of similar Twitch channels with other games. Twitch itself also began to promote streams with such interactivity, and later the category "Twitch Plays" was added to the site so that they could be easily found in searches. Platform users have already been offered to play games such as QWOP, The Witch's House, Tetris, Street Fighter 2, Halo: Combat Evolved, Dungeon Raiders, Dark Souls, Fallout 3, PUBG, TFT, Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and many , many others.

In addition to games, projects in a completely different direction are held in the Twitch Plays format. Twitch Does Pixel Art, where users draw by choosing the color and position of the pixel on the screen. There is a channel where they rewrite the complete collection of William Shakespeare's works by typing words into the chat. Twitch even installed Linux on a virtual machine using text commands, typing one letter at a time into the chat.

Inspired by the "Linux install game," another experimental project kicked off in 2017 allowing Twitch users to trade on the New York Stock Exchange. The initial capital of $ 50,000 was provided by the streamer. Every 5 minutes, users voted for the next trade. However, there were some restrictions on this stream to avoid problems with the law.