Odds are, if you've read any sort of technological related news over the past week or been on social media, you will at least have heard of Twitch Plays Pokémon, which has rapidly become an internet phenomena. If you're wondering what it is, I can give a quick run down. Basically, Twich Plays Pokémon is an online emulated version of the classic RPG Pokémon Red given multiplayer capabilities. The catch is that instead of multiplayer referring to each player controlling a separate character, all those involved are corporately controlling ONE character. the creator says that he made the game as a social experiment to see how large numbers of people can cooperate together.
As there are tens of thousands of people trying to play at any one moment, this obviously has resulted in massive lag and some truly derpy actions to have taken place. There is a mix of those who want to complete the game, those who simply play for fun, and trolls who enjoy messing up progress just for laughs. Memes are quickly sprouting up in relation to some of the more amusing events that have occurred.
What I find most interesting about it is the ability for players to vote between playing in "anarchy" and "democracy" modes, the difference being that anarchy ids a free for all where the game accepts all input while democracy only decides to do the most popular button chosen. There has been real debate over which is better, with democracy advocates preferring its effectiveness while anarchists believe that their favored mode is more in the spirit of the experiment regardless of it being less effective. It will interesting to how players continue to progress as game difficulty continues to ramp up while critical mistakes occasionally occur. This type of experiment hasn't really been before and I am fascinated to see how things will turn out.
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