

Thousands play one game of Pokemon simutaneously - crystalmace
http://www.twitch.tv/twitchplayspokemon/

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mistercow
It would be cool to see this done with a voting system, rather than the
current system which (because of how the actual game handles input) more or
less randomly selects a button to press. If, instead, it looked at the buttons
pressed in the last n seconds, and then picked the one with the most
occurrences, I think you'd get more of a hive-mind effect.

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hcarvalhoalves
So, right now it's anarchy. You're proposing democracy. How long until this
turns into a dictatorship ruled by the players who know what's the best way to
play? :)

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crystalmace
However long it takes until one of the payers get frustrated enough to just
play it by themself on a emulator on their own computer. :)

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deletes
Interesting results and fan art:
[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ka89uCBeLl9VV5GPlAKuW7yF...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ka89uCBeLl9VV5GPlAKuW7yF8FGtnVmdbPnIwG8FnQ4/preview)

And here come the imitators:

[http://www.twitch.tv/xkeeper_](http://www.twitch.tv/xkeeper_)

[http://www.twitch.tv/trakof](http://www.twitch.tv/trakof)

[http://www.twitch.tv/piapwns](http://www.twitch.tv/piapwns)

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Groxx
That fan-art / random section is hilarious, thanks!

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hcarvalhoalves
Well, it's been fun watching Ash fail to get past a door for the last 15
minutes (EDIT: it looks like it's been stuck there for 4 hours). There's some
people obviously trolling.

I guess this experiment shows collective control doesn't get too far,
objectively, without some sort of selection (e.g. punishment for bad moves).

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deletes
Punishment is lack of progress; the longer they are stuck more people will
want to progress, and those who oppose it will be a minority.

They almost made it over the "bridge" a couple of times, they were two steps
away from a safe location once.

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drewblaisdell
It looks like the player has been stuck on a part of the map that is easily
sidetracked by one or two "down" commands.

Here is a graph someone posted in the chat:
[http://i.imgur.com/6Iy7h7l.png](http://i.imgur.com/6Iy7h7l.png)

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therobot24
as suspected nothing is happening, thousands of people are all giving
conflicting commands so the character is just wandering aimlessly without
really going anywhere

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crystalmace
I'm quite astonished that they have managed to make it past three gyms
already. I suspect that the game will eventually be beaten, but only after a
while and after going through several ' cycles', so to speak.

I imagine that each cycle will consist of a mass of people becoming bored with
the lack of progress and leave. As more people leave, it becomes easier to
control the character, leading to progress being made. Howevere, once progress
is made and certain milestones are reached, the interest will again grow and
the players will increase again. Eventually, it will become too dfficult to
play and interest will wane again; allowing the cycle to repeat.

Thus, I think it will eventually be completed, but not for a while. I'll be
following it with interest however!

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deletes
Very nice experiment that really proved worthwhile to the developer. With some
luck and media coverage, they have enough viewers now that they have
introduced the _subscribe_ (read: $) option, not present before.

I would really like to see more games done in similar fashion.

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j2kun
I'm wondering about the legality, but also the latency. How long does it take
to register an action?

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eshyong
From the info below the video:

> The amount of lag is approximately 20~40 seconds depending on connection
> quality. After watching the stream for awhile the lag may increase a tiny
> amount (enough for chat spoilers), refreshing may help in this case.

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Nikkau
It's streaming lag, the input lag should be far higher.

I suspect a very simple setup :

\- An IRC bot listen for message including a key name and queue them somewhere
(Redis maybe?).

\- Another process just dequeue keys and apply them in emulator.

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chandrew
LOL, very funny.

