Go on, I'll wait. Set it up to play.
Is it playing? Good.
PRAISE HELIX!
Ok, let me explain. I'll start at the beginning in case this makes absolutely no sense to you. On the popular streaming site www.twitch.tv there has been a social experiment running (for the better part of the past two weeks) called Twitch Plays Pokemon. Basically someone made an IRC script that takes commands typed into the twitch.tv chat and translates them into commands for an emulator running the original game boy Pokemon Red. Allowing anyone watching the stream to input commands and thus control the action on screen.
This sounds kinda cool from a technical standpoint, and it is. But there's one problem.
Twitch Plays Pokemon now has 50,000+ people watching at any given time.
Fifty. Thousand. People.
Each of them has precicely the same amount of control over the game as each of the others.
There are over 500 commands scrolling by every minute. The player character is bouncing around like an epileptic mongoose on speed. This sounds like a recipe for anarchy. And it is. In more ways than one, but something staggering has happened.
As of this writing, Twitch Plays Pokemon has collected seven of the eight gym badges, navigated several puzzle dungeons, defeated team rocket, and caught Zapdos in the power plant. Is is an absolutely staggering amount of progress for what should be essentially a random input generator.
As amazing as the progress through the game is, something else has grown up around his stream. The fandom has gone absolutely batshit insane over this. There is even a religion forming around some of the more memorable moments from the adventure.
At a certain point in the game, the player is given a choice between two fossils, the Helix fossil or the Dome fossil. Twitch Plays Pokemon (hereafter called TPP) chose the helix fossil. In the game you can use items in battle, and a lot of the random commands entered have made the player try to use the helix fossil, giving the same error message over and over again. Thus a cry of 'Consult the helix' became popular.
As is the way with fandom, this idea grew in an organic manner. Eventually the followers of the Helix had an enemy (in the form of a false prophet flareon and the dome fossil), a tragedy ('bloody Sunday' where several of the captured Pokemon were released by people trolling the chat), a messiah (a pigeot they call 'Bird Jesus' who has been with the party since the very early game), a resurrection (the helix fossil was revived into omanyte, now seen as a god, during the quest for the 7th badge), and even disciples in the form of the other Pokemon in the party.
As of this writing, the party consists of Omanyte - the revivd helix fossil, Bird Jesus - the messiah, Air Jordan the Fresh Prince - a Lapras, All Terrain Attack Venomoth - the ATV, AJ the Archangel of Justice - Zapdos, and The Moon King - a fully evolved Nidoking. Notable Pokemon released have been the starter (a charmander named Abby) and DigRat (a rattatta who knew dig). There have been more, but I don't know them all off e top of my hand.
What makes this so beautiful is the organic growth of the fandom. There has been fan art galore, stories, a freaking religion, and now the music you hopefully are listening to right now. It's beautiful. There is nothing with as much power to bring people together as fandom. And that is a wonderful thing. It makes me glad, and gives me hope for humanity that such beauty can come from a group of random strangers working in concert against adversity. Hope. Isn't that what religion is all about?
No, I am not losing my religion. But I am proud to be a gamer, and I feel privileged and honored to witness the rise of The Blessed Helix Fossil. The fact that people can come together to create such beauty over something as silly as this gives me real hope for the future of humanity. Somehow, The Blessed Helix has shown me the light of truth.
So I'll say it loud. And I'll say it proud!
PRAISE HELIX!
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