Twitch Plays Pokemon was a surprising success. It occurred when one user wrote a script that took Twitch’s built in chat function and turned it into a controller that was effectively used by thousands of gamers at one time. Typing up, for instance, would move the character up. It was chaotic and it took a while to beat the game but, by sheer force of will, the game was beaten. The experiment spawned imitators.
Now it seems that Twitch is officially recognizing the legitimacy of this style of play with a new channel. The hope is that the new Twitch Plays section will increase the likelihood that these games get discovered.
What is particularly interesting about the Twitch Plays phenomenon is that it doesn’t seem to be relegated to any one genre of game. It’s easy to see how it would eventually work with a simple game like Pokemon but the viewers at Twitch have also successfully completed the notoriously difficult action RPG, Dark Souls. I have to wonder how developers will further innovate on the chaotic idea.