A Walks Into Walls

Thousands of people were controlling a single Pokémon game through Twitch chat, voting on every button press, and watching a character named A slowly shuffle through Pokémon Emerald. By hour five they’d barely left the starting town, which is the whole point. Chat is split between left, down, and random noise, so the character wanders in circles, gets turned around in doorways, sometimes by accident gets closer to where they need to go.

They’d done this before with Pokémon Red and Crystal, and people showed up to do it again. There’s something weirdly compelling about it—the stupidest possible way to play a video game, designed so failure is guaranteed and beautiful. You’re voting for up while five hundred other people vote for down, and the net result is that A just stands there hitting a wall for thirty seconds. Then finally the character turns and walks straight into a tree.

What actually works about it is how honest it feels. No one pretends it’s anything other than what it is: thousands of people with competing interests, just watching chaos unfold together. The Pokédex grows one ridiculous catch at a time. Pokémon get released. Chat goes insane. Someone probably releases your favorite. That’s the game, that’s the community, that’s why you keep voting.

There’s a real human thing happening there that has nothing to do with Pokémon. It’s the appeal of being part of a collective that’s large enough to feel significant but too disorganized to actually accomplish anything. The game progresses anyway, stupidly and slowly, and you know thousands of other people saw that exact stupid moment you just watched.