Twitch Plays Pokémon: Remix as a Fictional and Playful Matrix

Twitch Plays Pokémon: Remix as a Fictional and Playful Matrix

Fanny Barnabé – Marie-Curie COFUND postdoctoral fellow, co-funded by the European Union Liège Game Lab – University of Liège – Belgium – fanny.barnabe@ulg.ac.be

1. Twitch Plays Pokémon: The Phenomenon

In 2014, Twitch Plays Pokémon (TPP) gathered: - _{121,000 simultaneous viewers at the most}

1. Twitch Plays Pokémon: The Phenomenon

Sharing the

control

of a

single avatar…

…between tens of thousands of

players

1.

Twitch

Plays Pokémon: The Phenomenon

Turning insignificant passages

into impassable obstacles

The case of

“The Ledge”

• Players finished the game after 16d7h45m30s of consecutive play

• The phenomenon led to the production of many media

1. Twitch Plays Pokémon: The Phenomenon

Narrativization

of a

game-related coincidence

=> The production of a narrative allowed players

to

make sense

of a chaotic playing experience

and of a complex community phenomenon

2. Deconstruction and Codification: Some Figures of Remix

deconstruction

of the original game’s codes

V

S

codification

of new conventions

• = Process of “lexicalization”: how a figure

enters the gaming vocabulary

2.1. Deconstruction of the Interface

The chat < a game

control mechanism

(Pruijt, 2014: 3)

2.1.1. Hyperflat World

Þ // “Hyperflat World” (Azuma, 2009: 102):

A single plane features at the same time the fictional

content of Pokémon Red, the playful experience and the community dialogues

2.1. Deconstruction of the Interface

TPP = a communication mode marked by saturation, a “silent din”, a “textual cacophony” (Derine, 2016: 64)

2.1.2. Cacophony

Using references and memes =

the only way to

create enough redundancy to

share meaning in the middle of this

2.2. Deconstruction of Gameplay

Ex.: “The Ledge”

2.2. Deconstruction of Gameplay

“Games such as QWOP (Foddy.net), Surgeon Simulator (Bossa Studios, 2013), and Octodad (Young Horses, 2014) use difficult controls to create new, and often comedic, gaming experiences.

[…] [I]n stumblecore […] part of the fun is overcoming the terrible controls to accomplish otherwise mundane tasks”

(Ramirez, Saucerman and Dietmeier, 2014: 9)

2.2. Deconstruction of Gameplay

« At times what was happening in the game itself was just outright boring. Being stuck at a very simple ledge in the game for more than ten hours might be an interesting challenge, but is also very tedious to watch »

(Pruijt, 2014: 3)

2.3. Deconstruction through Narrativization

Narrativization

proceeds:

- by extracting a moment of play from its gaming context

- by concealing the gameplay rules in favor of another logic

= Adding a

motivation

where there was only a playful or technical

coincidence

2.3. Deconstruction through Narrativization

Þ Narrative interpretations deconstruct the coherence of the original universe + the boundaries of the game device

Þ Narrativization also has codifying functions in the communication:

“According to Nitsche, narrative ‘...can create a supportive context for the necessary interpretation and

prevent a chaotic and meaningless explosion of possibilities’ (p.43)” (Ramirez, Saucerman and Dietmeier,

3. Conclusion

TPP

breaks

Pokémon Red’s original structure

The remix codifies a new

frame

of conventions, a new

gameplay and a renewed fictional universe

• _{Azuma Hiroki (2009), Otaku: Japan’s database animals, Minneapolis, University of} Minnesota Press

• _{Chase (2014), « TPP Victory! The Thundershock Heard Around the World », on Twitch Blog.}

URL :

https://blog.twitch.tv/tpp-victory-the-thundershock-heard-around-the-world-3128a5b1cdf 5

• _{Derine Julien (2016), TWITCH TV: Analyse socio-technique de la plateforme de streaming et}

de son impact sur le monde vidéoludique, Master’s thesis in Information and Communication, University of Liège

• Pruijt Daan (2014), “The game about the game: Metagaming in Twitchplayspokémon”,

Master’s thesis in Sciences, University of Amsterdam. URL : http:// dare.uva.nl/cgi/arno/show.cgi?fid=550381

• _{Ramirez Dennis, Saucerman Jenny and Dietmeier Jeremy (2014), “Twitch Plays Pokemon: A}

Case Study in Big G Games”, in Proceedings of DiGRA 2014: <Verb that ends in ‘ing’> the <noun> of Game <plural noun>, Snowbird. URL:

http://library.med.utah.edu/e-channel/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/digra2014_submissi on_127.pdf

Works Cited