What is so fun about getting nothing done in a game? For me, not much
Twitch Plays Pokemon was the phenomenon where the 1998 GameBoy game Pokemon Red was emulated on a computer and streamed to the masses. But the real appeal was that for viewers who tuned in, they could actually enter the game's commands – up, down, left, right, A, B, start – in the Twitch channel chat, and whatever command was translated into in-game results.
However, with 70,000 people playing at the same time, the commands were oftentimes contradictory and nothing productive happened. I actually was on twitch at the time of the event, and participated for a while. However, given that it took so long to get any progress in the game, I quickly became bored and quit playing. I checked back in on occasion, and was absolutely shocked by how slowly they were progressing. There seemed to be no appeal, and I was left with the conclusion that the more people were playing, the less was able to be completed, and the less fun the game was.
However, the real entertainment occurs not through the actual gameplay, but what the community as a whole is able to produce. Namely, the twitch community was able to turn ordinary and mundane things into objects of adoration and excitement. For example, when Twitch together was able to finally capture a pidgey, this event which is so incredibly commonplace became a subject of worship. He came to be known as "Bird Jesus" because of his perceived leadership and strength in the face of adversity. That and the fact that he was pretty much the only Pokemon capable of doing anything useful. I found it incredibly fascinating how the community created such a positive icon.
But the community also felt that it was important to create a villain, and they did so with Flareon. In the game, it is important to teach a Pokemon a certain move called surf, which would enable players to progress further. However, when the wrong pokemon was evolved, Flareon, this was unable to be done. Flareon became the "false prophet" the antichrist to Bird Jesus.
Essentially, these are hilarious outcomes that are only possible with the inclusion of the community. Trends such as these are only two examples of the immense number of similar creations by Twitch. It is especially important to note that Pokemon is largely meant to be a single player game, yet by enabling a multi player aspect, the game can develop in unpredictable and preposterous ways.
The question therefore is then what would happen if this were applied to other games? Pokemon was easily a great place to start because of its popularity, and rather simple gameplay. And the game still took an incredible amount of time to complete. Other games would simply not become completed, and I really am curious whether Twitch is strong enough to build entertainment from even situations such as those. My inherent response would be no, there are limits, but Twitch Plays Pokemon proved that the medium of Twitch was (and still is) ripe for innovation, and that there are new and excited ways to create interactive content that has never been done before.