ButtonMasher is our column about video games and gaming culture 鈥� from the offbeat fringes to the cutting-edge innovations behind the latest blockbusters
Left, left, left! I鈥檓 trying to play a game by typing commands over and over, but my character just won鈥檛 obey. That鈥檚 because, at the moment, there are 67,000 other players all trying to control the same character at the same time. We are part of , in which tens of thousands of people attempt to play a single version of a classic video game. It started as a quirky experiment, but may have revealed a novel way to play.
The popularity of video-streaming site Twitch has exploded in the past few years as a way for people to broadcast their game-playing experiences. The software is built into the recently released PlayStation 4 and will soon be added to the Xbox One.
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Viewers are normally passive, restricted to a chatroom beside the video, but one Twitch user decided to set up a stream taking commands from the chat. Observers can enter words like left, right and so on that are then fed into to a copy of 笔辞办茅尘辞苍 Red, a single-player game in which the player captures creatures and uses them to fight battles.
It isn鈥檛 a totally new idea 鈥� in 1991 Loren Carpenter, who went on to co-found Pixar, had an entire auditorium 鈥� but it has never been seen on this scale. In the past week, as many as 80,000 players at a time have worked together to make their way through the game. Progress is very slow 鈥� I鈥檝e been playing for half an hour and we鈥檙e still stuck in the same battle 鈥� and hindered by some people deliberately inputting unhelpful commands. Even so, players are now roughly half-way through the game and have even created their own mythology based on the .
Anarchy vs democracy
笔辞办茅尘辞苍 doesn鈥檛 require quick reactions, making it particularly suited to this style of play. As the stream鈥檚 popularity increased, its creator modified the rules to let players choose between two modes of control.
The original mode, dubbed anarchy, feeds all commands to the game, but democracy mode chooses the most popular command over a given period. Players can vote to switch between the two modes 鈥� democracy makes it easier to pass tricky sections, but also makes it slower to control.
Could the popularity of the stream open up a new genre of collaborative games? Copycats using other games have already sprung up on Twitch, but none has seen the success of Twitch Plays 笔辞办茅尘辞苍. 鈥淵ou can put practically any game in and it鈥檒l be controllable from chat, but there鈥檚 a good possibility you鈥檇 end up with something that doesn鈥檛 provide a good experience,鈥� says the stream鈥檚 creator, an Australian programmer who prefers to stay anonymous.
of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, who studies how crowds can perform complex, real-time tasks such as captioning video, might have a solution. Last year, Bigham and his colleagues studied different ways for multiple people to control a single game.
Game-within-a-game
After experimenting with anarchy and democracy modes, they created a third mode in which each player鈥檚 input is compared to everyone else鈥檚. The player whose commands on average best match the rest is elected leader and given sole control over the game but, crucially, they have no idea they are in charge. 鈥淭hat elected leader can act out the crowd鈥檚 will in a very consistent and real-time way,鈥� says Bigham 鈥� and if the mood of the crowd changes, a different leader will be elected.
Bigham suggests this scheme could be adapted to create a game-within-a-game, where people watching an expert player鈥檚 stream could join in. 鈥淲e wanted to allow experts and novices to play together and potentially learn from each other,鈥� he says. For example, observers could attempt to play the game like the expert would and be scored on how well they match.
, a game in which players control an octopus pretending to be a human, takes a different approach. Four players control a limb each 鈥� to hilarious effect, says Phil Tibitoski of game developing team Young Horses. 鈥淐ooperation may be the goal when controlling the game all together, but goals aren鈥檛 always important or even necessary in the act of play.鈥�
Inspired by the success of Twitch Plays 笔辞办茅尘辞苍, Young Horses is now considering its own crowdsourced game in which the audience acts as a 鈥淒ungeon Master鈥�, deciding what players will experience. Another developer, Sean Hogan, is letting Twitch users collaborate to , Even the Ocean, by adding or removing blocks through chat commands. 鈥淭he larger streaming and YouTubers become, the more room there is for this to grow,鈥� says Tibitoski. 鈥淚 don鈥檛 think it鈥檚 going anywhere soon.鈥�
