When I was 5 years old, I successfully beat my first video game all the way through. Pokemon Red Version, released in the summer of 1998, was the epicenter of a craze that would soon sweep the world. Simple, turn based game play, a variety of characters and strategies, and a fully customizable lineup allowed for even my youngster self to have a fully unique and immersive experience.

But what if 80,000 people at once were playing this game? Sharing the controller, fighting to have input in the one character’s movements and actions? Could the game be traversed then? Or would the game be so mind numbingly unintelligible that even though the game is being played, it’s so far removed from the essence of its true nature?

If you haven’t heard of the Internet sensation TwitchPlaysPokemon (TPP), you have been missing out on either something admirably spectacular or laughably disastrous. No matter what it is, it’s fresh, organic, and full of zeitgeist As we speak, a crowd larger than the capacity of Lucas Oil Field is watching the game’s protagonist, Pokemon Trainer and recipient of over 20 commands a second, Red, flail his way through the island of Kanto, surely confusing the island’s reserved residents, and most surprisingly of all, continuing to make progress despite insurmountable odds (as of this post, they have defeated 7 of the 8 gym leaders leading up to the game’s fina test). The craziest thing about this whole experience? 12 days ago, this wasn’t even a thing. Subreddits, user generated art, in jokes, hell, even it’s own language have sprung up seemingly over night. And jumping down the rabbit hole into this plethora of new content, you begin to realize this is more than just a bunch of people implausibly trying to defeat a nearly 20 year old game; this unique experience has generated it’s own microcosm of reality.

Lore is written by the hour based on the seemingly random inputs submitted by users. Bad experiences, such as accidentally releasing caught Pokemon, are seen as punishment for failing to worship the games idols – a ticket to a cruise ship, an elevator key, and most famously, a deity known as Helix Fossil – or by falling victim to false prophets – a Flareon and a Dome Fossil. Positive experiences, such as successfully using the all-powerful MasterBall on one of the most powerful Pokemon in the game instead of disposing of it, are seen as benevolent praise from the Helix Fossil. Religions have began forming, as diagrammed here and here. Political groups have been instituted between the majority that are anarchists, in favor of the game’s lucarative rapid input system, and the minority that are democrats, in favor of voting every 10 seconds what the next move should be, with a few stray souls who believe in balance between the two. The Pokemon themselves have their own titles and nicknames, as the players of TPP have generally thrown indiscernible nicknames for their pious army admidst the chaos of buttons. “AATTVVV”, “AIIIIIIIRRR”, “AA-j”, “AAAAAAAAAA”, “JLVWNNOOOO”, and “ABBBBBBK (” have been seen as Red’s attempts to name them “All-Terrain Venomoth”, “Air Jordan”, “Archangel of Justice”, “King Fonz”, “Jay Leno”, and “Abby”.

These absolutely disastrous and often laughably pathetic outcomes are a part of thee beauty of what makes TwitchPlaysPokemon so endearing. The collective conscious of TPP allows for progress to be made albeit with unexpected results. Twice they have been pitted against “The Ledge”, a path that is the width of the main character, bordered by a ledge that is jumpable on one side but not the other. This path is only 10 steps long, and would take under 10 seconds to complete if controlled by one person. But with everyone’s collective button-mashing, they have been jammed by The Ledge for over 4 hours at a time. Twice they made it to the end of a boss’s lair and accidentally used a Pokemon’s ability to leave before grabbing what they came for. In the Pokemon Mansion, which took over 18 hours, they once were right next to the Gym Key they needed to progress, but their final remaining Pokemon fainted due to poison just as they arrived, sending them back to the PokeCenter and the very beginning of the puzzle.

Perhaps the most tragic event that occurred during this playthrough was the untimely release of their starter Pokemon, Abby the Charmeleon, and Jay Leno the Rattata. Their releases were seen as sacrifice for retrieving the False Prophet Flareon. Many people believe they have gone about their lives trying to learn the undomesticated way of life again. I, for one do not believe this to be true. I think they are out in shadows, protecting Red as he vaguely goes in the general direction of progress from the False Prophet. The False Prophet, after he was released, made his way back to Mount Moon, grabbed the Dome Fossil, and spent time making his way back to Red’s path of destruction. Luckily, Abby and Jay Leno are there as the silent protectors, always keeping the true evil at bay. Below is a rendering of how I believe that would look.

This was done mostly using a combination of a starry night texture and a transparent black sheet and using the eraser tool to highlight spots on the ground, grass, air, and other Pokemon. The duplicate, flip, and spot heal tool were used to make the landscape bigger than before. Credit to the people below for all source images.

In full conclusion, I believe that there is something beautiful going on over at TwitchPlaysPokemon. It’s chaotic and overzealous, but at it’s core, it’s organic, pure, and blends together user participation with complete a story that we cannot predict. It blurs the line between completely user generated content and completely outwardly generated content, such as movies. It’s able to react to the demands of the consumers in relative real time, allows members to feel like a part of a true, characterized collective, and is ambiguous enough to completely throw a wrench in itself. This isn’t exactly a novel concept, as institutions like professional wrestling, on some level, have touched a similar base. In professional wrestling, there is an intimacy with the crowd in real time, the crowd gets to have some influence over the individuals they will watch, but in the end, the people who run the program from the back get to pull the trigger on who the main stars are rather than ourselves. In both scenarios, the outside sources and ambiguity of it all keep the users entertained, surprised, and endlessly theorizing.

How can this relate to landscape architecture? Well, that is quite difficult to determine. I think physically, there are forms or ideas that could begin to insinuate that people are a stroke on the canvas of their community. There have been community art galleries which provide the materials and format in which you can participate with. This allows for individual freedom, community bonding, and possibly planning with others on how to connect theirs together to tell a story, or tell a joke. Socially, it seems that TPP loves the ordered chaos that just happens in the environment. Even if something bad happens, it develops the character of the story. Many players would prefer something bad happen amidst the chaos than something good happen when delegated to democracy. This tells me that people only want to vote on things like laws that provide a framework for us to live in. Otherwise, they would rather see something chaotic and interesting and potentially disastrous (in terms of perhaps, an ugly facade and not a structural failure in a building) rather than boring and average in the world around us. Simplicity has a character that is inherent and undefinable that tells a story the way rigid forms of order does not.

Perhaps, like over at TwitchPlaysPokemon, we need to sit back and let the beautifully messy story play out.

Sources:

http://fc07.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2013/097/7/4/018___pidgeot_by_tails19950-d60r8aw.png

http://cdn.bulbagarden.net/upload/thumb/a/ab/131Lapras.png/250px-131Lapras.png

http://pldh.net/media/pokemon/ken_sugimori/update1/138.png

http://cdn.bulbagarden.net/upload/4/4a/Dream_Dome_Fossil_Sprite.png

http://static2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20130825230055/sonicfanchara/images/1/17/Flareon.png

http://puu.sh/3w4iC.png

http://images.kaneva.com/filestore9/4523625/6569743/starryUnightUtexture.jpg

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-L-1LOTT54S4/UMAjpByIlPI/AAAAAAAAAJQ/5HFz5rU-mq4/s1600/Zapdos__lord_of_thunderstorms_by_raykins.png

http://tibia.comunidada-virtual.com/pokemon/charmeleon_by_izzyreddragon-d5lq58r.png

http://pokemon3d.net/wiki/images/c/c4/Rattata.png

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Cbd2EBodEb4/TJwcgQaUvzI/AAAAAAAAAPw/jFbnQh_-Kgc/s1600/Konza+Praire+17.JPG

http://fc02.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2011/363/9/d/red___pokemon_by_red_asakura-d4koihr.jpg