---
title: "Twitch Plays Pokémon"
canonical: "https://openvibe.meme/m/twitch-plays-pokemon"
updated: null
---

# Twitch Plays Pokémon

HTML: [Twitch Plays Pokémon](https://openvibe.meme/m/twitch-plays-pokemon)

Internet meme · Classic

# Twitch Plays Pokémon

Twitch Plays Pokémon is a crowdsourced, live-streamed experiment where chat commands control the gameplay of Pokémon Red, creating a chaotic shared experience.

- First seen: 2014-01-01
- Last seen: 2026-10-31
- Uses cited: 3
- Revision: 2

## Where it started

Twitch Plays Pokémon (TPP) is a social experiment and channel on the video game live streaming website Twitch, consisting of a crowdsourced attempt to play Game Freak's and Nintendo's Pokémon video games by parsing commands sent by users through the channel's chat room. It holds the Guinness World Record for having "the most users to input a command to play a live streamed videogame" with 1,165,140 participants. The concept was developed by an anonymous Australian programmer and launched on 12 February 2014, starting with the game Pokémon Red. The stream became unexpectedly popular, reaching an average concurrent viewership of over 80,000 viewers (with at least 10% participating). On 1 March 2014, the game was completed after more than 16 continuous days of gameplay; Twitch estimated that over 1.16 million people participated, with peak simultaneous participation at 121,000, and with a total of 55 million views during the experiment. On 5 December 2014, Twitch Plays Pokémon received a Game Award in the "Best Fan Creation" category. The experiment was met with attention by media outlets and staff members of Twitch for its interactivity, its erratic and chaotic nature, the unique challenges faced by players due to the mechanics of its system, and the community and memes developed by participants. Twitch as a company used the experiment to explore how they could make streaming more interactive for viewers and expand their offerings. Following the completion of Red, the broadcaster continued the channel with many other games in the Pokémon series along with unofficial ROM hacks. The broadcaster has plans to continue with other Pokémon games as long as there remains interest in the channel. The success of the experiment led to a number of similar Twitch-based streams for other games, and led Twitch to promote more streams with similar interactivity with watchers.

## The use timeline

1. 2014-01-01

    

   An "experiment" and channel created by an anonymous user on Twitch in February 2014. Logged-in viewers to the channel can enter commands in chat corresponding to the physical inputs used in the JRPG video game Pokémon Red. These are collected and parsed by a chat software robot that uses the commands to control the main character in the game, which is then live-streamed from the channel. The stream attracted more than 80,000 simultaneous players with over 10 million views with a week of going live, creating a chaotic series of movements and actions within the game, a number of original memes, and derivative fan art. The combination has been called an entertainment hybrid of "a video game, live video and a participatory experience," which has inspired similar versions for other games.
2. 2014-01-01

    

   Wikidata Q15735802: Twitch Plays Pokémon — crowdsourced game of Pokémon in early 2014.

## Examples

No example is attached yet.

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