from the infinite-Primapes-with-infinite-gamepads dept.
laserfusion writes:
"CNET is reporting on a massively-mono-player gaming experiment. From the article :
In what can only be described as the best thing to happen to Valentine's Day, about 12,000 people are participating in a collective game of Pokemon Red on the live game-streaming service Twitch, all by simply typing in directions in the comment box in a messy frenzy. Not every single one of the viewers is mashing in commands of course, but because anyone with a Twitch account can comment on a public stream, any viewer is a potential player in this wacky experiment.
Currently there are 80,000 players. Despite all the noise and trolls, they were able to make progress in the game and multiple goals have been achieved. Now there is a new control mode "democracy" in which the most popular commands in every 10 seconds are executed. "Democracy" and "anarchy" modes can be switched by a 75% vote."
(Score: 5, Funny) by youngatheart on Tuesday February 18 2014, @11:26PM
There seemed to be an awful lot of potential information in this summary that didn't translate to me actually understanding what's going on.
I did grasp that there is a game where huge numbers of people are responsible for controlling a single character and I found that very interesting. Can we call it Congress yet or is it too early and successful?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by KibiByte on Tuesday February 18 2014, @11:46PM
"There seemed to be an awful lot of potential information in this summary that didn't translate to me actually understanding what's going on."
In short, it's anarchy controlled by a half-assed democracy at first, then it can go from either controlled democracy or absolute anarchy with regards to rules at any vote's notice.
AKA enjoy your time there but don't be stupid as you're likely to be on the wrong end of the bullshit.
Sounds like the scam that is EVE.
The One True Unit UID
(Score: 1) by tniemi on Wednesday February 19 2014, @01:15AM
I think scams are a required part of EVE.
(Score: 3, Funny) by KibiByte on Wednesday February 19 2014, @01:31AM
That is why I'm against EVE and all advertising of such.
If you get someone into EVE, you probably want to rob them.
The One True Unit UID
(Score: 2, Insightful) by crutchy on Wednesday February 19 2014, @09:07AM
never heard of anyone being able to control mob rule... take a minority position in a democracy and you get beaten to a bloody pulp
(Score: 1) by KibiByte on Wednesday February 26 2014, @11:32PM
Speaking as a gay man, I would disagree with your position given the current changeover and Federal rulings of late.
The One True Unit UID
(Score: 1) by KibiByte on Wednesday February 26 2014, @11:38PM
Oh, and let's add medical marijuana user.
The One True Unit UID
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 19 2014, @12:01AM
Couldn't agree more!
(Score: 2, Funny) by pgc on Tuesday February 18 2014, @11:27PM
on valentine's day, I guess :P
(Score: 5, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 18 2014, @11:30PM
(Score: 1) by CHALLNGEACCPTD on Wednesday February 19 2014, @11:08PM
Only Bird Jesus can save you.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 18 2014, @11:30PM
Derp beta
(Score: 5, Informative) by gallondr00nk on Tuesday February 18 2014, @11:37PM
I've been watching this on and off since yesterday and it's absolutely brilliant. Amazingly, they've managed to get about half way through the game, collecting four badges, though in the last 24 hours I've noticed they've made little progress.
One problem seems to be the stream on Twitch.tv progressively falls behind the longer you watch the stream, which means that IRC comments are sometimes in reponse to action that happened a minute or more ago. In democracy mode, you see players voting for the same actions three or four times when it's obvious they're all watching different action on the stream.
(Score: 5, Informative) by DarkMorph on Wednesday February 19 2014, @04:03AM
I'm not so sure how much drift occurs if you continuously watch a stream without any buffering occurrences for a few hours, but even when you first load the feed you will be roughly half a minute behind immediately.
Reference: Blog post by Twitch introducing the aforementioned change [twitch.tv]
(Score: 1) by gallondr00nk on Wednesday February 19 2014, @09:45AM
I can confirm Twitch definately drifts further behind the longer you watch it. I used to be quite into watching Speedrun streams on it, and it was pretty well understood that watching for a couple of hours would add a couple of minutes to the delay.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 18 2014, @11:59PM
Slashdot got this like a day ago. I found it myself when it was 10k playing. Soiled old news.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 19 2014, @01:00AM
Soylentils, please. I would ask that we not immediately mod down people comparing us to another site, especially if we weren't particularly timely. This kind of feedback is valuable to the editors and admins. If the news isn't timely, should we post it, or not? I will note that SoylentNews has beaten another site to the punch on at least two occasions. But regardless, let us work out the kinks.
Yes, I'm on the "staff" of the site, for what it is worth. I finally got mod points so I'm posting AC, but as soon as I log in I will mod the parent UP.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by SpallsHurgenson on Wednesday February 19 2014, @04:04AM
I've never been bothered all that much by the fact that Slashdot posted some news a few days - or even weeks - after it has been reported elsewhere. I've not the time anymore to scour the web for all the things that interest me, and more often than not the first time I heard about the "old news" was on Slashdot anyway. Plus, the comments - you know, the main reason we all purported to read Slashdot - were still pretty good (at least once you got past the "site XXXX reported this 3 weeks ago!" flood). Heck, the fact that some articles were posted a week or two later often worked to Slashdot's advantage, because people could comment on the stories having given it more thought and having read more opinions on the issue, rather than being forced to make an spur-of-the-moment comment.
So, barring exceptional cases like year-old stories, I don't think there should be an particular editorial policy against old articles, especially if you intend to use a Firehouse-like system that lets users vote on stories anyway.
At least, that's my two cents on the issue.
(Score: 1) by quadrox on Wednesday February 19 2014, @05:39AM
Of course it is preferable to have news posted quickly, but in the end I would rather get it late than never. This was my feeling on Slashdot as well.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ancientt on Wednesday February 19 2014, @01:08AM
We've got trolls. I know I should be offended, maybe even bothered. One of the slashcott replacement sites was talking about ensuring the editors could remove troll comments like this and I can see the point with stuff like this, but it has a -1 Troll rating. I can't help but see this as a sort of triumph.
I once had a New Year's resolution to make more friends and make more enemies because you're judged by both. Nothing says success like having the hatred of the willfully ignorant aimed at you.
Congratulations soylent news, you're growing up fast!
This post brought to you by Database Barbie
(Score: 1) by buswolley on Wednesday February 19 2014, @01:15AM
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
but now
subicular junctures
(Score: 1) by linsane on Wednesday February 19 2014, @01:23AM
The other place got this a day ago? Well a cursory glance at TFS does note that this was from Valentine's Day, (14 Feb??) not exactly too quick off the block from either.
Reddit has been going a little bit crazy from what I can tell for the last few days http://www.reddit.com/r/twitchplayspokemon/search? q=twitch&sort=relevance&restrict_sr=on&t=all [reddit.com] and there is all sorts of oddness being talked about fossils and things. A very odd phenomenon indeed
(Score: 4, Insightful) by LaminatorX on Wednesday February 19 2014, @02:52AM
It's challenging enough to keep up with our own postings, let alone worry about being scooped by the old place (or Ars, or The Register, or...). I plucked this from the submission pool, knowing full well it was talking about something from a few days ago, because I thought it would be interesting to think about and discuss amongst our community. I don't think being breaking news is what makes this article worth discussing.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by mindriot on Wednesday February 19 2014, @02:40PM
soylent_uid=$(echo $slash_uid|cut -c1,3,5)
(Score: 5, Insightful) by combatserver on Wednesday February 19 2014, @01:03AM
It's a lesson, at the very least, in how a community can interact--I'm sure there are lessons to be learned for everyone involved, especially in terms of governance. Keep in mind that many--if not most--of the people playing this democratic version of Pokemon Red are young, impressionable types.
My daughter has been a Pokemon fan since she was a toddler, so I decided to get her take on this (She observed the game, but didn't participate). Here is her take on it.
"It's looks like one person playing it, but with their eyes closed."
If you take that in the context of governance, I'm not sure I like the outcome--It doesn't matter how many Captains you have on the ship if nobody is paying attention to the horizon.
I hope I can change this later...
(Score: 2, Insightful) by edIII on Wednesday February 19 2014, @02:55AM
That's not entirely true. They're paying attention to the horizon, but all together are slightly paralyzed about what action to take, not if they take an action. Those actions are predominately intended to be positive, trolls aside.
Now you already have something better than Congress. Congress deliberately ignores the horizon due to monied interests.
I would rather have 250 million people screaming to control part of a big wheel with semi-random consequences, than a couple hundred people controlling it with no regard for the consequences for 99% of the people.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by combatserver on Wednesday February 19 2014, @03:30AM
"I would rather have 250 million people screaming to control part of a big wheel with semi-random consequences, than a couple hundred people controlling it with no regard for the consequences for 99% of the people."
That smacks of Anarchy to me--no, thanks. I'd prefer something squarely in the middle.
I hope I can change this later...
(Score: 1) by edIII on Wednesday February 19 2014, @05:07AM
Think of it this way.
Would you rather live in a country where vampires roam around treating like you cattle, you have no defense, and life is really just a crapshoot to see if you can make it til death, and you live in constant fear of if they are going to take you next?
or
Would you rather live in a country where at any one time everybody is acting towards their own benefit, which can often benefit others as well, towards a common goal, but still has a very random chance for bizzare events that can could bring great harm towards you, negligence, and overall inefficiency but in non-premeditated way?
I'm not arguing that it isn't a form of anarchy, only that it would ultimately bring them less harm than what Congress has done in the last 15 years.
I'm saying Congress is worse for us than random chance.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 19 2014, @04:47PM
I'm pretty sure Congress is worse for us than roving bands of bloodthirsty vampires. At least the vampires need to drink our blood to survive...
(Score: 3, Funny) by Zoot on Wednesday February 19 2014, @01:08AM
Flappy Bird MMOG:
http://flapmmo.com/FlappyMMO [flapmmo.com]
G.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 19 2014, @01:33AM
I hate you
(Score: 1) by threering on Wednesday February 19 2014, @03:17AM
I saw a post about this earlier today. I watched it for about thirty seconds. I thought it looked a lot like my four year old trying to play. I seriously don't get the fascination with it.
(Score: 3, Informative) by thegothicguardian on Wednesday February 19 2014, @03:53AM
All of the Pokemon commands are also controlling a version of Tetris [kotaku.com].
(Score: 2, Interesting) by lothmordor on Wednesday February 19 2014, @07:20AM
Seems like this is an attempt to use crowd sourcing to play a game, but I'm not really sure what the developer's goals are. I've seen videos where a game reviewer will play (somewhat) based on feedback from an IRC audience, which actually works well for solving puzzles. In that case, the reviewer had the freedom to ignore the input if it was nonsense or conflicted with his current goal. Effectively, he was acting like a filter to the input stream.
In the case of this pokemon game, the only filter seems to be "majority rule", at least in the democracy mode. The fact that very much progress has been made at all is impressive, although whether this is due to intelligent collaboration or the 80K inputs acting like a fuzzer seems uncertain.
(Score: 1) by el_isma on Wednesday February 19 2014, @12:25PM
I hear voices in my head! 80000 of them!