Twitch Plays Pokemon, the social experiment where millions of viewers flocked to assist one trainer in his bid to be the very best is now over. A whopping number of commands in excess of 122 million were sent to the stream which has spawned a legion of memes since its debut.
The statistics have been released on the official Twitch blog and there are a whole slew of unbelievable results to be found below:
- Total time: 16 days, 7 hours, 45 minutes and 30 seconds
- Peak players: 121,000
- Commands issued: More than 122 million
- Onlookers: More than 9 million
- Total views: More than 36 million
- Total minutes watched: More than 1 billion
It’s worth noting that the total views are not all unique but are nevertheless still impressive.
The protagonist was controlled through an IRC bot developed by an Australian programmer and written in Python. It was described by the programmer as “an experiment to test the viability of this format, the way people interact with the input system and the way they interact socially with each other.”
The adventure began on February 12th when the live stream of the 1996 classic, Pokemon Red began. At times the stream was downright frustrating as a myriad of commands were sent, causing the trainer to turn repeatedly or backtrack on itself once moving, which while hilarious at first soon became tiring. The journey came to a close when a level 81 Zapdos named “AA-j” by the masses defeated a level 65 Blastoise.
Twitch Plays Pokemon has taught us many things and we look forward to seeing what the series holds in the future. A 24-hour countdown clock has replaced the game’s stream, with players expecting the bot to launch them into another captivating adventure once the time passes. What would you like to see follow the Pokemon Red stream?