Community-based Play in Twitch Plays Pokémon

On February 12th, 2014, an Australian programmer and fan of the Pokémon series began a live stream of a program he was running on his computer. The program was a Game Boy Advance emulator entitled Visual Boy Advance, running a hacked copy of Pokémon Red, the first JRPG in the now-famous Pokémon series. The start screen displayed the classic black-and-white image of trainer Red and starting Pokémon Charmander. Alongside the emulated screen, there was a list of usernames. Next to the usernames were either “b”, “a”, or the directional buttons found on a Game Boy Advance, buttons that the emulator thought
were being pressed, which caused actions to be taken by the player in Pokémon Red (see figure 1). These actions were witnessed by hundreds of thousands of people with frustration, laughter, and sometimes even triumph.