The game about the game:
Metagaming in Twitchplayspokémon
Author: Daan PruijtStudent Number: 5630533 Supervisor: dr. Frank Nack Second Reader: dr. Sander Bakkes
Final Version: 20-08-2014
The game about the game:
Metagaming in Twitchplayspokémon
Daan Pruijt
University of Amsterdam
Hoofdweg 105a
1058 BA Amsterdam
+31646170253
daan.pruijt@student.uva.nl
ABSTRACT
In this thesis I explore the Twitchplayspokémon phenomenon and how players experience playing a game that was designed to be played by a single person with thousands of players simultaneously.
I suggest that the metagame that was created around Twitchplayspokémon was of great importance to the success of the phenomenon. Enjoyment of games on a metagame level is introduced as an addition to the aesthetic model presented by Hunicke et al.(2004).
1.
INTRODUCTION
Games can be enjoyed in many different ways. In February 2014 another way was introduced when an anonymous Australian programmer re-programmed a Pokémon game, originally intended to be played by one person, in a way that it could be played by many people simultaneously (www.pokemon.com). The game was introduced to the audience through the streaming platform Twitch.TV (www.twitch.tv). This marked a change in the use of the platform, allowing people to influence the broadcast content instead of merely watching it. At the height of the hype at the end of February over 121,000 thousand people were watching and playing at the same time.
Adding thousands of players to a single player game changes the way the game is experienced. For Twitchplayspokémon this meant that a community formed around the phenomenon that created stories, art and political and religious debates around the game its members enjoyed and played together. Twitchplayspokémon is not the first nor will it be the last game to have a community built around it. But in this case it was the community that tried to make sense out of the madness that is 121,000 people playing a singleplayer game. In doing so the community helped make something succeed that may come off as boring and senseless to an unknowing onlooker. The community-generated content shaped the experience of playing Twitchplayspokémon greatly. This community activity happened on a meta level. In this thesis I suggest that it was the metagame that greatly impacted how Twitchplayspokémon was experienced by players. I aim to answer the question: How does transforming a singleplayer game into a multiplayer game affect the player experience and what role did metagaming play herein?
First a number of concepts will be introduced more thoroughly. Then follows a section on relevant literature. After that the research is introduced and the results are given. Then these results are discussed and conclusions and recommendations are made.
2.
DEFINITIONS
This section aims to clarify the basic concepts and context of the Twitchplayspokémon phenomenon.
2.1
Twitch.tv
Twitch.tv is the premier live streaming platform for videogames and videogame related activities. Since its inception in 2011 it has gone through an immense growth. In 2013 it attracted around 45,000,000 unique viewers monthly, more than doubling the 20,000,000 a month from 2012. These numbers put it among the top cable networks servicing its core audience: males between 18-49 (Twitch annual report, 2013).
Twitch.tv allows everyone and anyone to set up a livestream of him or her playing videogames and to broadcast it over the internet. This allows viewers the world over to view the best and or the most entertaining gamers playing their game of choice. Viewers can now choose from around 1 million gamers to watch. (www.twitch.tv/p/about)
The most prolific of these gamers have gathered enormous followings, who get the option of subscribing to these players for a small monthly fee, allowing them to follow their favorite players and all their doings. Income from these subscribers in combination with revenue from broadcasting advertisements allows an increasing number of players, around 5100, to make their living with playing and broadcasting their videogames on the Twitch platform. Twitch CEO and co-founder Emmett Shear calls these gamers that are earning money of their streams one of the internal metrics of success his company uses (Martin DiPietro 2014).
Twitch.tv has a built-in chat-function through which viewers and broadcasters are able to interact with one another.
2.2
Pokémon
Pokémon is a media franchise published and owned by the Japanese videogame company Nintendo(www.Nintendo.com). It was created by Satoshi Tajiri in 1996 and has been revolving around a world inhabited by the titular creatures. The franchise started as a pair of Nintendo Game Boy games that could be linked together ( www.nintendo.co.uk/Support/Game-Boy-Pocket-Color/Product-information/Game-Boy/Game-Boy-619591.html ). It has since branched out into anime, cartoons, full length feature movies, trading card games, and numerous other media and is considered a key example of cross-media. It is one of the most lucrative videogame franchises ever published.(Emma Boyes, 2007)
Since the original videogames there have been six generations of games for Nintendo's different handheld systems. All have followed the same basic premises. Each has been a role-playing game that focuses on the creatures inhabiting the game world, the Pokémon. The player walks around and explores this world inhabited by Pokémon and tries to catch and train them with the aim to battle them against other Pokémon trainers to further the game and eventually become the top Pokémon trainer.
2.3
Twitchplayspokémon
In early February 2014 an Australian programmer, who has remained anonymous, decided to change something fundamental about how an audience would view content on Twitch.tv. Whereas the chat function would normally function as a way for viewers to interact with each other and the streamer on Twitch.tv, he turned the chat into a game control mechanism.
The game being played was Pokémon Red, one of the two original Pokémon games released for the Nintendo Game Boy in 1996. As the Game Boy was originally released in 1989 it has a relatively simple control setup, utilizing a four-direction D-pad, two main buttons in A and B and two secondary buttons in start and select. The simplicity of the controls allowed the game to be controlled through the chat function on Twitch.tv. The viewers would type in commands like UP, DOWN, A or B, and a bot programmed by the creator would take these inputs and one by one act them out in the game.
Image 1. Twitchplayspokémon in action.
In an interview the creator of Twitchplayspokémon stated that he just wanted to see what would happen if he let the viewers play the game that was being streamed instead of merely watching (Interview with the creator of Twitchplayspokémon, 2014). Instead, his creation turned into a social experiment that exploded in popularity overnight. Across the internet bloggers and journalists responded very positively to the phenomenon, further adding to the hype surrounding it. More and more viewers flocked to it, creating an ever-increasing mayhem on screen. During the highpoint in February 2014 there were 121,000 people watching and playing at the same time. In total over ten million unique viewers witnessed the unfolding spectacle (Chase, 2014). The creator never envisioned this success, but he did very deliberately choose a Pokémon game as the game to be played, since it is turn based and very forgiving in the game play. (Interview with the creator of Twitchplayspokémon, 2014). What also helped was that the game allows for endless play, since it has
no losing condition that results in loss of progress. It is also very hard to not make some progress in the game, as even running around erratically lets the player fight other monsters and trainers, which makes the player stronger by doing so.
Eventually, the first game was finished in 16 days, 7 hours, 45 minutes and 30 seconds of consecutive play. A basic normal single player play-through (by completing the storyline) would take around 20-30 hours.
Tens of thousands of people controlling a single player game character at the same time lead to a lot of disparate inputs for the game's main character. What unfolded on screen were semi-random movements, endless timeouts in the game’s menus, and struggles with even the simplest tasks to perform for a single player. In addition there were always players who wanted to sabotage the proceedings. Furthermore there was a delay between what was actually happening in the game and what showed up on the viewers' screen (due to technical limitations). Thus, the first play sessions turned into chaotic events.
At times what was happening in the game itself was just outright boring. Being stuck at a very simple ledge in the game for more than ten hours might be an interesting challenge, but is also very tedious to watch.
Image 2. The simplest tasks become difficult.
From a viewing perspective then, one might have expected the phenomenon to die down shortly after the initial hype. Despite the fact that this occurred to a certain extent, as the viewer numbers dwindled, in the five months of the channels existence, there have been at least six Pokémon games successfully completed. People were enjoying themselves, although what happened on screen failed to make much sense very often. It seems then that their enjoyment was not necessarily related to in-game success. During the play-through something happened in the midst of this fascinating and at times boring chaos. In trying to make sense of the chaos a community formed around the Twitch channel. In this community the fans developed complex theories about why things happened in the game, intricate stories about their favorite characters and Pokémon and lore that evolved around the happenings on screen. Furthermore pieces of art and memes were created to commemorate major events or just to celebrate the madness of the phenomenon.
Image 3. Fan-art celebrating the madness of Twitchplayspokémon.
Discussions flared out around the different modes of controlling the game. Originally the creator had programmed it in such a way that every single command issued in the chat would be executed one by one. This way of controlling the game, called the 'anarchist' mode, caused problems with so many people playing simultaneously and made progress go very slow. Then a new mode was introduced called 'democracy', where the game-bot would look at the most common command issued in the chat and then performing the most voted for option every five seconds. This new system caused an outrage of players who wanted the original 'anarchy' mode back, because they felt it was the more 'pure' way of playing. This was the start of what was in essence a political debate on how to go about the game's progression. Other than political debate the community also spawned what might be considered religions around certain characters or items. For example one such religion was dedicated to the 'Helix Fossil', an in-game item that would show up every so often without much reason or use in the game. The fans would ascribe different powers and motivations to different characters. For example one group claimed that the Pokémon that would spring to life out of the 'Helix fossil' would lead the project to salvation. Another infamous character was the 'False Prophet' Flareon, who some held accountable for the events on 'Bloody Sunday' where numerous Pokémon in the game were released into the wild. When a Pokémon gets released in a game this means it is gone and impossible to get back, which can have dramatic consequences if it is an important Pokémon in the game.
It seems that these fans were enjoying the game to an extent that reached far beyond the actual in-game happenings. The Twitchplayspokémon community operated in the periphery of the game itself. They created stories and art around it. They were enjoying the game from a distance so to say, having fun about the game, on a meta level. The creation of the community around the phenomenon Twitchplayspokémon was a result of the game being played with a multitude of players. They created a metagame around the Twitchplayspokémon channel.
3.
LITERATURE
The concept 'metagame' was popularized by Garfield (2000). It describes the way games and real life intersect. Each player adds idiosyncratic experiences, social relationships, goals and knowledge to the context of a game. The metagame is how these factors interact with each other.
However, according to Carter et al. (2012), in the world of gaming the term has become somewhat muddled. They suggest
that it can mean a number of different things in diverse contexts. For example: in competitive strategy games such as League of Legends (www.leagueoflegends.com ), Starcraft II (www.battle.net/sc2 ) or competitive card games such as Magic: the Gathering (www.magic.wizards.com ) the term is often used as a way to describe a higher strategy: the player uses knowledge of previous games, tendencies of players and the popular strategies at the moment to try to gain an edge in the future. In other contexts, such as role-playing games it might point to the behavior of players to use knowledge from outside the game to influence things in the game world where this might not always be desirable.
Downs et al. (2012) adhere to a broader meaning. They take the metagame to be the wider context of a game, where the game is part of the context and the focus of attention, but far from the only thing happening in a gaming environment.
Following Downs et al. (2012) I suggest that the activities of the community surrounding Twitchplayspokémon also fall under the concept 'metagame'. Such metagame activity is not unique to Twitchplayspokémon, but here it seems to play a far more prominent role. It seems to be the most important experience for many playing the game.
Although Twitchplayspokémon had the same in-game content as the original single player Pokémon game, it seemed to have been experienced dramatically different by players. Allowing a multitude of people to play simultaneously seems to have made it a completely different game. The change in how the game was controlled seems to have had far-reaching consequences.
Hunicke et al.(2004) introduced an approach to game design and game research. Their Mechanics-Dynamics-Aesthetics model divides games and their design into three layers.
“Mechanics describes the particular components of the game, at the level of data representation and algorithms. Dynamics describes the run-time behavior of the
mechanics acting on player inputs and each others outputs over time.
Aesthetics describes the desirable emotional responses evoked in the player, when he or she interacts with the game system” (Hunicke et al. 2004).
Their research suggests to move away from words like “fun” and “gameplay” in favor of the term “aesthetics”. Aesthetics in this sense means the way in which players experience game play without placing a value judgment on it. The authors give a taxonomy of aesthetics including, but not limited to the following eight concepts: Sensation, Fantasy, Narrative, Challenge, Fellowship, Discovery, Expression and Submission.
In a speech at the Game Developers Conference 2008 one of the authors of the MDA-model, Marc LeBlanc, provides the following descriptions of these eight aesthetics (Nutt, 2008):
Sensation- “To function as an art object, to look, sound or feel beautiful.”
Fantasy- “A game to be about something, a vehicle for make-believe.”
Narrative- “The ability for a game to function as a story, to unfold over time [...] think of a movie or of a sports event [...] there is story content in the sports event itself. Those things form a narrative.”
Challenge- “The ability of a game to provide you obstacles to overcome, problems to solve, plans to form.”
Fellowship- “All of the social aspects of games; the ability for a game to function as a social framework. All the ways in which games facilitate human interaction.” Discovery- “An opportunity for a game to function as
uncharted territory -- you could be a tourist walking around Disneyland, or you could be a tourist in the tech tree in Civilization and exploring it. To see a new space and become a master over it -- that's what I call discovery.”
Expression- “Whether it is how you dress your avatar or it is how you play. Using the game as a vehicle for expressing yourself.”
Submission- “The pleasure of a game as a mindless pastime, like the pleasure of knitting or organizing CDs on a shelf. Some people play Solitaire because it is an interesting problem; some play it for the pleasure of moving the cards around. The second is submission.” According to the MDA-model, every change in a game's mechanics will trickle down through the dynamics level into the aesthetics level, and will thus affect how players experience the game. This means that when a game designer is looking for a certain experience for the player playing their game they can make use of certain mechanics to get the desired effect. Hunicke et al (2004) give the example of a basic frame of a game that revolves around hide and seek. Adding and subtracting mechanics results in different experiences. This could become a game aimed at 7-12 year old girls with social interactions by making them take care of children and playing hide and seek with them. Or it could become a stealth-based military shooter game for men between 14-35 where the player has to avoid his enemies at all costs.
On a mechanical level Twitchplayspokémon differs from the original Pokémon games on one key point: the way the game is controlled. Allowing the Twitch channel chat function with many users to control the game greatly impacts the game at all levels. The MDA-model does not account for 'metagaming' as an aesthetic experience. However, given the apparent importance of the metagame in shaping Twitchplayspokémon, I suggest adding a ninth aesthetic category: 'metagaming'. For the intents of this research I defined metagaming in the same vein as the eight aesthetics mentioned above:
Metagaming- “Enjoying the game outside the game. For example: thinking of the game while not playing, or researching new strategies for the next time you will play.”
This metagame experience is not unique to Twitchplayspokémon, however it seems to play a far more profound role in the enjoyment of the phenomenon than in other games. Where for other games a sense of community could play a secondary role in the overall experience, it plays an absolutely central role in Twitchplayspokémon.
Until now it might not have been necessary to define metagaming as a separate aesthetic experience. The way the players took this new concept of Twitchplayspokémon and shaped the way it was played and experienced however leads me to consider metagaming a fully separate aesthetic category.
4.
METHOD
4.1
Goal and Research question
In this thesis I aim to answer the question:How does transforming a singleplayer game into a multiplayer game affect the player experience and what role did metagaming play herein?
To define player experience I will make use of the aesthetic model given by Hunicke et al. (2004). In addition to the eight aesthetic experiences they list I add a ninth of my own to be tested. I hypothesize that the player experience differs greatly between Pokémon as a single player game and Twitchplayspokémon. Furthermore I hypothesize that the metagaming plays an important role in shaping the player experience for Twitchplayspokémon.
4.2
Materials
To answer this question an online questionnaire was created for this research that consisted of twenty-nine questions divided into four sections. The full questionnaire can be found in appendix 1. The first section contained nine questions on the aesthetic experiences that the subject might have felt during playing Twitchplayspokémon. These nine questions were scored on a Likert scale ranging from 1 (not at all) to 5 (very much). The second section contained the same nine questions, also scored on a 5-point Likert scale, but about experiences with playing Pokémon as a single player game.
Of the nine experiences that were covered in the questionnaire eight were taken from the MDA-model (Hunicke et al. 2004). These were Sensation, Fantasy, Narrative, Challenge, Fellowship, Discovery, Expression and Submission. To clarify what these mean to the subjects the descriptions of LeBlanc for the original eight aesthetics mentioned above where added as a description to the questions.
To these eight types of aesthetics a ninth was added, namely Metagaming. My own description mentioned above was added to help clarify the question.
The aim of these questions is to find out how the player experience differs between Twitchplayspokémon and Pokémon as a single player game.
The third section of the questionnaire consisted of five free text open questions. These were aimed at what got people playing Twitchplayspokémon, kept them playing, and what they thought were the most important aspects of Twitchplayspokémon. These open questions were asked to deepen the insights into the reasons for playing Twitchplayspokémon, to see whether or not the Metagame plays as big of a role as I suspect it does and to bolster my understanding of what this Metagame entails for players.
The fourth section included question on demographics such as the age of the respondent and their sex.
The questionnaire was filled in online through a website, and the results were gathered online. Google documents was used to create the questionnaire.
4.3
Procedure
An introduction to the questionnaire told the subjects that this research was focused on finding the differences between Twitchplayspokémon and Pokémon as a single player game. It also stated that their data would be used anonymously and only for the intents and purposes of this research.
The subjects were further instructed to rate the items in the first two sections, and to answer the open questions in the last two sections.
All subjects filled in the same questionnaire. The research utilizes a within-subject design to compare the ratings of the nine aesthetics for both modes of the Pokémon game.
The questionnaire had no time limit, but should have taken around 15 minutes to complete.
4.4
Participants
In this study 37 subjects voluntarily participated (8 women and 29 men) ranging in age between 13 and 32 (M= 20,9, SD= 4,4). These participants were recruited from the Twitchplayspokémon subreddit ( ww.reddit.com/r/twitchplayspokemonw ). This is the main hub for the community around Twitchplayspokémon.
For the questionnaire, players were needed with experience in playing both the original Pokémon games and the single player games. Recruiting directly from the community was the only option for finding individuals that fit these requirements.
5.
RESULTS
Two subjects were excluded from the final data. One subject asked to be excluded because he felt he was not part of the intended target group. The other subject was excluded because of incompletely and incoherently answering the questions.
5.1
Aesthetics results
The two sections of nine 5-point Likert scale question were analyzed using nine paired t-tests.
To compensate for doing nine paired t-tests within one subject the null hypothesis has to be corrected according to Bonferroni (Bland and Altman 1995). Bonferroni states that the critical p value must be divided by the amount of tests performed. This leads to α= 0.05/9 = 0.0055.
Table 1. Means and standard deviations.
Five significant differences in experience between Twitchplayspokémon and Pokémon as a single player game were found, see table 2.
The sense of Sensation for Twitchplayspokémon (M= 3.49, SD= 0.853) is significantly lower than the sense of Sensation for the single player condition (M=4, SD= 0.804) with p= 0.002. The sense of Challenge was higher for Twitchplayspokémon (M= 4.29, SD= 1.017) than for the single player condition (M=3.11, SD= 1.183) with p= 0.000.
The subjects also reported a higher sense of Fellowship for the Twitchplayspokémon condition (M= 4.26, SD= 0,817) than the
Table 2. Significance.
Note: Sensation_TPP stands for Sensation in Twitchplayspokémon. Sensation_S stands for Sensation Singleplayer Pokémon. Etc
.
single player condition (M= 2.09, SD= 0,981) with p= 0,000. This was an expected result.
However, for the single player condition there was a higher reported sense of Discovery (M=4.29, SD= 0.860) than for Discovery in Twitchplayspokémon (M= 3.17, SD= 1.043) with p= 0.000
Lastly the subjects reported a higher sense of Expression in the singleplayer condition (M=3.80, SD= 0.964) than in Twitchplayspokémon (M=2.89, SD= 1.323) with p= 0.003. There was no significant difference in how the subjects reported Metagame for the two conditions.
Means and standard deviations for each test are in table 1. The significance of the differences between measurements can be found in the rightmost column of table 2.
5.2
Open question results
These open questions are aimed at supporting the Likert scale questions by adding depth with more room for different answers. The questions were specifically aimed at factors that I associate with metagame elements in order to further my understanding of the role this concept plays and what it means for the subjects. 5.2.1 Coding
In order to make sense out of the many different answers they were coded. Following Goodrich (2008) trends in the answers were looked for to construct a list of key terms. Conceptually similar terms were grouped together. This was done for all five open questions. The answers where then measured against these key terms. If an answer contained more than three elements, only the first three were used. Answers that occurred only once where put in the 'Other' category. An example of this coding: S10 gave this answer to the question 'What do you think are the most interesting aspects of Twitchplayspokémon?': 'Lore, artwork, the challenge of working together with people you don't know.' Lore falls in the category of storytelling. Artwork was put under art and working together with people was counted under collaboration. If this subject had named a fourth aspect it would have been disregarded.
5.2.2 'What originally drew you to Twitchplayspokémon?'
Answer Quantity Percentage
Idea 7 20,00% Friends 7 20,00% Storytelling 4 11,42% Another twitch channel 3 8,57% Art 3 8,57% Tumbler 3 8,57% Other 8 22,85%
This question caused confusion with the subjects as many interpreted it as how they heard of the channel. It was aimed at
what attracted people to the Twitchplayspokémon at first and what it was they liked about it immediately.
5.2.3 'What do you think are the most interesting aspects of Twitchplayspokémon?'
Answer Quantity Percentage
Storytelling 19 54.28% Collaboration 13 37.14% Art 7 20.00% Metagame strategies 4 11.42% Community 3 8.57% Other 10 28.57%
Key terms included under the storytelling category were 'lore', 'stories' and 'narrative'. Under collective decision making fell terms like 'working together', 'group coordination' 'playing with others'.
5.2.4 'What keeps you playing Twitchplayspokémon?'
Answer Quantity Percentage
Storytelling 14 40.00% Community 12 34.28% Curiosity 4 11.42% Teamwork 2 5.71% Addiction 2 5.71% Unexpected events 2 5.71% Art 2 5.71% Other 4 11.42%
Key terms included under the storytelling category were 'lore', 'stories' and 'narrative'. Community includes terms like 'community' and 'the people surrounding the game'.
5.2.5 'What do you think are essential differences between Twitchplayspokémon and the original counterparts?
Answer Quantity Percentage
Playing with others 13 37.14%
Lack of control 12 34.28%
Community 5 14.28%
Different challenges 4 11.42%
Storytelling 3 8.57%
'Playing with others' includes key terms like 'multiplayer' and 'other players' and 'not alone'. 'Lack of control' encompasses 'randomness', 'chaos' and 'lack of control'.
5.2.6 'Do you spend time on Twitchplayspokémon outside of playing it on the Twitch channel, and if yes: on what?'
Answer Quantity Percentage
Reddit 25 71.42% Watching art 6 17.14% Creating Art 3 8.57% No 3 8.57% Reading Stories 2 5.71% Other 7 20,00%
5.2.7 'How important do you feel is the community for Twitchplayspokémon and why?'
34 out of 35 subjects answered that the community was indeed important for Twitchplayspokémon, with only one person mentioning it being unimportant to him.
6.
DISCUSSION
Five significant differences in aesthetic experience were found. The subjects reported a significantly higher sense of Fellowship for Twitchplayspokémon than for the normal Pokémon games. Perhaps the biggest difference between the two games is the fact that Twitchplayspokémon is played with many players simultaneously. It seems only natural that this leads to a sense of togetherness and fellowship in playing the game.
Four other factors were found to be significant as well. The singleplayer condition had significantly higher reported value for Sensation, Discovery and Expression. For Twitchplayspokémon the responses showed a significantly higher value for the sense of Challenge.
The fact that Sensation was reported to be higher for the singleplayer version might prove difficult to explain. It might be explained by the way in which people experienced playing the original games on a handheld system as a new and refreshing experience. Since the players were required to have previous experience with playing Pokémon games prior to playing Twitchplayspokémon, they already knew much of the content of the Pokémon game. This might be a start to explaining why people felt more stimulated with the original singleplayer games since they were to an extent already familiar with the content provided by Twitchplayspokémon.
The fact that most players were already familiar with Pokémon games also explains why people felt a greater sense of Discovery for the single player Pokémon condition. The first time one plays a game everything is new. The way Pokémon games are set up, with exploring and finding out new things being at the core of the gameplay this is especially true. A second play-through, be that alone or with thousands of people, is bound to give a lesser sense of Discovery, since you already are familiar with most of the content of the game. It is also harder to discover anything since an individual has little control over where the game is headed, which might lead to fewer areas being visited in the game world.
Lastly there was a higher reported value for Expression for Pokémon as a singleplayer game. This might be explained by the fact that if one plays by oneself the player has more space to make his or her own decisions. You get to choose which Pokémon to play with, how to name them and how to grow them. Your team of Pokémon is more of a representation of yourself. In Twitchplayspokémon this was simply impossible. Thousands of people playing at the same time more or less led to a team of random Pokémon with very random names consisting of mostly random letters and symbols with a lot of random abilities. This lack of control might lead to a lower sense of Expression in the game.
For Twitchplayspokémon the subjects reported a higher sense of Challenge. The Pokémon games are not known for their difficulty. If you play by yourself you might face a few difficult moments, but it is not a game that constantly throws difficult challenges at the player. This fairly easy game suddenly became very troublesome with thousands of players controlling it at the same time. This turns very basic actions in the game into a challenge in and of themselves. This could explain the higher sense of challenge reported for Twitchplayspokémon.
The reported value for the sense of Metagame was higher for the Twitchplayspokémon condition (M=3,86) than for the singleplayer condition (M=3,60) but not significantly so. This puts my second hypothesis at peril. One reason for not finding a significant difference here might be the way the question was phrased. I described Metagame as: “Enjoying the game outside the game. For example: thinking of the game while not playing, or researching new strategies for the next time you'll play.” This description may have been too ambiguous in getting my meaning of the term Metagame across. There might also have been confusion about the general term 'metagame', as multiple definitions and explanations of the term exist, as was shown above.
However, the results from the open questions, which were intended to support and deepen the insight into subjects reasons for playing Twitchplayspokémon, do suggest that factors that are part of the Metagame played an important part in subjects experiences playing Twitchplayspokémon.
A common theme in the answers to the open questions was the importance of the storytelling, the artwork and the community as a whole. 40% of the subjects said that the storytelling around Twitchplayspokémon was the reason they were still playing the game. P29 puts it this way: “On the subreddit, the headcanon that goes on. All the comics and stories that spawn from this seemingly random series of events, making sense of it all in a narrative way”. P11: “The community and everything that they create from what their actions do.”
When questioned about the importance of the community for Twitchplayspokémon the 34 of 35 subjects responded by stating its importance. “Without the community the stream would not have continued”, says P3. According to P19 “the community is what generates the narrative, and that narrative is what makes Twitchplayspokémon work. Therefore, it is pretty vital in my opinion.” These answers suggest that the community and their expressions are in fact of vital importance to the Twitchplayspokémon phenomenon. And they would thus suggest a more important role of the Metagame than players indicated in the first part of the questionnaire.
A few participants also specifically mentioned the metagame as an interesting aspect of Twitchplayspokémon. P8: “The metagame employed in salvaging a screwed up game, as would never happen in an individual play-through. I also like the artificial plot that develops within the community.” This points towards another use of the term metagame, as here it refers to embracing the difficult conditions for playing Twitchplayspokémon and using this knowledge to find solutions.
Perhaps the fact that my second hypothesis was not confirmed by the statistical data of the first part of the research, but did find some supporting evidence in the second part points to a problem: the terminology. Maybe Metagame is not the correct term to describe the actions of the community around Twitchplayspokémon, since metagame is an already existing concept with many differing meanings. Perhaps another term should be coined for the way in which the players of Twitchplayspokémon found a way to make sense of this new phenomenon and most importantly enjoy it.
Lastly, the first and last open questions lead to some problems as they were poorly phrased, leaving them open to interpretation to a far too great extent. This caused the answers to be very disparate and hard to organize into a pattern. Therefore I chose to largely ignore these questions in forming my conclusions.
7. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK
One hypothesis was confirmed in finding five significantly different aesthetic experiences between Twitchplayspokémon and Pokémon as a single player game. The second hypothesis was not confirmed by statistical data, but strong traces of supporting evidence were found in the supporting open questions.
These open questions provided insight into the fact that the community around the game played a very important role in the way people played and enjoyed Twitchplayspokémon.
This community and its creativity played a unique role in the success of the Twitchplayspokémon phenomenon in a way never seen before.
Since the Twitchsplayspokémon phenomenon provides a new and interesting way of playing games, it is worthy as a subject for further research. This research could be conducted on the effects of changing a singleplayer game to one played by many at the same time. Perhaps in future research similar changes could be made to different games to see what effects the change from singleplayer to multiplayer would have. It might prove difficult to see the same community response that Twitchplayspokémon saw, as Pokémon is a well established and well loved game franchise. Furthermore, the community aspect of Twitchplayspokémon is relevant for further exploration. The fact that a community is formed in a game is not unique to Twitchplayspokémon, but it seems to have worked in a different way here than in other games such as League of Legends. In those games, the community is far more secondary than in Twitchplayspokémon. Further research is needed into the role communities surrounding games play in shaping player experiences.
Perhaps in the future new initiatives will emerge on the Twitch.tv platform, changing the way games are played even more.
From a design point of view it might be worth investigating further how to design games to facilitate the creation of a community and metagame activity as this could prove an important factor in determining a game's success. Perhaps at some point the community surrounding a game will no longer be the
effect of creating a nice game, but the other way around; games could be designed with the aesthetic goal to form a community.
8.
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Carter, M., Gibbs, M., Harrop, M.(2012). Metagames, paragames and orthogames: A new vocabulary. Proc. FDG 2012. , Raleigh, NC.
Chase (2014, March 1) TPP Victory! The Thundershock Heard Around the World. [Web log post] Retrieved on 20-08-2014 from http://blog.twitch.tv/2014/03/twitch-prevails-at-pokemon/.
DiPietro, M. (2014, June 12). Twitch CEO on Bloomberg TV. [web log post] Retrieved on 20-08-2014 from
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conference.
Hunicke, R., LeBlanc, M., Zubek, R., (2004) MDA: A Formal Approach to Game Design and Game Research.
Interview with the creatore of Twitchplayspokémon (2014, February 16). Retrieved on 20-08-2014 from
http://badatvideogames.net/2014/02/16/an-interview-with-the-creator-of-twitchplayspokemon/.
Nutt, C (2008, February 18) GDC: Game Design Workshop: Mechanics, Dynamics, Aesthetics. [Web log post] Retrieved on 20-08-2014 from
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GDC_Game_Design_Workshop_Mechanics_Dynamics_Aest hetics.php
Twitch.tv. (2013). Twitch 2013 Retrospective. Retrieved on 20-08-2014 from http://www.twitch.tv/year/2013.
9.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank dr. Frank Nack for guiding me through the process of writing this thesis. I would also like thank dr. Sander Bakkes for being my second reader.
Furthermore I would like to thank the Twitchplayspokémon subreddit community for graciously agreeing to participate in this research.
Lastly I thank my girlfriend and family, for their support and for putting up with me during the process.
APPENDIX 1 QUESTIONNAIRE
The full questionnaire can be found here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1cwWrH3VY6x1F_XNejo6kf0 MMim2k7wB_qFxrcV1IzD8/viewform?c=0&w=1.lumns on Last Page Should Be Made As Close As Possible to Equal Lengths
