Twitch Plays Pokemon has been done before – but Twitch Plays Pokemon GO is a crazy new spin on the old idea.
As with past Twitch Plays sessions, viewers control the game through written commands in the livestream’s chat room.
Since Pokemon GO is an AR game that requires someone to head out into the real world, the internet is now in control of an actual human being – may God have mercy on their soul.
Thankfully, it seems that in this case they’ve managed to create a virtual player to travel the world.
Our digital hero started off in Central Park, but at the time of writing the stream is offline – where they are now is anybody’s guess.
The Verge reports that this project was made possible by members of HackNY, a New York non-profit which ‘aims to federate the next generation of hackers for the New York innovation community’.
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Considering what they’re doing is technically ‘cheating’ on Pokemon GO, there’s a chance that developer Niantic could step in and shut the whole thing down.
However, the guys running the stream have said:
If Niantic or Nintendo wishes to ban the account that Twitch is playing with, they’re more than welcome to, but we assume that they understand that this is all in good fun.
Cheating or not, wouldn’t it be awesome if this community managed to be the first Pokemon GO ‘player’ to catch ’em all?
Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.