One of the internet's most popular social experiments in recent times, Twitch Plays Pokemon, has now ended. The event saw thousands of players play help control trainer Red in a streamed version of Pokémon Red via command input in the chat section.

The event began on 12 February and has seen over 35 million viewers during that time period, according to Joystiq.

Might Become a Gaming Platform

The idea was originally developed as a social experiment to test the viability of the Twitch format. It allowed the creators to understand more about how people interact with the input system, apart from their social interaction. Owing to the massive success of the platform, Twitch is now being considered for evolution into a gaming platform.

"It has delivered a huge and sustained audience for days on end and captivated the attention of the entire Twitch community", said Matthew Di Pietro, Vice President of Twitch, according to NintendoLIfe. "The incredibly high volume of chat activity has helped us to hone our chat system to deal with massive loads like we're experiencing. It has also made us all think deeply about creative social experiments that can be done on Twitch. This is one of the most interesting things we've seen on Twitch since we launched, and we hope to see more experiments like it".

Commenting on the idea of Twitch becoming a game platform, he said: "You never know. Twitch Plays Pokémon is an interesting proof-of-concept though. We encourage everyone to think about new ways to leverage Twitch's platform and community for creative gaming endeavours. This is unique in the history of Twitch. And when you consider how game developers might capitalize on features and functionality like this, the sky is the limit."

New Game Starting on Sunday

"A new adventure will begin," said the update. It indicates that the next version of Twitch Plays Pokemon will begin at 7:00am EST Sunday morning.

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