Twitch (Still) Plays Pokémon: When Spectators Become Archivists

Abstract

In 2014, an anonymous user changed the way that game streaming worked. Through the channel of Twitch Plays Pokémon on Twitch, viewers were able to control and play the classic Pokémon Red game in real time. Without any prompt from the stream's management, fans started documenting the stream's history and records. I examine how this case transcends the regular case of user-generated fan art and becomes one of the first examples of pure fan-generated narrative, often through references to archived material.

Keywords

• fan labor
• streaming
• user-generated content
• video games