Should Software Video Game Input Questions Be On-Topic?

Question

A recent question about "start9" in TwitchPlaysPokemon was closed for various reasons and has generated quite the discussion.

I am not going to discuss (or even bring up after this sentence) whether or not the Twitch chatroom constitutes a game.

However, with regards to the specific question and the primary close reason, which is that the question is off-topic because it is "about the rules and workings of an input parser":

Should questions dealing with software based video game inputs be allowed or not?

Answer 1

I would say software video game input questions are acceptable in a general sense. Programming input is not a foreign concept - the very heart of "macros" are pre-set forms of input that are deployed into a game. It's feasible to picture that this can be done through a third-party program that isn't built into the game - and to a point one might consider the very nature of installed plugins that do just that to be sorta between "in the game" and "in a third-party program".

To a more direct point, let's think about something like the wonderful joy2key that I never actually use but I recommend a lot of people who are happy with it. We cover a fair number of questions about gamepad controls on computers, a lot of which turn up joy2key in the answers. In this sense, the system is gamepad -> joy2key -> game. We allow questions about the first and the last part, disallowing the middle seems misguided.

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I would then say this meta is a technicality-borne distraction from judging the actual question on main that is under discussion. The applicability of this entire question to the given point is that we perceive the system as Twitch Chat -> Input Parser -> Pokemon Red. This is a way to perceive it, but it's not one that everyone agrees on, or that everyone actually considers is even relevant to the acceptability of the question. Now I know that Jason Berkan is not attempting to make a technicality call here - I ain't going to say that he is. I am saying that adopting this as the reason would be the community making such a call.

This coincidentally-also-Pokemon question was asked two days before the game's global release date - we have rules that say "No questions before a game is out!", but in this case the user was one of many who received an advance copy. We can qualify it as a "pre-release question", but that would be a mistake. One that we elected not to make because we toned down the relevance of our time clause.

In the same vein, I think that trying to look at this from the perspective of "This is just an input parser into an emulator running Red" is shooting ourselves in the foot. It sets the stage for the discussion as the broad spectrum rule, meaning that opposition requires big picture changes that can be a lot more destructive than if we had just looked at a narrow perspective.

I think TPP is a unique entity of its own. Whether or not we can classify it as a video game, that's something we should discuss in another question. Divorcing the nature of what TPP is, and looking only at this one part of it, and trying to say that the question is only about that part, is why this feels like the community acting on a technicality. Like when people jumped on "list questions"^† as if they were game-rec and I had to write this thing, it's failing to see the sloth for the bears. Focusing on only one bear means the rest will brutalize us - in the same way, focusing on only one detail of an entity that really is more than just that one detail, is an unhealthy habit for the site in either direction.

Look at how this question went. We got two responses rather quickly - one that was pro-TPP, and one that was anti-TPP. But neither actually wanted anything to do with what this discussion is trying to focus on, because neither really agreed that it was impactful. That's a major red flag with how this question's subject is applicable to the situation that is under discussion. So just like how we chose not to apply the weight of pre-release status to the aforementioned question, so too do I feel that this is the community noting that the weight of this particular label on the question isn't helpful for addressing the situation.

We're the fourth largest Child Meta on the network - we have a lot of labels we can apply to questions. These labels have unequal and also inconsistent weights, because at heart we're a collective of people who think. Rules are guidelines, not hard-and-fast rules, and in our case we have a lot of overlap in what applies to what. And we also have things that don't actually fall in the overlaps. There's no doubt that we can perceive this TPP question as one about the input parser - but I feel that if the community were to stick to that, of all things, as the reason to allow it, that would be having the community be dishonest to itself. Ergo, I feel that regardless of how we feel about software video game input questions, it isn't a major factor as to whether we should allow or disallow the TPP question. We are a collective people and we can address the question and its subject matter on its own without needing to find some broad-spectrum label to put it under for rote mechanical obedience. Nor do we have to make a decision to which the future will follow with a cold iron fist.

_{^†LIST QUESTIONS AREN'T A THING.}

Answer 2

Arqade is for passionate videogamers from all platforms, including consoles, computers, handhelds, and mobile devices. If your question generally covers things such as …

• Gameplay strategies and tactics check
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…then you are in the right place to ask your question!

Please note, however, that site policies prohibit questions of the following types:

• Game and Mod Development check
• Requests for game identification based on personal recollection alone check
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• Piracy, and support with pirated games check

I think it is reasonable to consider Twitch Plays Pokémon a video game with non-obvious game mechanics that deserve an explanation. While I would rather have us cover the event through questions about Pokémon Red itself (say, "What is the optimal route through the Safari Zone?"), I think those questions are on-topic, relevant and timely.

Original image courtesy of FEichinger in this very same question.

The argument made by FEIchinger is that, since the question is about what happens on the green side, and the game is on the red side, the question is off-topic. Nothing could be further from the truth. Allow me to abstract the situation:

On the left side, we have the player-side part of the program. You have a window in which you can issue commands. The commands go through the network through a set of so-called RPCs (remote procedure calls; the name is not important) and the game server reads your commands and acts on it. The game server then sends you the answer back with the updated state of the game.

Does it sound novel or extraordinary? It shouldn't. Here's another example of this configuration:

I'm going to pick World of Warcraft here, but this is the description of almost every multiplayer game ever written. Every game that has a server is comparable to Twitch Plays Pokemon.

• When I play World of Warcarft, I open the World of Warcraft application (green) and give commands at it (blue arrow rightwards). These commands are sent (rightwards arrow) to Blizzard's World of Warcraft server (red box), which gets my input and processes it, resulting in the casting of spells. The server gets back to the client (leftwards arrow) and tells the client that yes, you had enough mana, you were still alive, you did have access to the spell, so the spell was cast.
• When I play Twitch Plays Pokèmon, I open the Twitch application (green) and give commands at it (blue arrow leftwards). These commands are sent (rightwards arrow) to the Twitch Plays Pokemon server (red box), which gets my input and processes it, resulting in the pressing of a button. The server gets back to the client (leftwards arrow) and tells the client that yes, your button of choice has been pressed.

Saying that questions about the left side of TPP are off-topic is saying that we do not want questions about the World of Warcraft application. All troubleshooting questions are now off-topic. All questions about configuration are now off-topic. All questions about the interface are now off-topic. All questions about chat are now off-topic.

Ironically, FEIchinger got the situation entirely wrong. He argues that the only part of the setup that's our concern is the red one. Nothing could be further from truth.

What happens on the red side is actually off-topic. We don't want questions on how to be Blizzard and operate and maintain the World of Warcraft servers. Similarly, questions about Twitch Plays Pokemon should not ask about Pokemon Red, or the IRC bot that feeds it input. Questions about Pokemon Red should be tagged Pokemon Red.

We are very much about the green box. Making it work, understanding its user interface, its commands, making it do our willing: this is very much what Arqade is about.

This is clearly and patently absurd, and not how we have operated this website for the last 3½ years. We should not panic over one borderline question and singlehandedly destroy the site in the process.

But badp, I hear you cry. This can't be right! Pokemon Red is a game! Twitch chat isn't! Have you gone insane? No. No I have not. See, there is a little thing out there called cheats. When you have a server-client program where some of the clients may be compromised (say, gold farmers), your main recourse is that of using a "thin client." What this means is that all the client knows is how to render the game state and how to send inputs. The game itself - the game logic, the game state, who is where, who is doing what to whom, what map they're in, everything - is right on the server.

Even in World of Warcraft, the actual game code is on the red side. All the green side does is send commands and get frames back. And yet it's the precious, precious green side the part that we commonly call "the game." It's the part we install, it's the part we maintain, it's part we mod with texture packs and shaders and HUDs and polygons and anti-aliasing and all the delicious client parts that are so dear to us and are, ultimately, what this website is about.

This might be far and abstract because the World of Warcraft servers are only in Blizzard's hands, but since this is almost every single multiplayer game ever made, Minecraft comes to the rescue. Even when you play in single player mode, Minecraft has a thin client that connects to the server side with all the game logic. The client only knows how to render the world as downloaded from the server.

All of this is precisely, identically, indistinguishably, exactly the same deal with Minecraft, and World of Warcraft, and Team Fortress 2, and Starcraft, and Quake — and, likewise, Twitch Plays Pokemon.

(Exceptions are games that operate in peer-to-peer. I'm not aware of any.)

Visual thinkers may find my argument in this diagram:

What I need you to understand is that if we decide that TPP is not a game, we must do it sensibly, on grounds that make sense when looking at the big picture, without necessarily take half of our topic with it. So far, in order to outlaw Twitch Plays Pokemon, we have tried in turn to outlaw every game with a menu ever, every game with a community ever, every videogame with luck elements in it ever, every hidden object game ever and now every multiplayer game ever. All for one question about start9.

If TPP is truly different from EvE online and its bretheren and we want to give a reason as to the difference, we must be more careful. This website is 3½ years old. This question is not going to open the floodgates for thousands over thousands of terrible questions, and even if it does we should let the floodgate open anyway to have some actual data and discriminate the good from the bad. We can't do that on one question and one game and the super-generic tone of this question is not helping.

This should make you pause and think on what actually we are trying to achieve. Is it worth to destroy this website over one question?

Answer 3

This specific question should be re-opened, because video game input is on-topic on Arqade.

We have always allowed questions on keyboards, mice, joysticks and controllers. However, we have also allowed questions about stranger things, such as using a Nintendo DS to control a PC and using a purpose built device to control an emulator. In all cases, we allow questions about input devices that are not exclusive to gaming, when the topic of the question pertains to a video game or some other video game related software, such as an emulator. When it comes to hardware devices, video game input has always been on-topic.

The only difference in this question is that the input is software based rather than hardware based. In fact, it is very similar to the iCade question, where we were asked about mapping purpose built hardware to MAME (an emulator). The Twitch Plays Pokémon software maps chat room input to VisualBoyAdvance (an emulator). Software based video game input should not be treated any different than hardware based input. In both cases, we are dealing with input into a video game.

Answer 4

I don't think so.

Fundamentally, what we have here is this:

From a given chat's input (block 1), key words are selected (transition 1), then a command is picked in some method (block 2) and piped (transition 2) into a game/emulator (block 3).

This is all fair and well, that's just how it works. Our expertise regarding this lies here:

We know how the game works, and we know what happens when we give a certain input - that is, we know the controls, too.

Here's what these questions are about:

They're about the process of selecting and transforming the chat input. Not about the game input itself.

"But, but, but, ... That's totally a new game!"

Okay, let me show you the next sketch:

Here we have replaced the game/emulator with a music player. The part the questions are about (chat input and transforming that) is still the same. The target device has just changed. I certainly don't consider "Twitch picks music!" a game.

And here's the thing - our expertise does not apply to "Twitch picks music!" anymore:

The input and workings of a music player are not in our expertise, but the setup here is still exactly the same.

Answer 5

I don't honestly think we can call Twitch Plays Pokemon a video game at all. At best, there's a video game there, but that's not what's being played. What's being played is a chat box, where what you input may or may not happen. That's not a video game so much as an exercise in luck.

Describing it as another form of input is disingenuous, since no one can actually guarantee that what goes in is what actually happens. Other input devices, such as a keyboard or mouse, we can be expected that what you press, happens. Not so for this.

I'm not sure how watching a video where what you want to happen may or may not happen can be construed as a video game of any sort. It is a partially interactive video. We play video games here. Twitch Plays Pokemon isn't one.