The Twitch Community Is Trying To Play Dark Souls Collectively

Twitch, the live game broadcasting service, has had two successful attempts in the past where all viewers were in control, at the same time, of the game being played. First was one of the original Pokemon games, then came an older Metal Gear title. Thousands of people, all inputting commands into the chat window. It was madness, but in both cases, they were successful in beating the games. Now the Twitch community is doing it again, but this time with Dark Souls, the first entry in what is easily one of the most difficult series in recent history.

The action-RPG series, by developer From Software, is famous for how punishing it's bosses are. A single mistake or mis-timed movement results in death. The game even used the slogan "Prepare to die" in its past ad campaigns. That's how difficult we are talking.

In order for stream viewers to be able to control the game, a Python script is used that interprets specific text from the chat window as game commands. So typing "f" makes the character move forward, "r" to turn right, "u" to use an item, "r1" for normal attack, "l1" for block, and so on.

With thousands of players entering whatever command they want, just getting the character to walk down a hallway can be an achievement. The idea of this set up being able to defeat even one of the game's notorious bosses seems like lunacy.

Other games have managed to pull off incredible Dark Souls achievements, like beating the game without once leveling their character up, or using only a guitar controller from Rock Band. But like this? Nah, it'll never happen. Not when it's taking them over an hour just to leave a room.