I am fascinated by the Strange r/Place Video Game Alliances.
Yesterday I didn’t know what r/place was. Today I am fascinated by people reaching out to other video game fandoms and negotiating alliances overdrawing images of Sonic on a large public canvas.
Don’t be confused if you are in the same boat as me. I can help. The subreddit r/place, a massive community-made art piece, appeared in 2017 as an April Fool’s Day Project. It is easy to use. Zoom in on the canvas, and choose a spot to colour in one pixel. It is limited to one tile per minute, so it takes a coordinated effort from the entire community to colour anything significant in the grid.
The thing that has me laughing is the commotion among fandoms trying to form alliances for space and drawing aid. There are many requests for assistance from different groups on Twitter, Reddit and Twitch. Once fans reach an agreement, they exchange canvas coordinates and begin drawing one pixel at a time. There may be a Discord link so that people can talk about their game plans in real-time.
This thread is where the Kingdom Hearts group requests cooperation from the Nier fandom. It seems like Emil’s head is pretty well coordinated. Another cute little 2B–is it the Sly Cooper_? I’m not sure. I like Donald Duck asking Kaine for help. I want to think she’d be willing to give him her blessing and call him a pigeon.
It’s almost like playing I Spy. But the image is always changing, so I am afraid to look away. The Hollow Knight fandom and Elden Ring fans have also merged in cute mishmashes that combine cross-cultural artwork. “The girl is from Elden Ring. We have an alliance with them,” said someone into Hollow Knight. This is a hilarious explanation of why the FromSoftware game is easily one of the top ten most fun internet things I’ve ever read.
Although it’s not a perfect mix of hellish and neat, I find myself being endlessly entertained by Redditors’ coordinated efforts to colour tributes to favourite games. It’s charming to love some of these games so much that you try to take over a small public space for them. Some of my personal favourites are Final Fantasy XIV and Legend of Zelda. Ace Attorney and Monster Hunter are also examples. What is the HTMLXIV logo coordinates ” The bottom left of DK, and Among Us?
The TV series Community has many viewers who are Spyro fanatics. I hope that the anarchists will protect the Stardew Valley Chicken. I would like to see the Maplestory Subreddit ask for an alliance with Silent Hill. Let’s get together and make sure Pink Bean can hang out with Pyramid Head near the cute collection of Pride flags. Although it’s silly, I love it.
