Interactive Games on Social Media: EmojiTetra

An Arcade Game on Twitter

Emoji Tetra is an implementation of the classic block-dropping game (you know, the trademarked one starting with a T) implemented as a Twitter bot. The next move is determined by the audience, via a Twitter poll.

Each completed move generates a new tweet, at a rate of three per hour (20 minutes per poll.) When the game is over, it restarts using a different set of emoji for the game pieces. Joe Sondow, the bot's creator, has made the code freely available: https://gitlab.com/JoeSondow/emojitetra

Joe has continued to tweak the bot (and sometimes does so in live coding sessions on Twitch!) The original tweet format with the score at the top has been revised to make the next piece more highly visible by placing it on the right, as shown above. The first game was just one long thread, which proved unwieldy, and now the bot starts a new thread periodically, and ends the previous thread with a link to the next.

Emoji Tetra culture

Because the game takes place on Twitter, all the normal features such as retweets, likes, and responses are available. Emoji Tetra players will respond to a move with reaction GIFs, celebratory tweets, and anguished responses. They will try to steer the voting by championing particular strategies, sometimes even creating a sample board in the same style to illustrate their plan. More often, the responses are complaints about the unwisdom of the crowd.

The "plummet" option (found in many Tetris implementations) immediately drops the piece and goes on to the next one. This is a popular option in Emoji Tetra because it immediately moves the game forward. Dropping the pieces a square at a time can literally take hours, so many casual players do not have the patience for advanced strategies such as rotating or sliding a piece into place at the last minute. The "#TeamPlummet" hashtag has been used to disparage those who favor plummeting instead of thoughtful play.

Players also engage in strategic voting. Sometimes they may prefer one option, but worry that the crowd will not follow through correctly. Because moves happen only one vote at a time, it is not possible to commit to a particular place for a piece. In many polls there is also considerable difference of opinion about rotating first, and then moving left or right; or instead moving the piece to the correct column first.

Joe Sondow is the creator of other Twitter bots and humorous accounts, including @RikerGoogling and @EmojiAquarium.

Postscript

Sadly, Steemit's representation of the same emoji do not line up nicely to form a regular grid:

◽◽◽◽◽👔◽
◽◽◽◽◽👔👔　Next
◽◽◽◽◽👔◽　👖
◽◽◽◽◽◽◽　👖👖
◽◽◽◽◽◽◽　◽👖
◽◽◽◽◽◽◽
👘◽◽◽◽◽◽
👘◽👚◽👖◽◽　Score
👔👚👕🎽🎽◽👖　13250
👚👚◽🎽🎽🎽🎽
👚👖◽🎽🎽🎽🎽