News culture Pixel War: Reddit’s cult event is back, what is it?
More than a year after its buzz, the Pixel War is back on Reddit. Launch of hostilities: Thursday July 20, 2023… Do you want to know why this is an event? Our editorial staff explains.
The war is back. The war… of the pixels! Reddit announced it a few hours ago: on this Thursday, July 20, 2023, it’s time to welcome a new edition of “r/place”, also called “Pixel War”. You must have heard of it: from April 1 to 5, 2022 – on the famous forum – millions of Internet users created a giant digital mosaic. The only conditions: have a Reddit account and wait five minutes before submitting a new square. The result, a work evolution of a new genre, where country flags rub shoulders with a whole host of references to pop culture and art. The concept had been a great success in 2017, during a first edition imagined on the basis of an April Fool’s joke. As of this writing, the Pixel War has begun (you can go there ici).
France in the spotlight
Since that feat last year (6 millions of attendees | 72 million pixels placed), as much to say that the r/place is now firmly awaited. On Twitter, several Internet users are already counting on the presence of Kameto to “lead the operation” ! In 2022, the streamer, who currently has 1.7 million fans on Twitch, had largely helped put France in the spotlight: “He pushed his community to create | keep a large French flag at the bottom left of the image, first with an Eiffel Tower and then an Arc de Triomphe and the face of Zinedine Zidane”, notes The world. At the time, the former footballer even thanked Kameto and his subscribers with a short video.
It is obviously not the only star of the French web to have wet the jersey at the time. In the lot, we can also mention Squeezie or Hugo Décrypte… Ditto across the Channel, with the participation of Pokimane (9.3 million Twitch subscribers) or even xQc (12 million) – who had not not deprived to destroy certain creations, including those of Kameto. A destructive mission especially embodied by the ‘void’, a cluster of black pixels which had done significant damage at first.
Stand on the sidelines
Because whether it’s to build or destroy, the Pixel War requires organization. In 2022, community sites (Twitch, Discord, Reddit) resulted in impressive coordination, showcasing subscriber bases able to mobilize quickly… In this category, France shines particularly. According to the website GamingCampus, our beautiful country was the one that placed the most pixels during the last edition (185,000). “In France, with all the events between streamers like the ZEvent (…) we are trained to be welded” explained Kameto a year ago, on the set of Popcorn ! “As soon as we decide on something, people will understand quickly, they will follow the directives, which was not the case with the Spaniards and the Americans. For us, I felt that everyone was involved to put the pixel down to the second. We were better organized”.
Obviously, Kameto’s KCORP (taken from the name of its eSports structure) will be back for Pixel War 2023. Last year, France had set up its little nest in the bottom left of the digital canvas, after the mosaic has doubled in size… Gradually: other monuments and personalities have joined the features of Zidane, like the astronaut Thomas Pesquet, the Louvre and the Arc de Triomphe! Representations that surprise by their sense of detail. “At first, I didn’t know r/place at all (…) we destroyed things to take up space, we made a super ugly logo, we didn’t really understand the spirit” admits Kameto, on the same set. “Over the hours, we began to understand that there were artistic creations, for example the Windows XP bar (at the very bottom of the image – editor’s note) (…) We understood that we had to do art in fact”.
