Game mechanics
The game on VKontakte was built on a simple task: on a shared field, you had to color in pixels. A participant received an assignment through a button that gave a color and coordinates, then opened the field, found the required point and colored it in, or received a new assignment.
The “pixel battle” described in October 2017 worked on the same principle. Initially the task seemed simple, but the field quickly turned into a competition in which participants tried to take up as much space as possible.
Occasion and versions
The catalog ties the game to VKontakte's birthday. A post published on October 11, 2017 names the occasion as the birthday of Pavel Durov, and the goal of the battle as a picture of his portrait measuring 178 by 100 pixels, which started from a specific point and was laid out along an outline and fill.
The sources disagree on the occasion, so both versions are given. The exact initiator of the overall game has not been established.
War of communities
Alongside the game, a struggle between communities unfolded. Large public pages and sites sought to paint over as much space as possible to place their logo, and as a result dense blocks of emblems appeared on the field. Both humorous communities and meme projects took part in the competition, and some organized their own actions on the field.
The conflict was more playful than serious. It was built on competitiveness and a desire to make oneself known, not on real enmity between participants.
Image
The saved file shows a fragment of such a field: a dense mosaic of logos, characters and inscriptions made of pixels. Among the visible elements are emblems of popular Russian-language public pages, figures from internet culture, game symbols and service logos.
The image shows not the game screen but the final composition, which conveys the scale of the competition for space on the field.
Legacy
After the game, the format of painting with pixels continued. In 2017, separate communities appeared that transferred pixel art onto real photographs, so that characters seemed to appear in the urban environment. According to the description of one such project, created in 2017, it quickly gathered about 20 thousand participants, had no advertising, and later stopped being active.
So the mechanics of the pixel battle became linked to a separate trend in the Russian-language internet, not just to one single event.
Summary
Pixel War is interesting as an example of how a simple game mechanic turns into a tool of community rivalry. The meme took hold in the form of logo collages and recalls how, in 2017, users shared a common space.
The occasion of the event is named differently in the sources, so the article gives both versions.
