GDQ + Speedrunning

[maru]

I have to confess ... GDQ is my Superbowl. I've been watching it twice a year since 2016.

Have you ever wanted to actually go? Do you always watch it? Are there runners you keep up with?

I'm going to SGDQ this year in person. I just got accepted as a volunteer, too, so I guess I'm helping do it.

I feel like no matter what there's always magic. The Bonesaw run. The 2016 Talos run.

Pannenkoek spends four hours talking about invisible walls in Mario 64 interspersed with tons of clips of speedrunners hitting those exact walls and it looks like a nature documentary.

Speedruns, man.

[watermoon]

ah, gdq… i've been watching it since 2014, and used to be a pretty avid follower, though i've been watching it less and less over the years, and now just catch the highlights + games i'm interested in. never seriously considered attending in-person though… maybe because i don't really consider myself part of the community. my uncle (the one who doesn't suck) is a huge fan though, and every so often he'll make a comment about wanting to drag me along if he ever decides to attend. and i sooorta considered going after i saw that my baby got into agdq 2020, and i probably could've been on couch for it as the game's literal only other runner, but i didn't feel like going to so much effort just to make an ass of myself live.

i'll have to think about if there are any runs that stick with me, once i'm less sleepy. the bonesaw one definitely does (even if i didn't catch it live), and the alttp swordless run and randomizer race with andy and patty have become comfort watches that i come back to every so often. also, even though it's not gdq, tmr's blindfolded deathless turbo tunnel run at esa has to be one of my favorite moments. definitely a legendary popoff.

save the animals.

[Pogckets]

Speedrunners give me faith in humanity

[netdoll]

I think as far as GDQ itself is concerned, I haven't actually seen much of it since most of the games run there are pretty much outside the scope of the games I play. But I do hear about it, and the various Tetris the Grand Master blocks at GDQ have done a lot to help popularize the game in the West, which I appreciate. That being said, there are a number of smaller/regional events like GDQ which I saw, and of those, Stunfest 2014 will be forever seared into my mind as the one which had the strongest impact, seeing WTN and SPS live just absolutely destroying their respective games.

[JennyDog]

GDQ isn't my comfort food or anything, but there's been days when im sad or sick or sadsick and work my way through playthrough, or when I hear about fun runs like the ocarina of time run that rewrote most of the in game memory to replicate dummied out content filled out. i dont know if im in the place in my life to be invested, but i don't think i've ever been disapointed by gdq, it's always done good for me for what i've asked.

[chc4]

I don't actually watch GDQ very much, but I've seen a lot of VoDs from it and really love speedrunning and the surrounding culture (including 4 hour Mario 64 explanation videos).

It tickles a lot of the same neurons in my brain as cybersecurity, where you have a like set of actions you can do (which the game dev intended) but a specific set of actions gets you access to a new capability you shouldn't have access to, and then you can chain those and chain those and chain those and then you're teleporting across the world and beating the game in four (4) minutes. It just makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside. In a completely different way this is also why I liked Avengers Infinity War, where Thanos kinda speedruns his way through the setting they'd been setting up for years, going in a straight line from the most important part to the most important part lol

[maru]

It tickles a lot of the same neurons in my brain as cybersecurity, where you have a like set of actions you can do (which the game dev intended) but a specific set of actions gets you access to a new capability you shouldn't have access to, and then you can chain those and chain those and chain those and then you're teleporting across the world and beating the game in four (4) minutes. It just makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside. In a completely different way this is also why I liked Avengers Infinity War, where Thanos kinda speedruns his way through the setting they'd been setting up for years, going in a straight line from the most important part to the most important part lol

My friend Phoebe always referred to this as "weird computers", though I'm not sure if that's from a specific paper. That is to say, that in the old Pokemon games, as an example, since you were directly reading and modifying memory, you had a weird amount of root access, and so could treat the diegetic game world as parts of a larger computer. You reinvent a computer out of a world that is trying to keep you on the rails of its state machine. But if you get the state machine into a weird state, it continues to modify itself using its constraints in stranger and stranger directions.

I can see the appeal just sociologically speaking in scrapping your way nomadically across different guardrailed systems, making personal use of the entropy.

[chc4]

Yeah, Weird Machine is a term of art from cybersecurity that talks about the same thing - Sergey Bratus, a project manager at DARPA, coined the phrase and it's been used in trying to formalize what a computer exploit *is* in terms of state machines and unexpected transitions. <a href='https://www.academia.edu/download/81009110/Bratus.pdf' rel='nofollow noopener' target='_blank'>https://www.academia.edu/download/81009 ... tus.pdf</a> isn't the source of the term, but probably one of the more famous papers talking about it

[maru]

Ah! Thank you. Okay. I found this <a href='https://gist.github.com/0xabad1dea/7740977' rel='nofollow noopener' target='_blank'>gist</a> with lots of video game examples, which is honestly pretty inspiring.

[spellbook of fate]

i like speedrunning well enough and ill catch gdq sometimes! theres some cultural ideas and problems that bug me though. theres the idea that speedrunning is the only (or if not only, then best) way to play games as challenge content. that its straight line single path evolution from the games of old. theres a karl jobst quote that exemplifies this to me perfectly, (paraphrasing as) "speedrunning was born when gamers became too skilled for simple score based gameplay". thats nonsense.

and to be clear, im not laying any of this charge at gdq themselves. despite the name, theyve been open from go that the event is about high level gameplay of any kind. ive had friends and acquaintances do shmup score runs on there for example, and theyve all reported that the staff have been helpful and understanding. but i do get annoyed at an audience thats sitting down for their nth year of mario zelda metroid, seeing something slightly different but just as skilled, and asking why its even here.

if you look at something at <a href='https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdxuXU86lBs' rel='nofollow noopener' target='_blank'>high level play for hellsinker,</a> i think this is just as worthy as big gdq headliners. and probably more worthy than some "meme categories" or things like that. its a lil frustrating.

[watermoon]

i like speedrunning well enough and ill catch gdq sometimes! theres some cultural ideas and problems that bug me though. theres the idea that speedrunning is the only (or if not only, then best) way to play games as challenge content. that its straight line single path evolution from the games of old. theres a karl jobst quote that exemplifies this to me perfectly, (paraphrasing as) "speedrunning was born when gamers became too skilled for simple score based gameplay". thats nonsense.

you make a good point here. i wonder if part of that is because speedrunning is an intuitive concept for the average person to get onboard with: if someone is familiar with mario, then "mario but fast" is more easily recognizable as an impressive achievement. it's also one that can be widely applied to a lot of games, so if you already love a game then speedrunning is an easy inroad into finding a community that also loves that game.

is it fair that they get the majority of the attention in the high-level gaming sphere, at least outside of the world of esports? i'm not really sure, but i understand the feeling of being slighted. personally i'm just glad that there will always be pocket communities for certain gaming niches, and they'll keep caring regardless of whether the rest of the world does.
(plus i don't necessarily think that it's universally true? like gen alpha got really into nes tetris and now dominates that scene, and one kid got on the news for it…)

that also brings to mind another phenomenon i've noticed that i can only describe as "visible skill." it's more easy to impress audiences with a game if the gameplay looks difficult, which requires an amount of both spectacle and intelligibility. if someone is personally familiar with a game and how it plays (e.g. mario 64), then it becomes more impressive to watch someone move fluidly through it. if someone isn't, then it's up to the game itself to sell its own difficulty.
i think that explains why within the shmup sphere, i always felt like danmaku took up the majority of the attention, with those games often being what drew people into the genre and what manages to sustain the community. everything else tends to get pushed to the margins – if not within the community itself, then definitely within the wider gaming sphere.

but also that reaction kinda makes sense. it's easy to get invested in watching gus <a href='https://youtu.be/7d76YdrGawE' rel='nofollow noopener' target='_blank'>dodge a million bullets</a> and cut a promo right afterward. with a little explanation of the stakes involved, it's easy to watch <a href='https://youtu.be/7HW7qt67h3Y' rel='nofollow noopener' target='_blank'>fufufu's daioujou white label run at wasshoi 2015</a> and feel the tension as he clutches out loop 2. hellsinker i think would be a bit tougher to get an audience to understand, though, since doing so would require explaining how the game works, how deadliar plays, and then the mess that is spirit scoring.

i'm also now thinking about how rhythm games have been represented in gdq, since it kinda feeds into the same phenomenon. even if all of them are undoubtedly demonstrated by high-level players, which ones grab the most attention? and honestly, the most engaging one i've watched so far has been <a href='https://youtu.be/pd-0LAPshek' rel='nofollow noopener' target='_blank'>happyf333tz's pump it up showcase(s)</a>, since doubles at that level is really fun to watch, and i find him to be a charismatic runner.

<span style='font-size:7pt;line-height:100%'>- was always more of a minogame girl</span>

[watermoon]

while recently keeping up with this internet personality [s]because her recent psychological collapse is extremely relevant to my interests[/s], this older video she made popped up and i couldn't help but think about this conversation again.
and i kinda wonder if, within the more independent spheres of game development, anybody making anything action-related is bound to be cognizant of the speedrunning community as a secondary demographic, and will factor their concerns into the design process… if not design the game around speedrunning as a valid goal.

the video lists rng and autoscrollers as mechanics that land on the chopping block once speedrunning becomes a primary design objective. after some thought, i can add cutscenes and scripted elements, intentionally slower-paced gameplay, and glitch and sequence break patching to the list too. actually that last one is kinda weird because i feel like it creates a sense of animosity if the devs patch something that's a significant time-save, even if the bug potentially worsens the experience for other players who trigger it.

is this the future we want? or does any objective have this consequence once enough people treat it as the standard for high-level gameplay? and if it keeps people sticking with a game and keeping it alive, is it really so bad?

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[maru]

and i kinda wonder if, within the more independent spheres of game development, anybody making anything action-related is bound to be cognizant of the speedrunning community as a secondary demographic, and will factor their concerns into the design process… if not design the game around speedrunning as a valid goal.

is this the future we want? or does any objective have this consequence once enough people treat it as the standard for high-level gameplay? and if it keeps people sticking with a game and keeping it alive, is it really so bad?

I am pretty sure Axiom Verge added a speedrun mode like <a href='https://blog.playstation.com/2015/01/26 ... drun-mode/' rel='nofollow noopener' target='_blank'>almost ten years ago</a>.

I guess my question is whether the game designer is trying to privilege a specific kind of play, or what they're instrumentalising play in the service of, narratively (if they're trying to convey something else). There's a valid school where enabling as many different types of play is considered superior design. Way of the Passive Fist <a href='http://www.wayofthepassivefist.com/the- ... ltysetting' rel='nofollow noopener' target='_blank'>was a bit extreme about this</a>.

I also wonder whether part of the fun of speedrunning is the idea that you're doing stuff you're not supposed to -- purposefully counter-reading the text, as an art form. Are you a speedrunner as a performance art? etc...

[meri]

while recently keeping up with this internet personality [s]because her recent psychological collapse is extremely relevant to my interests[/s], this older video she made popped up and i couldn't help but think about this conversation again.

i have been binging these on your recommendation. the way she expresses herself is a little too relatable, getting under fire and all. this kind of vlogging and sharing format is fun, and im shocked that it uh, works? that people want to watch this kind of thing? <a href='https://www.youtube.com/@hhhazel' rel='nofollow noopener' target='_blank'>hazel</a> is fun too. maps to a similar space in my mind. i like when people are real

[watermoon]

I guess my question is whether the game designer is trying to privilege a specific kind of play, or what they're instrumentalising play in the service of, narratively (if they're trying to convey something else). There's a valid school where enabling as many different types of play is considered superior design. Way of the Passive Fist <a href='http://www.wayofthepassivefist.com/the- ... ltysetting' rel='nofollow noopener' target='_blank'>was a bit extreme about this</a>.

i feel like there's a valid point here, and i wanna say that in general affording the ability for players to adopt different playstyles is a good thing? but that also depends on how stringent the criteria becomes for "whichever objective" you want the game to be about. if it's just about beating the game, then it's neat to allow multiple paths toward that end. or, in a balanced multiplayer game, many different characters and playstyles should be valid for competing against other players, since there's a lot of depth to be found in learning both your style and how to use it to counter others'. but if the aim is just to get through the story mode as quickly as possible then things tend to converge toward there being a single indisputably-optimal playstyle for the purpose. the goal of speedrunning perhaps narrows the horizon…

I also wonder whether part of the fun of speedrunning is the idea that you're doing stuff you're not supposed to -- purposefully counter-reading the text, as an art form. Are you a speedrunner as a performance art? etc...

that's absolutely part of the appeal, yeah, and it's interesting how you conceptualize this as treating the game's mechanics as a text. from that perspective, i then have to wonder if games validate interpretations of them (in this sense) through the fact that these tricks are executable at all. it's not like an alternate reading of a story where we can argue about its validity all we want: you can beat super mario 64 without collecting any of the game's intended markers of progression, and i think the fact that this can be done says something unique about the game.

though as a player, i also think it's especially satisfying when certain unintended mechanics link together to create a feeling of flowing through the game. in that case, if it's a performance art it's one akin to dance, or parkour, or street skating.

i have been binging these on your recommendation. the way she expresses herself is a little too relatable, getting under fire and all. this kind of vlogging and sharing format is fun, and im shocked that it uh, works? that people want to watch this kind of thing? <a href='https://www.youtube.com/@hhhazel' rel='nofollow noopener' target='_blank'>hazel</a> is fun too. maps to a similar space in my mind. i like when people are real

oh yeah hazel is a real one, and i find her videos to be super comfy watches.
if you like that kind of unnervingly personal delivery and also have an interest in [s]eroge[/s] visual novels, i'd highly recommend <a href='https://www.youtube.com/@AmelieDoree' rel='nofollow noopener' target='_blank'>amelie doree</a> too. there's a sense of heartrending earnestness which comes in her interpretations of the games she covers, and i usually come away with them with a line or two that sticks with me…
(like hell, <a href='https://youtu.be/8nJboN3iQQI' rel='nofollow noopener' target='_blank'>her video about the pc-98 game "sex 2"</a> ends up being more about learning to accept one's cringe and find happiness in things that are often looked down upon, and that's become a sentiment that i've tried to carry with me more and more)