The Fascination with Speedrunning

Green Hill Zone from Sonic the Hedgehog (1991) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A gaming phenomenon that has proven to be very popular on Twitch.tv and YouTube is speedrunning.  If you pay a visit to Twitch right now, I can almost guarantee that you will find a few channels where people are attempting to speedrun games, and most of those channels will have hundreds of viewers.  First off, what, you may ask, is speedrunning?  Simply speaking, it is an attempt to complete a game as quickly as possible.  This concept is straightforward, so what makes speedrunning so popular?  The obvious answer is that people speedrun to beat or obtain a world record.  Thus, it is understandably quite exciting to cheer on the speedrunner as he or she attempts to make their mark in gaming history.

Speedrunning, to some extent, goes against my instincts as a gamer.  In much of my gaming career, I’ve taken time to appreciate the scenery of many of the games I’ve played.  In fact, when I first heard of speedrunning, I was a bit tuned off by it for that precise reason.  Although I am still a casual gamer at heart, I can’t help but understand and appreciate the popularity of speedrunning.  It takes hard work and a great amount of dedication, perhaps to the point where you might get sick of the game you are trying to speedrun.  Even I tried my hand at speedrunning Leon’s A scenario in Resident Evil 2.  My personal best was 1:30:37 (which is saved in an archived video on my Twitch channel if you are interested in checking it out.  There’s my shameless plug of the day).

While the idea isn’t difficult to comprehend, the actual execution of a speedrun is a complex feat.  Think about it.  How do you go about speeding through a game?  Speedrunners exhibit a great amount of dedication in playing a game and learning the ins and outs of it in order to find the fastest route possible, and as a result, a hardcore speedrunner is probably one of the best experts on whichever game he or she is running.  It is pretty fascinating to see what sorts of glitches, shortcuts and technical features are used by speedrunners to get from point A to point B as quickly as possible.  Even if watching a speedrun isn’t your thing, you might learn some new things about your favorite video game if someone is attempting to obtain a world record for it.

How popular is speedrunning?  Speedrunning has become such a widespread phenomenon that some speedrunners have used their skills to help raise money for charity most recently in January when they took part in Awesome Games Done Quick 2013 (AGDQ).  Their combined efforts helped to raise over $448,000 for the Prevent Cancer Foundation.

Now, is speedrunning here to stay, or is it just a passing fad?  To be honest, it’s hard to say.  A quick glance of Twitch suggests that there might not be as many channels dedicated to speedrunning as there were a few months ago, but whether this is indicative of a trend or just the time of day I happened to check Twitch, I’m not so sure.  Only time will tell, but the next major speedrunning event, Summer Games Done Quick (SGDQ), will serve as a reminder of this important phenomenon that has had a profound impact on the gaming community.

So, if learning glitches and running through a game several dozen times doesn’t seem like a daunting task to you, I’d say go for it and who knows?  You might see your name in the pages of gaming history before long.