I am a long time fan of speedrunning but have never discussed speedrunning with anyone who shared the same love I have for watching my favorite games being broken for better times. I am also a university student and was given the opportunity to study a unique anthropological phenomenon of my choosing this semester, and I have chosen video game speedrunning. If any of you would like to participate in my study, please comment on this post or direct message me. I am only legally allowed to interview adults, so please only message me or respond if you are above the age of 18. The study will only consist of written back and forths through speedrun.com's direct message about why speedrunning has exploded in popularity despite going against many of the norms of entertainment consumption. Please message me if this sounds interesting to you. I will ask permission before recording any conversations we have, and I will have your usernames changed to anonymous handles. And mods, I don't foresee that this post will be in violation, but if it is please take it down and message me and I will find another forum to post to.
This topic definetly sounds interesting to me and I wouldn't mind partaking in this. Out of interest will this be only be part of a coursework or done for any study group that publishes their findings? If it's only for a coursework, would you mind also posting the findings of your interview publicly after the coursework is done?
For me, watching top level speedruns has been similar to watching professional sports games. I love watching people at the top of their game performing some task to such a high degree of accuracy with so much knowledge and skill. For me, there isn't much difference between watching the 100 meter sprint at the Olympics than watching the world record holder on GDQ.
I also may be coming at it from a slightly different view from the regular person as I hold a record in one of my favorite games of all time, so watching people speedrun their favorite games I get to see the approaches to certain things such as timing, glitches and bunny-hopping for example.
Another part of it is that I enjoy watching people complete games that I DON'T speedrun but play casually. I love watching the Last of Us games being ran because I play those for the story and gameplay rather than seeing how fast I can complete it, meaning that I frequently watch the runners beat a section of the game in 30 seconds that may have taken me an hour. I remember a section in the first game where you needed to hold off a horde of zombies in one, small room with limited ammunition. I was not able to do this for some time as I was playing on the hardest difficulty (as I like to do with most games) and watching a speedrun after I had completed put me to shame as AnthonyCaliber fired arrows with surgical precision killing every zombie within moments of them appearing in the game before looking upwards and firing a rifle shot in a tiny crack directly after seeing a few pixels appear in that spot. That rifle shot killed one of the hardest enemies in the game with a single bullet, when it took me multiple magazines. I love seeing that sort of thing because I don't have the same level of knowledge to realise that its weakspot is the bottom of its foot, and that the only place in the entire game where you can utilise this was right there.
Adding to what Lemon said above, a big draw for me is that many of these top performers will interact with the audience. So I can root for a player and feel that I'm actually being heard or ask a player why they make a certain decision and get an answer while I'm watching. Active audience participation is a huge draw for me that other sports don't have.
Second, after I've played through a game I like enough times that it becomes repetitive and boring, there is always a speedrunner who is taking it a step further. For games I've never played before, they can be a sort of "Sparknotes". For instance, I watched someone run through Super Mario Galaxy in the same amount of time it would likely have taken me to just beat the first few levels. However, in that same amount of time, I got to see the entire story arc, and I feel like I got the whole experience in much shorter time, allowing me to move on to other things on my immeasurable long list of games to try.
i like seeing the games i like, get mutilated by speedrunners trying to get the fastest speed, like pidgeons eating cold chipotle that some one forgot to clean up.
what in the bots. It was two years ago guys ðŸ˜