I'm writing an essay on speedrunners, and I want to know what motivated you to become one. What was the moment you decided you wanted to do this? What is the most satisfying part of Speedrunning? I want to hear about your personal experience in this community.
Hi there! My name is turtlebias, and I would love to help! I'm new to the community, and being practicing multiple games such as SpongeBob Battle For Bikini Bottom and Roblox Speedrun Four. I was motivated to speedrun by watching others, and just being mind boggled on how my hours of gameplay were overlapped by, ten or in some cases, four minutes. The most satisfying part to me is beating a game that takes an extended amount of time normally in less than half that time. Such as beating it in twenty minutes (like Half Life, nice run quadrazid!) instead of multiple hours. I think this is personally one of the most welcoming communities in speedrunning as well. P.s, I am not a professional speedrunner, just a mediocre one getting on his feet. I would love to see the essay when done! Hope this helped.
I was about 9, maybe 10 years old when I got my first game, Kirby Squeak Squad for the DS. Once you 100% the game you unlock a mode that times how fast you can 100% game. Although this time isn't super accurate, it was enough to get me to try and speedrun it, and then most other games I play at least once. I notice in-game timers are how many get into speedrunning. They tend to pique the interest of players, who give speedrunning a try and often enjoy it. For me the most satisfying part of is coming up with and then implementing new strategies. It's why I like to speedrun a game for a couple of months before checking out any tutorials or guides, so I can see how far I can get using my own ideas. It's also why I like to run some games with smaller communities, there's plenty of potential for coming up with improvements to the run. Hope this helps, and can't wait to see the essay when it comes out!
Honestly, I started speedrunning to try and save money by getting more longevity out of my games. A couple hundred dollars in capture equipment later, I'm not sure that actually worked but I'm having fun so yea.
I was playing the indie game Monaco:What's your is mine - it has an online multiplayer, and somehow I ended up randomly joining a group of speedrunners. My impression is that it's online speedrun community was based around the in-game leaderboard, which is why it sort of artificially focused on 100% individual level categories instead of the "any% get to credits" that other speedruns do.
It was a few more years before I did single player speedruns in other games.. mostly started them because the Monaco group got a lot less active (it was a 2013 game after all).
I started speedrunning back in 2013/2014 when I found which I believe was GarageDoorOpener run Banjo Tooie on either his own Twitch or GDQ which was my first actual few speedruns I saw and watched and didn't understand anything of it, but due to the mere fact Banjo Tooie was one of my favorite games, I decided to pick it up as my very first speedgame. I later then found Nemz38 at the end of 2015 also on Twitch speedrunning Dark Souls III, which quickly became the game I actually found myself to be extremely passionate about and also became the only serious speedrun game which I ran for over a good 4 years now. It's intriguing to me how speedrunning sparks my interest because of the streamers I love watching.
I'll give you my take if you are willing to commission me for my input.
I do not believe for a minute any school, college or program is giving out assignments to take on an essay about speedrunners (if this is being posted on a website, then I really want commissioned). If this is more along the lines of a survey, I still want commissioned.
I'm going to be that guy that calls out how incorrect this is.
Edit: Just to clarify, I'm being honest. I'd just like to know what specifically this is meant for.