Try advertising in advertisment threads (make sure you don't necro in the process) or in speedrunning servers. If the game has a community, like reddit or a fandom page, try suggesting it there.
Tbh, not every game is gonna end up popular, but you never know when one will randomly gain a large following.
There are also a ton of smaller marathons you could show off the game, it doesn't have to be gdq immediately. Always has the chance of having a viewer getting interested in it. But don't expect too much, most games will never get popular and just get a handful runners at most.
Advertising the game is one way to get more runners, but another way is to just run the game actively. Your runs will show up on the front page of the site, and people can randomly find the game that way. Running the game also boosts the "active players" count for the game, which causes it to appear higher up in the "games" page.
wait, since speedrunning can be done in any game, is there a way for devs to "want" people to speed run their games intentionally? 🤔 is it like including speed timers in the game itself? like mirror's edge or some shmups games?
I was just curious about the UX experience from both the dev viewpoint and player. 😀
there is also neon white where you are basically forced to speedrun because of how the game and its mechanics work