So, something that's been on my mind lately is high scores. As you all know, there's no go-to / universal site for high scores on the internet. And for a while now, people have been asking me to add high scores to speedrun.com, however I don't particularly want to do this because high scores are not what the name "speedrun dot com" implies.

So I started looking at the alternatives. There are existing sites rivalling Twin Galaxies, such as Cyberscore and highscore.com, and while some have significant databases of records, none of them are quite what I think is needed right now, and that is a centralised high score website, where records wouldn't be verified by a higher team of moderators, but rather by moderators of game, pretty much the same way it works here on speedrun.com. This site would ideally collaborate / pool data from the existing alternatives to Twin Galaxies, and I believe if it's done right, it could become the most reputable high score site, and could even incur a surge in popularity of high score attempts, and streaming them on Twitch.

I would be willing to build such a site, or at least, if we could get a team together, collaborate and direct its development.

One issue however, is the name. Of all of the existing sites, one that really caught my eye is highscore.com. What a perfect domain name that is. I actually reached out to the owner in January and said all of the above, and offered to buy his domain name for a certain amount of money. He declined, adding that he's not currently interested in selling it (and that if he were, that amount doesn't come close to what the domain is worth), adding however, that he would be willing to consider collaboration / cross-promotion. We chatted a little back and forth throwing some ideas around, but nothing has yet been decided.

However, I'm not sure if I'm personally up for that, or if it would even work out. I feel like in order to see this through fully, then I need full control / ownership of it.

Last week, I was chatting to one of the head admins of Cyberscore, and mentioned all of the above. We had an informal chat, and basically, they would be very up for helping out / pooling / sharing data if this were to happen, which is good to know.

So, I'm now left with 4 options:

1. Add high scores to speedrun.com.
2. Work with the owner of highscore.com to try to improve the existing site.
3. Try again to buy highscore.com (offering more money), make a completely new website in its place, while trying to salvage as much of the existing data as possible.
4. Make a completely new high scores website under a different name / domain name.

Personally I would like to try option 3, but I'd like to get all of your opinions on what you think should be done, so please leave a comment with any thoughts or ideas you have.

Note: We wouldn't necessarily be expecting the same people to moderate on both potential sites, and a speedrun.com implementation would need discussion.

Add it to speedrun.com. Site is already known and yes it doesn't have a pretty name but it can be incorporated quite well IMO. It also could be separated from the speedruns and it not all be grouped together. I think that's the best way to go about it.

If the scores are added on Speedrun.com, there could be two pages for the games. The first page would contain the speedrun and the second page would contain the scores.

Option 3 or option 1 seem like the best options to me. Obviously getting highscore.com would be ideal because “speedrun” doesn’t imply high scores, but if option 1 does happen, it could be mitigated by creating another route under this one that is explicitly for high scores (speedrun.com/high_scores or something) so that was its kinda under the umbrella of the site while still remaining separated. Then it can kinda exist as it’s own entity. But at least that way it could match a lot of the format of this site in terms of game by game verification.

I personally wouldn't mind if highscores were just added to speedrun.com. Maybe have two "modes" for the site though for people who do care. Users could set in their preferences whether they want to only see highscores, speedruns, or both. And then maybe have a highscores.com domain that redirects to the site with the highscores mode enabled. Games could have separate highscore moderators, default to highscore listings, etc.

Or maybe have more of a hard separation, and have a separate site that requires all games to be set up/moderators added from scratch, which would probably be better in the long run, and lead to better verification of highscores, but still have a unified account system with speedrun.com and link everything together so the highscores and speedrun community are more intertwined.

I really don't think option 2 is a good idea though. Ideally, if it were a separate site, it'd have the same layout/themeing that speedrun.com has to keep everything nice and unified.

I'm a fan of trying options 3 or 4. I'd really like to see highscore.com be bought, and would be willing to donate towards purchasing the domain. Another Idea of fundraising would maybe be a speedrun/highscore hybrid marathon?

Are there any other similar names avaible like scores . com or something? If that's just not a option, 1 would be the best imo, then maybe do something like highscores.speedrun.com?

Edit: About the actual site then, I feel like the best would be to basically add a speedrun and highscore version for each game, moderators would carry over (if they don't want to mod the highscore part they could remove themselves and mod others instead), by doing this most games would already have mods that understand how the game works and the community would usually already have mods they know. Then obviously add a link to each other at the left side (like Forum, Streams etc)

I think adding highscores to the site itself would be alright. It could have its own tab where you see Leaderboard, Guides, Streams, etc. (probably under Leaderboard) if someone were to want to have highscores. It wouldn't need to be there either unless someone adds it through edit game just like how the IL tab works so there won't be a bunch of Highscores tabs throughout games that don't need to be there. It could operate in its own way separate from the regular leaderboards this way too I think. I don't believe working with someone you don't know like at all is worth the risk either, especially when they are the site owner.

EDIT: Or if it ends up being its own site the tab could just direct to the board on that site

It seems to me that SRDC has already incorporated many non-time-specific sections (such as: Guides, Streams, Resources, or Forum). Certainly, sections like these may not directly relate to competition in the same way a leaderboard does, but they certainly can, and still relate to the game. Because of these two factors, it's my understanding that while a 'High Score Leaderboard', may seem secondary in this context, that doesn't necessarily make it unconventional. Objectively though: For many speedgames, especially small ones, any information on the game can be important, and being able to keep track of it all on one site would make that convenient.

I like 1 and 4 :) I am interested in high scores but never liked how confusing the TG site was to use

highscores.com is available.

I'd vote for turning it into a sister-website to SRC. Same layout, same backend, link through to each other, but act as separate websites for all other purposes.

highscores.com is so fucking expensive!

I vote 2, probably will result in the best outcome of owner is cooperative.

EDIT: misread numbers, changed 3 to 2

Hello. I'm a Proof Mod from Cyberscore, and reading this got my attention.

I'd be willing to help if you create a "scores.com" site .

Voting for the 4th options, but 3rd options is acceptable nevertheless, but not guaranteed to succeed.

There are already some scores around on the site (check Flappy Bird) but this isnt quite the place for it.

Why I support your decision? Well speedrun.com is very well known for a vasta majority of people, and having a HighScore website from the creator of speedrunning.com would be very good. Hopefully some people transfer to HighScore as well.

CyberScore is a cool place and has a great community but it's not as big as speedrun. Also sometimes what is debatable of what can be considered a HighScore or not doesnt please everyone.

I would like to see the outcome of this.

I just have a question for you @Pac . In order to keep the submissions clean and legit, are you willing to ban the use of emulators?

Looking forward to this.

It sounds like 3 would be expensive, based on what you said. I think that this is a great idea, and 1 or 4 sound like good options.

Honestly, I don't even like the domain name highscores.com. It's not intuitive and would get confused with highscore.com. However, if I manage to get highscore.com, I might buy it as well some day to account for any confusion, like I did with** www.speedruns.com **

Considering he isn't interested in selling the site, 3 seems rather aggressive. With a lot of work I think I like the idea of 2 the most, but if you can't accept not having full ownership over the project, then I guess that's not a real option, either. 1 doesn't seem like a fantastic option, either, because while the site format would be really nice for highscores, I don't think the site itself is the best place for it.

I suppose 4 is the option I'd support.

Damn, well if the money is there...

Hmm. I actually like the idea of having a universal goto site for both speedruns and highscores in one site. The problem would obviously be the name.

So 2 different sites which are very closely linked with each other, like having a direct link to the score site of every game on speedrun.com and the other way around, plus sharing same accounts on both sites would maybe be the best solution.

But please try to have full ownership, like you said above.

I currently don't have a real opinion on this but, It would be nice to have a sister site to do as such. Name would be an issue and linking them together if possible would be a good idea. There are plenty of games I'm sure allot of us play that may have both Speedrun goals and Highscore parts to them as well and be interesting to be able to do so within the existing community. Either way I'll conform to w.e is decided, but I do not want to go else where to do as such as I find it nicer to be able to link everything in one place or easily find it as such.

Would "scorerun.com" work as an adequate domain name for a potential sister site?