A philosophical discussion of speedrunning

[Xunwael]

For me, I admire speedrunning because of the difficulty of getting good at it and the skill shown by the experts. Anything that you need to grind at over 1000s of hours so you can beat others and become the best is praiseworthy. The struggle of competition and repeated self improvement being fought against and overcome.

Video games are by definition luxury. "Self-improving" at the narcissistic enjoyment of luxury isn't only NOT admirable, it's the antithesis of admirable. To suggest otherwise is full-on freedom is slavery-levels of psychotic delusion.

I dunno about the thesis of twitterguy, but it's no surprise that people who are so deranged that they think hyper-specializing what is essentially communal public masturbation is something admirable, that the same people who are this literally insane would also be prone to doing other insane things like trooning out or supporting communism.

So that's my thesis. Being into speedrunning flows directly from not being able to tell when something is degenerate, disgusting, shameful, and something for which one should feel guilty when engaging in it. And the same inability to feel any genuine shame or guilt causes speedrunners to troon out and diddle kids and cut the heads off of puppies and have sex with the severed bodypart and so on.

Not that I'm not saying speedrunning itself is insane, (although it probably is, let's be honest. Running track or whatever would probably be insane too if it didn't win you medals or give you an ass worthy of desire.) But that being proud of it definitely is.

You shouldn't be proud of degenerate self-destructive shit. I'm not proud of playing video games. I'm not proud of jacking it to [redacted]. I'm not proud of picking my nose, or taking a shit, or responding to this thread. I enjoy it, but I'm not proud of it. Anyone who would be obviously has something severely fucked with their mind and soul. So it's no wonder vidya communities all become deranged shitholes. You kind of have to be a deranged shithole to be into this kinda stuff. The rest follows naturally. Only by embracing the SHAME and the GUILT inherent to enjoying vidya can YOUR soul be saved. Self-flagellate now, before it's too late. Don't become the girl. Resist and repent.

We are all sinners in a fallen world. But we can hope, in spite of despair. To be better.

not me, tho. I'm fucked.

 

[Gastrick]

Video games are by definition luxury. "Self-improving" at the narcissistic enjoyment of luxury isn't only NOT admirable, it's the antithesis of admirable. To suggest otherwise is full-on freedom is slavery-levels of psychotic delusion.

I dunno about the thesis of twitterguy, but it's no surprise that people who are so deranged that they think hyper-specializing what is essentially communal public masturbation is something admirable, that the same people who are this literally insane would also be prone to doing other insane things like trooning out or supporting communism.

So that's my thesis. Being into speedrunning flows directly from not being able to tell when something is degenerate, disgusting, shameful, and something for which one should feel guilty when engaging in it. And the same inability to feel any genuine shame or guilt causes speedrunners to troon out and diddle kids and cut the heads off of puppies and have sex with the severed bodypart and so on.

Not that I'm not saying speedrunning itself is insane, (although it probably is, let's be honest. Running track or whatever would probably be insane too if it didn't win you medals or give you an ass worthy of desire.) But that being proud of it definitely is.

You shouldn't be proud of degenerate self-destructive shit. I'm not proud of playing video games. I'm not proud of jacking it to [redacted]. I'm not proud of picking my nose, or taking a shit, or responding to this thread. I enjoy it, but I'm not proud of it. Anyone who would be obviously has something severely fucked with their mind and soul. So it's no wonder vidya communities all become deranged shitholes. You kind of have to be a deranged shithole to be into this kinda stuff. The rest follows naturally. Only by embracing the SHAME and the GUILT inherent to enjoying vidya can YOUR soul be saved. Self-flagellate now, before it's too late. Don't become the girl. Resist and repent.

We are all sinners in a fallen world. But we can hope, in spite of despair. To be better.

not me, tho. I'm fucked.

Golfing is a luxury and a real one at that, is Tiger Woods a disgusting degenerate? Being insane about what you are interested in is a good thing. Playing video games when you want to may be enjoyable, but replaying the same 10 second loop for over a dozen hours isn't necessarily fun. Edit: It doesn't matter either way though.

 

[KörangarTheMighty]

Do you know of any multi-millionaire speedrunners? You can call Tiger Woods a degenerate for a whole host of reasons applicable to most celebrities but certainly not for being good at golf and making bank from it.

Modern sportsball is the contemptible, emasculated replacement for martial sports like the joust of peace, Greek wrestling, pugilism, hunting etc, of that there is no question, but Tiger isn't in the same league as some sweaty-palmed loser on Twitch. At least he's making a living and touching grass.

 

[Morenatsu.]

Imagine actually speedrunning without glitches. That's boring. I want to see stuff like Half-Life being played at light-speed, I don't want to watch some guy run past scripted sequences for two hours. And as soon as you add anything like minor bunny-hopping and such, you're already using glitches. At some point it's not even possible to discern what's a glitch and what's not, so why not just allow glitches? If you think that's dishonourable to the game or something, you're a loser.

 

[Butter]

Do you know of any multi-millionaire speedrunners? You can call Tiger Woods a degenerate for a whole host of reasons applicable to most celebrities but certainly not for being good at golf and making bank from it.

Modern sportsball is the contemptible, emasculated replacement for martial sports like the joust of peace, Greek wrestling, pugilism, hunting etc, of that there is no question, but Tiger isn't in the same league as some sweaty-palmed loser on Twitch. At least he's making a living and touching grass.

There was a GoldenEye speedrunner who became a multi-millionaire playing poker. He realized his autism could be profitable if redirected to something people actually care about.

 

[KörangarTheMighty]

There was a GoldenEye speedrunner who became a multi-millionaire playing poker. He realized his autism could be profitable if redirected to something people actually care about.

It's good to hear that certain among these folks are capable of crawling up out of the shit. Poker isn't much better in my eyes, but it's further up the ladder and at least shows that we all still have a shot at redemption if we grasp it in earnest.

 

[Butter]

There was a GoldenEye speedrunner who became a multi-millionaire playing poker. He realized his autism could be profitable if redirected to something people actually care about.

You are agreeing with the point that speedrunners are losers right? Loser gamer turns into rich man by doing something less shit with his time and starts counting cards instead.

Poker is every bit as degenerate as speedrunning is. There's nothing admirable about having millions of dollars from not actually producing anything. If you robbed your opponents at knifepoint while they entered the casino, the result would be the same but you'd save everyone some time.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Video games are by definition luxury. "Self-improving" at the narcissistic enjoyment of luxury isn't only NOT admirable, it's the antithesis of admirable. To suggest otherwise is full-on freedom is slavery-levels of psychotic delusion.

I dunno about the thesis of twitterguy, but it's no surprise that people who are so deranged that they think hyper-specializing what is essentially communal public masturbation is something admirable, that the same people who are this literally insane would also be prone to doing other insane things like trooning out or supporting communism.

So that's my thesis. Being into speedrunning flows directly from not being able to tell when something is degenerate, disgusting, shameful, and something for which one should feel guilty when engaging in it. And the same inability to feel any genuine shame or guilt causes speedrunners to troon out and diddle kids and cut the heads off of puppies and have sex with the severed bodypart and so on.

Not that I'm not saying speedrunning itself is insane, (although it probably is, let's be honest. Running track or whatever would probably be insane too if it didn't win you medals or give you an ass worthy of desire.) But that being proud of it definitely is.

You shouldn't be proud of degenerate self-destructive shit. I'm not proud of playing video games. I'm not proud of jacking it to [redacted]. I'm not proud of picking my nose, or taking a shit, or responding to this thread. I enjoy it, but I'm not proud of it. Anyone who would be obviously has something severely fucked with their mind and soul. So it's no wonder vidya communities all become deranged shitholes. You kind of have to be a deranged shithole to be into this kinda stuff. The rest follows naturally. Only by embracing the SHAME and the GUILT inherent to enjoying vidya can YOUR soul be saved. Self-flagellate now, before it's too late. Don't become the girl. Resist and repent.

We are all sinners in a fallen world. But we can hope, in spite of despair. To be better.

not me, tho. I'm fucked.

Golfing is a luxury and a real one at that, is Tiger Woods a disgusting degenerate? Being insane about what you are interested in is a good thing. Playing video games when you want to may be enjoyable, but replaying the same 10 second loop for over a dozen hours isn't necessarily fun. Edit: It doesn't matter either way though.

Oh, if I had done nothing simply from laziness! Heavens, how I should have respected myself, then. I should have respected myself because I should at least have been capable of being lazy; there would at least have been one quality, as it were, positive in me, in which I could have believed myself. Question: What is he? Answer: A sluggard; how very pleasant it would have been to hear that of oneself! It would mean that I was positively defined, it would mean that there was something to say about me. "Sluggard"--why, it is a calling and vocation, it is a career. Do not jest, it is so. I should then be a member of the best club by right, and should find my occupation in continually respecting myself. I knew a gentleman who prided himself all his life on being a connoisseur of Lafitte. He considered this as his positive virtue, and never doubted himself. He died, not simply with a tranquil, but with a triumphant conscience, and he was quite right, too.
- Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground

 

[Ash]

Most of the video games are not designed for speedrunning. Finding the speedrunning strategy is kinda fun but executing it is really tedious which requires lots of grinding.

This. There's all those years of thought put into the game design, iterating, making it fun, engaging, challenging, balanced, varied, complex, deep, everything working in cohesion...then there's this speedrunner twerp that comes along and plays it in the most lamest barebones way possible (depending on the genre; as another said platformers or racing games are natural fits for speedrunning).

Though I do think speedrunners are a good measure of how broken a game is. Most games shouldn't be easy to speedrun, yet many seemingly are. Or maybe it's because they often tend to play on easy which is...lol.

People are weird. There are speedrunners, achievement hunters, collectors (the type that owns 20 copies of the same game), or just those with absolutely terrible taste and somehow enjoys mind-numbingly boring games...I'm not sure which type of gamer is worse. It is probably achievement hunters that are the most degenerate.

Imagine actually speedrunning without glitches. That's boring. I want to see stuff like Half-Life being played at light-speed, I don't want to watch some guy run past scripted sequences for two hours. And as soon as you add anything like minor bunny-hopping and such, you're already using glitches. At some point it's not even possible to discern what's a glitch and what's not, so why not just allow glitches? If you think that's dishonourable to the game or something, you're a loser.

Because Half-Life is not the type of game that lends itself well to speedrunning in the first place and in a sane world nobody would bother. It is only through using glitches that is becomes minimally interesting to watch in the first place. The gameplay doesn't have a high skill ceiling and has a lot of scripted stuff. Hitscan combat, and also a lot of stuff that can be easily broken. Now Super Mario on the other hand is 100% gameplay focused, no story fluff, and more skill-based. Instead of scripted sequences that play rigidly or walking sim segments, its non-stop skill-based action. This makes much more sense to speedrun, and is a much more impressive act of skill (providing no exploits, hacks, constant save/loads then cutting that part out and only showing the successful attempt or whatever else half-measures the speedrunning community like to abuse). That's not to say parts of Half-Life don't make for good speedrunning, they for sure do, but a lot of it doesn't.

I would actually watch a controlled e-sport where people go head to head live (so no cheating) in games with minimal fluff and high skill ceiling, games actually suited for it. But instead people play fortnite, or speedrun on their dumb terms, or other degenerate shit.

 

[Morenatsu.]

There's another thing, too. Speedruns, and also arcade games, are all about world-records. They aren't about direct competition between people, so comparing them to sports isn't really appropriate. People watch sports to see their favourite team win, player skill isn't the important part.

Most of the video games are not designed for speedrunning. Finding the speedrunning strategy is kinda fun but executing it is really tedious which requires lots of grinding.

This. There's all those years of thought put into the game design, iterating, making it fun, engaging, challenging, balanced, varied, complex, deep, everything working in cohesion...then there's this speedrunner twerp that comes along and plays it in the most lamest barebones way possible (depending on the genre; as another said platformers or racing games are natural fits for speedrunning).

Though I do think speedrunners are a good measure of how broken a game is. Most games shouldn't be easy to speedrun, yet many seemingly are. Or maybe it's because they often tend to play on easy which is...lol.

People are weird. There are speedrunners, achievement hunters, collectors (the type that owns 20 copies of the same game), or just those with absolutely terrible taste and somehow enjoys mind-numbingly boring games...I'm not sure which type of gamer is worse. It is probably achievement hunters that are the most degenerate.

As a wannabe game designer, you're upset that there are people who break games.

Because Half-Life is not the type of game that lends itself well to speedrunning in the first place and in a sane world nobody would bother. It is only through using glitches that is becomes minimally interesting to watch in the first place. The gameplay doesn't have a high skill ceiling and has a lot of scripted stuff. Hitscan combat, and also a lot of stuff that can be easily broken. Now Super Mario on the other hand is 100% gameplay focused, no story fluff, and more skill-based. Instead of scripted sequences that play rigidly or walking sim segments, its non-stop skill-based action. This makes much more sense to speedrun, and is a much more impressive act of skill (providing no exploits, hacks, constant save/loads then cutting that part out and only showing the successful attempt or whatever else half-measures the speedrunning community like to abuse). That's not to say parts of Half-Life don't make for good speedrunning, they for sure do, but a lot of it doesn't.

I would actually watch a controlled e-sport where people go head to head live (so no cheating) in games with minimal fluff and high skill ceiling, games actually suited for it. But instead people play fortnite, or speedrun on their dumb terms, or other degenerate shit.

A speedrun of Mario is just Mario. It's not interesting. The point is, when you remove glitches, 99% of all games become pointless to speedrun, and the remaining ones are just normal gameplay, but faster. THAT is minimally interesting, and probably not even that if you're not also playing the game in such a way yourself. People asking for glitchless speedruns are just asking for speedruns to not exist.

But of course we all know about how much a poseur loser you are, and how much you want to try hard to seem like a hardcore gamer. You're just a senseless idiot, though. A virgin mooder who goes ‘omg hitscan bad, you can't play that shitty half-life game, I only play SKILL BASED GAMES, you skill-less cheating LOSERS!!’, while the chad speedrunner is backflipping over your digital grave with his epic gamer skillz. Forget about the rules, speedrunning is interesting and it's entertaining, and some dumb e-sport version of it isn't. It's competition for real nerds, not normie competitors who don't get it, and all those absurd glitches take as much skill as ‘skill-based gameplay’, if not more. But it's against your rules therefore it's cheating therefore it's easy even though it isn't.

 

[Falksi]

Some games suit speed running, others not so much. Alien 3 on the Megadrive is a great game to speedrun as you're already up against a timer, so it's essentially designed to speedrun anyway and playing that way enhances the experience once you've mastered it and want to take that mastery to another level.

But when I read of people speedrunning games like A Link To The Past or Deus Ex I just laugh at the silly twats doing themselves out of enjoyment. These are games designed to be absorbed, not create a tense sense of pressure. These are the type of folk who'd rush to spunk as quickly as possible if Michelle Pfeiffer offered them a fuck. Anyone with any sense would soak it up for a long as possible.

And no speedrun counts properly unless you're doing it live surrounded by friends or other people watching, and under a genuine sense of pressure. It's like the soft twats who can shred guitar like masters in their bedroom, but shit their pants when they get on-stage. Speedrunning with no one else around is just rehearsing.

 

[Morenatsu.]

Ah yes those darn speedrunners don't know how to enjoy a good game, they just pick it up and immediately start doing cartwheels to the end of the game in five minutes because they're retarded!

I mean, some of them might play a game just to speedrun it, but most people don't start speedrunning those kinds of games unless they actually liked them enough to begin with.

 

[Falksi]

Ah yes those darn speedrunners don't know how to enjoy a good game, they just pick it up and immediately start doing cartwheels to the end of the game in five minutes because they're retarded!

I mean, some of them might play a game just to speedrun it, but most people don't start speedrunning those kinds of games unless they actually liked them enough to begin with.

Thanks, but not really anything to do with my point that some games are meant to be savored.

I'm sure an alcoholic can bollock a bottle of Macallan Red down his neck in half a day, but you've got to be unhealthily obsessed with drinking to do that. The same for gamers who speedrun games which take many, many hours to complete. There's something fundamentally retarded about them.

Play it, enjoy it, forget about it for a few months/years, come back to it and enjoy that flavour again. Speedrun the shorter games which are designed for speed, not the deeper games which are designed for savouring.

 

[Morenatsu.]

It's only retarded if the resulting speedrun is still several hours long.

 

[DJOGamer PT]

Modern sportsball is the contemptible, emasculated replacement for martial sports like the joust of peace, Greek wrestling, pugilism, hunting etc, of that there is no question

Never understood this opinion
In fact, most of the times I heard something like this it came from women, and was usually followed by butthurt remarks of "they make millions every month from just kicking a ball around"

Seriously what's so emasculated about it?
It requires a great deal of endurance, it bolsters competitiveness and like all team exercises it thrives on good planning and good faith between teammates


Also on what basis do you claim that it replaced martial sports?
Most of the sports you mentioned still exist and are widely praticed.
Also most of them were historically meant for people in higher strata of society:
> Jousting - exclusive to nobles, pretty much disapeared after the early renaissance, but revived in the last century, also kind of a silly sport
> Greek Wrestling - like the name implies popular in Ancient Greece, with the changing of a pagan culture to a christian one it lost its reason to exist, but it got kinda revived, in the 19th, in the form of Greco-Roman Wrestling, an Olympic Sport for decades now
> Pugilism - Do you live in a fucking cave? Because last time I checked you can find countless Martial Arts "schools" in pretty much any civilized country, in every city. Not to mention the fact that Boxing and MMA are some of the most profitable and common sports in the world

> Hunting - very few people throughout history have partaken in hunts as sport, mostly nobles; also hunting as a sport is pretty contemptible



Now Golfing, is IMO the most boring and ridiculous excuse for a sport

 

[DJOGamer PT]

The point is, when you remove glitches, 99% of all games become pointless to speedrun, and the remaining ones are just normal gameplay, but faster.

Wrong as usual

 

[Morenatsu.]

The point is, when you remove glitches, 99% of all games become pointless to speedrun, and the remaining ones are just normal gameplay, but faster.

Wrong as usual

No, you. You and Ash belong to that special group of retards who are permanently butthurt about me because you're too dumb to understand anything I say. Enjoy fisting each other, I guess.

 

[Ash]

Worst poster on the codex. Nearly everything you say has my eyes rolling and misses the point spectacularly.

 

[Morenatsu.]

You don't even know what you don't know.

 

[DJOGamer PT]

snip

 

[Morenatsu.]

Here you go, a Codexian mood-board for you and your friends:

 

[KörangarTheMighty]

Never understood this opinion
In fact, most of the times I heard something like this it came from women, and was usually followed by butthurt remarks of "they make millions every month from just kicking a ball around"

Seriously what's emasculated about it?
It requires a great deal of endurance, it bolsters competitiveness and like all team exercises it thrives on good planning and good faith between teammates


Also on what basis do you claim that it replaced martial sports?
Most of the sports you mentioned still exist and are widely praticed.
Also most of them were historically meant for people in higher strata of society:
> Jousting - exclusive to nobles, pretty much disapeared after the early renaissance (only revived in the last century), also kind of a silly sport
> Greek Wrestling - like the name implies popular in Ancient Greece, with the changing of a pagan culture to a christian one it lost it's reason to exist, but it got somewhat revived in the 19th as Greco-Roman Wrestling where it still survives to this day as an Olympic Sport
> Pugilism - Do you live in a fucking cave? Because last time I checked you can find countless Martial Arts "schools" in pretty much any civilized country. Not to mention the fact that Boxing and MMA are some of the most profitable and common sports in the world

> Hunting - very few people throughout history have partaken in hunting as sport, mostly nobles; also hunting as a sport is pretty contemptible

Everything? Chasing a ball around a lawn is sport for hounds not men.

Every benefit you mentioned already exists in the martial sports I mentioned, moreover there is actual risk of death in most of them owing to the fact they're using weaponry, pursuing dangerous animals or otherwise beating the shit out of each other. The skills gained from all of these were both important outside the given sports and obviously masculine.

On the basis that they either don't exist anymore or are so small a niche that they are only seen as pussified facsimiles in the Olympics. None of these, even in their current watered-down state, come anywhere near the popularity of sportsball. They have been replaced.

Meant for people in higher strata?

"Jousting is for nobility." And?
"Greek" wrestling is a shorthand. Wrestling has nothing to do with being pagan lol. It never disappeared and was hugely popular in the medieval period. Where the fuck did you get that dumb idea from?
Pugilism as was no longer exists. Boxing is not pugilism. MMA is not pugilism.
No. Literally every able male in pre-history was a hunter. Further along in history, they were regulated and restricted to certain game, in certain countries. Do not take Norman Forest Law as the norm.

 

[LarryTyphoid]

You should only engage in this sort of comically unproductive hobby if you can point to something else you've got going on that is actually worthwhile. If you're otherwise a productive member of society then nobody will fault you for "speedrunning". But that's rarely the case for speedrunners, is it?

Everything? Chasing a ball around a lawn is sport for hounds not men.

Every benefit you mentioned already exists in the martial sports I mentioned, moreover there is actual risk of death in most of them owing to the fact they're using weaponry, pursuing dangerous animals or otherwise beating the shit out of each other. The skills gained from all of these were both important outside the given sports and obviously masculine.

Stop larping faggot

 

[KörangarTheMighty]

Stop larping faggot

Eat a dick.

 

[Morenatsu.]

Unproductivity is the highest of states!