Current View of the Speedrunning Community

I'm going to start this off by saying I have been a member of the community for a long time. I have both done speedruns as well as helped others learn to speedrun. I have helped route games, found glitches, and supported fellow speedrunners in bringing down the times of games. What I type here is based on the experiences I have witnessed throughout my time in this community.

Speedrunning is a very simple idea: beat the game as fast as possible. People have been speedrunners for many years before the term speedrunning was ever coined. My friends would come over on the weekend and we would take turns playing a game. We would see who could beat the game the fastest. Every new run someone would find a new strat to save time or even a lucky glitch and we would spend hours studying it until we could no longer lower the time. Speedrunning was always competitive to us. The person who would get the best run got to pick the game for the next week. What we understood, however, was that speedrunning was more about having fun as a group.

When we first found out that people all over the world did what we did, we were excited. We saw it as an opportunity to both learn from new people but to also teach people what we have learned in our games. We wanted to push our weekly games as low as possible. Overtime, we learned many new strategies from other runners that enabled us to get lower times in games we thought weren't possible to lower. The speedrun community at this time was one of the most exciting times in gaming history that I have been a part of. A new game would come out and I would call up my friends and we would spend that weekend routing, breaking, and enjoying the game. We would compare notes with other runners around the world. It was like each new game was a new adventure for us.

Then one day we found out about live streaming. This was huge. We could watch each other do speedruns and help lower the times of games in real time. We didn't have to wait overnight to see responses on a forum about new strategies. This was a pretty big time for not just us but for the speedrun community as a whole. At this time people were excited to watch new strategies live and help break games. The community as a whole would break games faster than ever while live. Progress was very fast. In my honest opinion, I believe this time to be the pinnacle time in speedrunning. From here it went downhill.

With the popularity of live streaming speedruns, a website was launched called SpeedRunsLive. This website on the front was an index of live on air streamers doing speedruns. It was very informative and allowed people to find new streamers and games to help out. The underside of the site took place on the IRC. There were channels dedicated to series of games like megaman and zelda where you could talk about speedruns and help/get help on games. The website as a whole was great, but what I would call "the downfall" of the community happened and it corrupted this site just like it corrupted most of the community.

"The downfall" is what I call what has happened to the community over the past couple years. The community went from a fairly large group of people who worked together to lower times in games to an enormous group of people who fought against each other to be the fastest in a game for individual fame. This change didn't happen overnight. It took a few years to ruin decades of work people have done.

There isn't one person or thing that caused "the downfall" but rather it's the product of many different factors. I will go over what I believe played a huge part in causing the decline of this hobby.

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1. SpeedRunsLive
SpeedRunsLive was originally one of the best websites for speedrunning and speedrunners. You could race friends, find new runners, and talk to people about your strategiess. However as time went on, SpeedRunsLive made a few questionable decisions that I feel affected the community as a whole and played a part in "the downfall".

SpeedRunsLive allowed visitors to watch live streams of runners. To get added to SpeedRunsLive page was fairly simple at first: be a speedrunner and ask on the irc to be added. This worked out great when the community was smaller, but as it grew there was trouble. SpeedRunsLive implemented a rule that to be included in their index you had to race a certain amount of time in a month. However, there was a "white list". This was a list of people who were exempt from the racing rule. On paper this seemed like a great idea, but in practice it was a horrible idea. Some games got very popular like super mario 64, and if you didn't race these popular games there was very little chance to get included on the index.

The "white list" had more implications than blocking legitimate speedrunners from being included on a community speedrun index. The "white list" divided runners on popularity/importance. If you were not important/popular you were not on that list. This mindset slowly grew in the community. This favoritism played a large part in peoples' views on the community. It was a huge factor in the change from community speedrunning to individual entertainer.

People also began to abuse the "white list" as well as the SpeedRunsLive index itself. Over the past year or so when the community changed to individual entertainer, people began to realize that its easier to entertain an audience playing new games (lets plays) than to reset speedruns. As such, people who were on the index began to do lets plays disguised at speedruns. They used the exposure gained from SpeedRunsLive to build their brand and entertain people. SpeedRunsLive refused to police these users, so more and more runners thought it was ok to do lets plays while still being on the index. This lack of control over content was a huge catalyst in this new era of individual entertainer.

SpeedRunsLive's final contribution to "the downfall" would be the project: SRL Leaderboards. Cosmo, the co-founder of SpeedRunsLive, said he had a dream where there would be a centralized leaderboard where people could go to look up record runs to learn from and improve upon. When he announced that SpeedRunsLive was working on this project, everyone got excited. Just about everyone backed the idea. However, just like everything else, the leaderboard project suffered from effects of the transition to individual entertainer era. Cosmo began to lose passion for the project when he realized that he could spend his time better by streaming and receiving donations. He wasn't getting paid for leaderboards but his livelihood depended on money earned from streaming. Eventually Cosmo passed responsibility onto a team and removed himself from the project. Unfortunately this team wasn't that great and pretty much gave up on the project unofficially. During the project lifetime there were other people who tried to make leaderboards but got told that competition would just hurt in the long run. So currently, the project that should have taken a few months max to finish is on year two. People are scared to oppose SpeedRunsLive, so there currently are no official centralized leaderboards. This is one of the largest negative impacts SpeedRunsLive has on the community. People noticed the lack of morale in what is to be considered the central speedrun site, and in turn their morale fell in the community.

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2. Games Done Quick marathons
A long time ago people thought of a great idea: speedrun games in a marathon to raise money for charity. In the beginning a few people would meet up in a basement to stream speedruns live. As the community grew, the number of attendees grew as well. Eventually the venue moved out of the basement and into a youth center. Attendance grew, viewers grew, and donation totals grew. The organizers of these marathons decided that with so much money being donated, that the time they spent on it should be compensated. It takes a lot of time for a few people to organize a marathon. The organizers then created a company and made organizing the two marathons their full time jobs. They contracted a less than stellar charity who was willing to negotiate wages and expense based on success of marathons. By deciding to go professional was the largest mistake ever. That decision was a huge factor in the start of "the downfall" of the speedrun community.

Once the contract was signed, the main goal of these marathons changed from showing off how fast games are completed to doing whatever it takes to raise the most amount of money to secure a better contract for next year. Normally, the games chosen to be played were based on how much a game has improved and entertainment + nostalgia factor with some influence. Once money became the primary measurement of success for the marathons, everything changed. At first the games chosen changed. Games that were considered boring to some had a much less chance of getting in. Games were mainly chosen based on how entertaining they were and how nostalgic they are. The more the viewer loves the game the better odds they will donate. Then submissions were accepted based on who ran the games. Organizers chose games ran by popular people because they knew their fans would donate lots of money to watch them play. Many popular runners got their submissions in even though their games had not improved or in fact they barely even ran it for long. The most recent example was the game Minecraft getting in by two people who don't speedrun.

Not only was game selection corrupt, but the event itself became corrupt. Organizers added donation goals for games to be played. They added donation goals for certain runners to play games. The most concerning change was the increase in fee for attending even though attendance almost doubles each year. People saw this and asked questions about what expenses needed to be covered. The forum posts from the organizers as well as videos revealed that the charity covers the cost of renting the venue as well as some costs for equipment. They also released a list of expenses which rose a lot of concerns of how they spend their money. As it turns out the marathon organizers have purchased essentially two different sets of equipment for each of their locations that marathons take place in. Instead of shipping/hauling equipment from marathon to marathon they have storage facilities. Currently as it stands, these marathons are making a profit off the fees charged to attend. In the past the costs were split evenly among attendees, but now that the organizers turned corporate, fees are static for everyone and a large profit is made. The next marathon is estimated to make a profit of almost $40,000 from the community alone. It is very disappointing how an event so exciting has turned into such a greedy chore for some.

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3. Speedrun Streamers
The third and final factor that I believe has contributed to "the downfall" of the speedrun community would have to be the attitudes and actions of streamers. When streaming first was introduced it was one of the most exciting things for the community. People would play their video games, others would watch, and all would contribute to conversations of how to improve the game. However, speedrun streamers saw how other video game communities were making money through twitch partner and donations and decided they could do that as well. At first getting partner from twitch was hard to do. It was a status symbol to get partner and subscription option from twitch. Being partner to twitch didn't directly influence the speedrun community much, but the money through donations had a huge influence (and still does) that would forever change how streamers acted.

People have always used webcams on their streams. The majority of a stream layout would be roughly 75% game 15% splits 10% webcam. As people started to monetize their streams more, the layouts started to change. Some streams went from 100% game screens to large webcams, small game screens, donation tracker, graphic overlays, and other bells and whistles. The changes in layouts would snowball across the community. When a more popular streamer turned their webcam away from their nails and onto their face and saw great monetary results, many others followed suit with the face cams. There was a sort of a meta game within streamers. A streamer that focused on making money over speedrunning was competing with other streamers for viewers. These competitions were fierce and many people went all out. Over the past year or so is when I feel the most change has happened to layouts. People added links to their social media, audio notifications when someone followed/subscribed/donated, and pictures on their layout that would appease to their viewers like anime characters or celebrity photos. These people were branding their stream. Generally branding your stream shouldn't effect the community since the focus should still be on the games. However, the more and more gimmicks that were displayed the more viewers enjoyed and more they donated to their favorite streamers. This created a sub culture that if you are streaming you NEED to have webcam or any of these bells and whistles. Some viewers won't even watch a stream if there isn't a webcam.

This attitude of having to brand your stream is a very concerning change. Over a year many people have put the actual hobby of speedrunning to the side and focused mainly on finding ways to attract and retain viewers so they could monetize their stream. The spectrum of gimmicks that have been created is astounding. There were subscriber goals, daily donation goals, every stream has a "group" you become part of when you subscribe to make you feel special and pressures others to be a part of, people stopped playing their favorite game in place of playing viewers' favorite games, irc chat raffles were made, bots kept track of your time in their irc and rewarded you, viewers could sponsor games to be played, subscribers could play games with the streamer, cosmetic changes like nail polish colors and no shirts, and many other gimmicks that focused on making the viewer the most important person to retain them.

Most of those marketing strategies of streamers did not directly effect other streamers. They only indirectly effected the community by forcing other streamers to get creative with new gimmicks to grab shares of a very limited viewing audience. And with more new gimmicks, more people saw success and copied. However, there were a couple community wide events that to this day I still cannot understand how or why the community ever thought it was a good idea to support. The main event being called "Showcase Race". This event was pitched by a streamer named Iateyourpie a year ago or so. The idea was that each stream would be a broadcast of a live race from a different game. The event would showcase each of the strats and glitches in that game and provide color commentary and explanations on how they all work. This idea of an event was a great idea. It was what the community needed.  However what actually came to fruition was quite a different take on the idea. The idea got molded into a competitive race where viewers could donate to the prize pool and the winner got the prizes. Then the event got sponsored by a company who was notorious for screwing over their content creators called Machinima. Once it was announced that Machinima would sponsor this new competitive twist the community fought back. People did not want the speedrun community advertised to the audience Machinima normally has (disrespectful teens/preteens). The community did not want to let Machinima get their foot in the door since many understood that the Showcase Races were just a beginning.  Fortunately, the community threw such an uproar over the "selling out" to Machinima that the whole project was canceled. Many people were excited that the community actually rejected a strong change towards monetization of the community. However, what confuses me to this day is recently they (Iateyourpie and few others) decided it would be a good idea to relaunch the Showcase Race event. This time it is sponsored by Twitch instead of Machinima. The fundamental flaws were not fixed. The event still hand picks certain individual game communities. The event still focuses on the competition instead of actually showcasing the strats and tricks in the games. The only difference is that the winner will not get a cash reward, but instead will get to choose a charity to put the reward to. It disappoints me that after a year to look over what went wrong the first time, Iateyourpie and others could not correctly identify the real reason why this event was a failure. This is very indicative of the state the the community is in.

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Like I have already said, there are many factors in the very apparent decline in speedrunning. The few I have listed here are not all of them. There are many other factors and there will be new ones as time goes on. These events are what I have personally witnessed over the years. What once was one of the most exciting times of my life have slowly deteriorated into some of the most disgusting times. I have witnessed people going from working together to lower the fastest time of a game to people slandering and causing drama to gain popularity so more viewers would watch their streams. I have seen many smaller groups of people form and reject new willing speedrunners on the basis of who they are friends with. I have seen people quit speedrunning altogether because of how oppressive the community has gotten towards new runners who don't stream or associate with the right people.

The speedrun community as a whole is divided. There are still people who only care about the hobby, but their number are very small. The other side are the people who care about popularity and status, and sadly that is the majority now days. No longer will someone come into my stream and ask "What is the WR in this game?" Instead they ask "Who has the WR in this game?" The shift from community to individual entertainer is very disheartening to me.

The only solace I can offer to people is that there are members of this community who actively fight this change. These are the people that speak up when marathons are scamming the community, they speak up when new stream gimmicks are created to get more viewers, they speak up about people joining the community to just get popular. I personally keep to myself more these days. My friends and I still help each other out and stream. We still care about the hobby. We just don't want the entire community to crumble under the greed of a few.

You may wonder what you could do to help slow or even reverse the change the community took. For starters, stop donating money to support these entertainers. Everyone who donates towards these gimmicks is hurting the community as a whole. The best support a viewer can give a speedrunner is through the games they play. Learn their games, help them out. Another thing you can do is question why marathons need to spend so much and why the community needs to pay for questionable expense choices. Speak up if you believe what people are doing wrong. Do not be afraid you will get shunned from the community. Question any actions by community leaders that seems to oppress new members or seem bad for the community. They are human too and make mistakes. Make your voice heard. Finally, if you agree with what was wrote here today, spread the word around. The more voices the greater chance of stopping the direction this community is headed in and maybe even change it for the better.

So in conclusion, if you are joining or have joined the speedrun community to get rich and famous, please do the whole community a favor and go somewhere else. The speed needs to be the focus again, not the money.