Content Creation In Speedrunning

So recently there's been a bit of drama in regards to individuals making content on YouTube using vods from various speedrunners. I'm not going to post the person’s name here. If you do 5 minutes of detective work on your favorite speedrunners twitter feed, I’m sure you’ll find it. There were a ton of problems that arose from this YouTube channel and generally speaking a good chunk of the community wasn't a huge fan. There’s quite a few reasons people within the community didn't like it but judging from what I've seen these were the 3 main ones.

1. The creator didn't ask for permission from the vast majority of the people he used content for
2. The creator made many videos that most felt portrayed the speedrunning community in a negative light
	- Tons of Top 10 Speedrunning Fails/Cringe Moments/Salty Speedrunners, as well as videos such as "The Death of Speedrunning" + "Why
	  I don't support GDQ's"
3. They were monetized (This one’s a big LOL to me, but I'll get to that one later.)

After finally having enough, a ton of runners rose up and basically DMCA'd a ton of his videos. He ended up taking most of the videos down, while putting out a video that he was done with making speedrunning content.  He went on to say that our community was stupid for not understanding how content is good for growth and speedrunners rejoiced in their victory.
So now that you've been caught up on the drama, I want to get to the point of this pastebin.

*********Speedrunning community really does need content creators, we just need to start going about it the RIGHT way.********

So let me make this clear. I think what the YouTube guy did was incredibly petty and to me he seemed like he wasn't really caring about the community at all, and was more looking to grow his own brand. I think one of the biggest reasons why content in the community hasn't really come up as a big driver for the community is that the community is really big and diverse. Other than GDQ's and a few other marathons, it's very rare for there to be a huge community event where you see members from all sides of the community come together. One of my favorite parts about GDQ's was getting a chance to meet people in communities that I would have never normally interacted with due to the fact that the games never interested me. While we all like different games, most of us would love to see the community grow.

We have great sites like SRL + Speedrun.com that do an excellent job of covering the streaming, database, and leaderboard portions of speedrunning. The main problem is that in terms of community content on YouTube, we’re incredibly lacking or too spread out. Virtually all online gaming communities  have one or two creators that are taking the vast amount of content and trimming it down to a size that’s consumable for the average YouTube viewer. When you want someone to get interested in something, you don’t overwhelm them with too much info. You make it easy for them to understand so that afterward they want to know more. Currently in the community, there aren’t too many people doing that. If they are doing it, the community isn’t doing a great job of supporting the content by sharing it.
What I would love to see is for there to be a Speedrunning Community YouTube channel that’s run by a handful of hardworking people within the community.  We have a ton of talented community members that are more than just good at video games. There are so many great coders, video editors, marketers, commentators, and personalities in this community for a project like this. Getting everyone on the same page and working towards a common goal would immensely help our community grow.

Imagine a channel that produced the following content on a daily/weekly basis and was vastly supported by the community both in runners/viewers:
 - “Week In Review” videos that break down all the latest speedrunning achievements both big and small ( WRs, cool PB’s, new glitches, runner interviews, glitch theories, etc)
- Top 10 Video’s that highlight positive moments in the community and not negative ones ( Speedrun Fails/ Silly Moments are fine if streamers are fine with it)
- Game of the Week Videos – Videos covering the speedrunning basics of games both big and small
- Speedrun Podcasts all in one place (There’s so many good ones out there, why not bring them into a community YouTube channel that helps promote these channels)
- Smaller Streamer Corner – Promoting speedrunners that are small in size, but provide excellent runs and/or commentary
-  Commentated races of various games
-  Commentated individual runs that are in the form of marathon style
-  + Plenty more small ideas that don’t need to be daily/weekly content

Now you’re probably saying to yourself, “But pie, almost all of these things already exist!” And you’re right, they do! The problem is that the content isn’t in a central location and its spread out all over the place. It’s also not in a format that really incentives the content producer to create content consistently. A lot of attempts have been made by various people within the community to improve the content that goes out to the masses with little to no support from the community or failure from the creator themselves to follow through with what they wanted.

I think if there’s anything we can take away from the YouTube content drama is that people are interested in speedrunning on YouTube. Many of these videos were getting 10’s of thousands of hits and for better or worse, introducing people to the community. The market is there for it, we just don’t have the workers ( or at least the ones we want representing out community.) Which brings us to the last part of this pastebin. Everyone’s favorite topic! Money!



*******Money & Speedrunning ********

I feel like we’re at the point in the community where the majority of the community doesn’t really care if people are making money or not.  A good chunk of the community in some shape or form gets some money from speedrunning. Whether that’s having a sub button, a donation link, a trip paid for by viewers to GDQ. There have been countless people within the community that were incredibly against money in speedrunning that now have these sub buttons and donation links. The community hasn’t turned into garbage because of it either. People are still sharing strats, helping new runners, and sharing the love with other smaller speedrunners. Money never killed speedrunning, it isn’t killing speedrunning, and it’s never going to kill speedrunning. If you don’t want money involved in the hobby, no one is stopping you from keeping it off your channel or avoiding those channels that do. Some of the best runners in their perspective games have sub buttons, and they are still grinding out good times and putting in work into their speed games while balancing a successful stream. I would argue if anything that money has incentivized speedrunning and pushed times down further and further, as there is more incentive to grind for WR if you know there may be a payoff for the countless hours you’re putting into the hobby.

The reality is the amount of work to make content consistently for a YouTube channel that is envisioned in this document is big. I think a lot of what deters some of our more talented members in the community from producing content like this on the daily is that the majority of them have jobs, families, social life, and just in general, little time to put into a massive project like this.  Why not create a way where they can get back something for them, while giving back to the community in terms of increasing the spotlight for everyone. A community supported channel that has well respected members taking all the content in our community and creating a marketable avenue for it benefits everyone. Yes, as a streamer, you’re giving up a little bit, and no one should feel forced to contribute, but in the grand scheme of things it’s opening up the world of speedrunning to more people year round, and not just during GDQs.

Transparency is key. If people are upfront on what is happening + getting the approval of community members before hand, this is a resource that we can truly come together and make a reality. It doesn't even need to be a huge effort by everyone, simply opening an opportunity for people to submit content/highlights to posted on one mega channel would go a long way to making some of this information central.

More than 100k tune into GDQ’s every year at the idea of speedrunning, something tells me a lot of these people want to know more.  This pastebin isn’t my way of saying “I’m going to be that guy,” it’s more there to spark the conversation amongst our community. A lot has been said since the YouTube incident, but I feel like not a lot of people are talking about how we can improve the model. More discussion needs to happen on the topic from those who agree and disagree. Speedrunning doesn’t have to be just a BIG event twice a year. We have the tools to make it big all the time, we just need to get more organized about it.

Thanks for taking time to read this! There's so much more to say on the topic, but I'd rather see that discussed openly then thrown into a pastebin. I realize that maybe a project like this is unrealistic, and would take time, but we're speedrunners. We're experts in optimizing strats in a fast fashion :) . I'm fully okay this doesn't immediately make something happen, but I'd love to see the general thought from the rest of the community.