GDQ Critique

To start off, I'll give this disclaimer: I wholeheartedly support Games Done Quick(GDQ), as their marathons, specifically in the years of 2011-2013, was one of the major things that kickstarted my speedrunning hobby. Lately(over the past couple of years or so), it has become very greatly apparent that there's favoritism going on when the GDQ committee selects games for every GDQ event. They have a huge bias towards old school Nintendo games, which is why there's typically so many damn games from either the NES/SNES era or flagship franchises like Zelda, Mario, and Mega Man in a regular event, and usually by top runners, WR holders, or popular runners as opposed to someone else. The GDQ committee doesn't explicitly state it, but it is there as it has become a recurring pattern. In a way this makes sense, as they want to keep with their roots while also allowing newer or non-Nintendo games into the event. And after all, the event is for raising lots of money for charity, so they do have to find ways to make that money. Why do I bring this up now? After seeing multiple rant posts from disappointed people in speedrunning communities I'm in and a recent video by fellow speedrunner ThaRixer, I decided I couldn't stay silent about this. To give my two cents, GDQ really needs to change up their stuff and stop having this Nintendo and retro game bias. I sincerely don't mean to shun the communities that put a LOT of work into the games that fall in those categories, but the flagship series at GDQ like Final Fantasy, Mega Man, and Zelda all need a break. As in, having just one game from each of those series or perhaps not having them in at all. A particularly bad offense of flagship games shafting other games is the most recent GDQ games list, for AGDQ 2019. One of the accepted games was Final Fantasy IX, clocking in at an estimate of 9:30:00. That's obviously quite a long run for a GDQ, and with that leaves 9 possible 1 hour speedruns that are legitimately interesting speedruns getting left out in the dust. For most seasoned speedrunners, especially the ones in more niche communities like the survival horror community, it makes the event boring. This favoritism can turn off a lot of good runners from submitting to the event, which can end up resulting in low submission turnout for actually good runs and an overall bad impression of GDQ itself.

ThaRixer's video: https://youtu.be/5vjyy-UkZBY