Speedrunning Is ALIIIIIIIVE

Some thoughts on speedrunning, from someone who hasn't actively done it in about a year, and so should be taken exactly as seriously as that entails.

Recently, there was a video about "How to Fix Speedrunning". You can find it, you're a smart person. Maybe you'll watch it. I didn't. Why? Because the title proceeds from what I believe is a false presumption.

Bluntly, speedrunning doesn't need fixing. If anything, it's healthier than ever.

Now, it's true that speedrunning is less centralized than it used to be. <a href="http://www.speedrunslive.com/races/#!/racestats">SpeedRunsLive race numbers</a> are down this year versus last year, which were in turn down from 2014. And while <a href="http://speeddemosarchive.com">Speed Demos Archive</a> still gets plenty of submissions, it's not the place for discussing game strategies and progress that it once was. The closest thing to a "central portal" speedrunning has nowadays is probably <a href="http://speedrun.com">Speedrun.com</a>.

The more I've thought about it, though, the more I've come to believe that that's a positive, and a sign of growth and health, not a negative that means "Speedrunning is dead forever". The fact is that you can find resources ranging from glitch videos to speedruns to TASes on basically any game, including obscure ones. And new games tend to be routed out much more quickly than in even the recent past, particularly if that game is one hyped up prior to its release. Note how Final Fantasy XV has speedruns less than a week after its release. I remember a time when just DOING a single-segment run of an RPG--ANY RPG--was considered insane. Now it's commonplace.

This is borne out further by the recent saturation of speedrunning marathons, both for fun and for charity of various sorts. While more general charity marathons have actually had this issue for several years--I remember one <a href="https://rizeupgaming.com/">Rize Up Gaming</a> marathon a couple years back that was held at the same time as Summer Games Done Quick--this is about the season where it becomes a concern for more speedrun-centered marathons. And this year it's especially cramped. You can see an example of just how many marathons of all sorts are happening (Admittedly, at least some of them aren't speedrun focused) at <a href="https://horaro.org/">horaro.org</a>. And for whatever its other problems are, <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/speedrun/">the speedrun subreddit</a> has a list of recent speedrun marathons on the right side that show just how many of them have taken place recently. this, again, is a good thing to me.

In short: Speedrunning is fine. Yes, it's different than it was in whatever you consider "the old days". But just because your favorite speedrunner no longer streams (Or no longer streams speedrunning content) doesn't mean everything is dead forever.