Racefile Thoughts

TL;DR

Converting to Racefile timing incentivizes both new and old runners alike to return to the game. The many long-term benefits of player/viewer engagement, lower time-to-improve, and the removal of Sunshine's stigma as "that game with the cutscenes," should easily outweigh the temporary drawbacks of implementation.

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BENEFITS
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LOGISTICAL ACCESSIBILITY

This has to do with two things: time and money. Prospective speedrunners will weigh heavily on how much they're willing to invest before actually choosing a game. The high install base of the Wii, and the decently low cost of the game itself, were essential in bringing the SMS playerbase to its peak. These benefits have not vanished, but quickly do new runners face the dilemma of time investment as they climb. How many runs can you feasibly fit into a given session length? How quickly can you improve? Which brings me to the following point:

FAIL FAST

Humans learn quickly when they are allowed to iterate on errors quickly. Learning occurs specifically when out of those repeated errors comes immediate feedback, followed by an immediate chance to redeem oneself. This idea is central to why the Mario series is good casually: every death puts you back into the game to try again within seconds. New runners will be given a better chance to actually experience that growth feedback loop with Racefile timing.

Even runners on the grind stand to benefit from Fail Fast. A speedrun essentially boils down to a sequence of tests. A test might be tough trick might be 90% consistent, or a 50% chance of good RNG. These probabilities are multiplicative, such that the mid- to top-level runners might only have a 1% or lower chance of getting a PB on a given run. If you constantly roll a 100-sided die, you should eventually roll a 100. More runs per session means fewer sessions needed to PB, which is an overall lower time investment. This also has the potential to improve the level of optimization of the World Record, which remains unchanged for over a year but would become more challengeable under Racefile.

SOCIAL ACCESSIBILITY

This mainly has to do with engagement, from runners and viewers to the randomers who only watch marathon runs. Anecdote: I major in math. When I tell people I major in math, people either say "Wow, you must really like math!" or "Wow, I always hated math!" The stigma attached to math as a subject is divisive; I have few people to engage with on the subject I enjoy, and few people will venture out to try it.

SMS has a similar stigma as "that speedgame with the 7 minute intro and too much RNG," and more recently picked up the stigma of "SMS is a dead game." While each of these are true to some degree, it frankly sucks for the community as a whole. I seriously doubt we will ever be rid of RNG in Sunshine, but the swap to Racefile would guarantee at least one stigma gone. And should the prior benefits also play out, then SMS could see a revival on Twitch from new and returning runners, ultimately removing the "dead game" stigma as well.

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ADDRESSING CONCERNS
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LEADERBOARDS

If Racefile takes over, it will put a temporary burden on leaderboard moderators as they convert old times to Racefile. The key here is that this is *temporary*. It will be a chore no matter how we decide to convert times, but it will be one-and-done. It's a non-issue in the long run.

AIRSTRIP and JAPAN

The argument here is that Racefile does skip gameplay on Airstrip, which may be the most compelling argument to preserve the current timing method. Additionally, many argue that Japanese runners would likely avoid Racefile, with the precedent set after the conversion from FS to RS timing. But the precedent that RS timing gives us is compelling enough to make the switch to Racefile. Japanese runners never left competition, and in fact currently hold nearly a third of the top 50 spots on the leaderboard. The amount of gameplay skipped in Airstrip, relative to the time saved from the timing method itself, is hardly much more than that skipped by RS timing.

In addition, since the RS debate was settled, the following milestones have been achieved: the Any% Record improved by several minutez; a several runners entered the upper echelon of competition, including JJPlaysGames, Jcool, BounceyBoy, Nindiddeh, and many others; an entire revival of the game peaked around 2015-16. The fact is that a change in timing method has no reason to negatively impact the game, especially given the current state of the community.