8.21.17

Just took a week off from online & speedrun (mostly- I did catch a FFT stream though). Much needed after all the Triple M coordination and preparation. Think it's good to take a break now and then, step back and do some other stuff for awhile. I've done this before (sometimes longer), just writing about it in a paste this time.

Triple M was a solid time. People generally seemed to respond well to the premise. The race itself was a solid show from the participants. Personally, 22 hours came and went very fast (it seems so long on paper but really it flew by). Lots of community awareness and hype for the event, was cool.

I'm definitely happy with my performance in 2nd place. Classic and Zero series are great. But most of the X series makes me think I'd probably not do it solo again, though if I'm around I'll help organize it (the format at this point is fairly figured out). I'd hope next time around the team concept kicks off more (I'd love to do the Zero series arm of the race). Also the preparation made me realize that I really do prefer doing my best to optimize my own times rather than generally learn speedruns- it was cool learning other Mega runs, but I much prefer improving times I care about the most. I'm probably good on participating in this style of event in the future.

I'll have varying amounts of time to work on speedruns (I have a fairly light plate over the next few weeks luckily). Have some GDQ submissions that I'll work on (reminder- submissions are much sooner than you think). I very much want to submit & play Umihara Kawase Shun- might stream it here and there.

Otherwise on the more serious speedrun front, going to keep pushing Zero 2 until I get a time I'm satisfied with, then it's back to Galaxy 2 (Zero 2 was an unfinished speedgame that I wanted to clean up and I'm getting closer, then I hope to just stick around Galaxy 2 into the future). Still a bit undecided on the RPG front, said I was going to do FFVI again and I still might, just need some personal motivation. I'd want to really dive in and do my own research & analysis, I think when the time is a bit better it'll come more naturally. But I think I'd prefer to play action platformers for a little while. Also Arc Rise Fantasia 2018.

This is all very long term, it's a fairly full speed-plate but I'm not really in a rush to do anything, so it's cool. I decided awhile ago that I'm not seriously picking up and grinding out many other games, but would focus on a few things while I spend time speedrunning (Triple M was kind of a major, weird one-off exception to that, haha, but I had that idea for awhile and glad it came to light)

Next casual game won't be until like November. It's a toss-up between starting Ace Attorney series (don't know much about it but watching Dreamboum play Aviary Attorney makes me want to play) or Persona 5. We'll see

One last thing- if you're reading this as a speedrun community member, show your appreciation however you can for people who organize speedrun community events and resources. Part of why Triple M was a positive experience was the fact that many people gave me constructive criticism and showed appreciation for my effort to pull it together. Candidly, even a small event like that is still way, way more work than one might think. I stopped organizing the Dragon Quest Marathon because it was an incredible amount of work for a fairly minimal 'reward' (sadly I don't have the time to sustainably do that, I am not a college kid nor do I work a 9-5 job). I have received some nice words of appreciation which is cool, but I'm not sure a lot of people regularly do. The community aspect of any hobby/medium relies upon people to pull it all together, and I think that goes unappreciated at times- people/groups in speedrunning like SpeedGaming & GDQ staff put tons of effort into trying to build a community. Some people baffle me how much effort they selflessly put into the administrative & organization side of the community. Would be cool if they regularly got the proper recognition, something to think about