LEADERBOARDS

So I was in dwd's chat the other day (darkwing_duck_sda) and we were talking about EVO and I mentioned that he should update his time on speedrun.com, and he said he doesn't use the site. I teasingly asked him why he didn't (I find a lot of oldbois didn't really adopt the site quite as readily) and the conversation we had led to some interesting insights for me.

I feel like for speedrunners, there are two prevailing schools of thought, and I'm not suggesting that people are either one or the other, but the two mindsets are at odds with one another. One last note: I don't think either is right or wrong, and I think they both have their benefits.

SRL MINDSET

This "player-first" mindset that I will refer to as the SRL mindset centers around the idea "I want to be the fastest in this game" or "I want to be in the top 10 of this game". This is the mindset that leaderboards really seem to appeal to, because leaderboards focus on where specific people fall within the community. The reason why I call this the SRL mindset is because races seem to be primarily player-centric. You probably aren't getting WR in a race, so it's just all about who gets the pride of being #1 in any given race (perhaps for racers who don't compete as well in a strictly RTA setting?)

SDA MINDSET

This is the "game-first" mindset. The SDA mindset centers around the idea "I want the game to be as fast as possible" or "The current best time is X, how do we beat that?". This is the mindset that leaderboards seem to apply to less. The focus is on the current best time, and if you aren't first, you're last. This seems to be a mindset I've seen repeated on srg as well, interestingly. Runners who think this way still seem to desire to be first, but there isn't much interest in being anything other than #1. This matches the structure of SDA, since for each game, they publish exactly one video with the best time (lmao)

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I want to talk a bit about the relative strengths of these mindsets. People are complex. People feel both ways and neither way and different ways. If you see things differently, just tell me. I don't think I've got everything figured out. But I feel like other people might benefit from what I learned from talking to someone who thinks differently from me.

You would think that the SRL mindset would breed competition in a way that would be unhealthy, people desiring so much to be #1 that they would hide strats, but an interesting side effect of having everyone's runs in one location is that new strats can be seen easily at all times. I think twitch helped a lot with this. Runs used to be recorded offline. Now, for better or worse, most people seem to do them all live. The only way to hide strats is to only do them offline, I suppose.

SDA would make it much easier to hide strats, and iirc there have been instances of exactly this happening, which sucks because if they don't get WR, we lose those strats forever. That is, unless they shared their strats with everyone, which used to happen with the SDA forums. I guess in a lot of ways the type of "people" I'm describing aren't that different from one another. Both sides desire to be the best. I think that is natural. It just feels like it is for different reasons and to different results. That said, I don't think anyone is purely one opinion over another.

I see myself as being 80% SDA, 20% SRL. I have games where I want to be near the top. That mindset helps with giving people small milestones to work toward. My desire isn't to beat 1:22:59 in 96 exit. I just want to improve myself. I can measure that improvement at times by moving up a leaderboard. I think sometimes the SDA mindset holds people back. I've known great speedrunners who don't want to even attempt a game because they think they can't get WR in it. If they aren't #1, why bother? I feel like that is really limiting.

I don't think leaderboards are important, aside from the goal of making sure that everything out there is well-documented. If we could trust that there were a comprehensive pool of resources where all strats are always made available for everyone to learn from and improve upon, I would be 100% SDA. I don't need to be #1. A lot of times, my runs are meant only to be a launchpad for other people to build upon. I don't want to have the best time. I just want there to be a good time for every game. I tend to not get too attached to specific runs; when Smartball or jeffrosledger or whoever comes along and beats my time, that doesn't bother me.

I'm rambling now...