Marathon commentary

What I'm about to talk about is something that's probably not a huge deal in the grand scheme of things but it's something I just wanted to talk about. This isn't a rant post or anything like that, just a pastebin to get my thoughts out there.

As you can assume by the title, it's about commentary for speedruns, specifically for livestreamed speedrun marathons, the most popular of which being GamesDoneQuick(GDQ). To me it's the most important part by far of any marathon run. I'm not saying this to look like an elitist; I know this because I've watched marathons for 7+ years and have a lot of inside knowledge both as a viewer and, more recently, a performer of the runs themselves. It's because of that experience that I want to help pass that on to prospective marathon runners or runners that want to do commentated videos of their runs with a few tips:

1. Better commentary comes with playing the game more/practicing.
This is a big one because if you don't know the intricacies of the run and the game(the "how and why" as I call it), you likely aren't going to know what to explain to people watching the run. You play the game and practice it/pick it apart and you'll start to notice things about the game you may not have picked up on when you first played the game.

2. Explain what needs to be explained.
Deciding what to commentate on can be tough when you're trying to explain it to a general audience. This is especially true for longer or more complicated speedruns, such as RPGs like Pokémon, Final Fantasy, or Shin Megami Tensei/Persona, to give a few examples. What I could say for this kinda goes with the above point, but a tip I can give, and it's something I've done with every marathon performance of mine, is practicing the commentary before you do the recording or live performance. If you feel it's needed, take notes so you can get a hold of what you want to explain. Everyone has different styles, but I feel those two things help.

3. (For a marathon performance) Play off of crowd or donation comment antics.
Something I've noticed in watching GDQ runs as well as runs from other marathons is that it's not explanations of speedrun strats that make them enjoyable. Instead, what makes the runs enjoyable is jokes cracked by the runner/couch or some shenanigans happening in donation comments or in the crowd. Two very good examples of this that I can give are Keizaron's run of Pokémon Crystal Any% Glitchless at RPG Limit Break 2018( https://youtu.be/Hv1y7BhqExo?t=372 ) and Andy's run of Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past All Dungeons Swordless at SGDQ 2017( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSkrK0-EIVY ). My advice is to play off of that in order to liven up the commentary, especially in sections of your speedgame where there's not much going on. With some games, the game or glitches in the game are so silly that it does the job for you!

I say all of this before leading into my next point, which is that I'm hitting a wall. While I consider myself an experienced marathon commentator, I am not terribly confident in my ability to commentate RPG runs. This could mean trouble for when I get my RPG Limit Break submissions ready come January.