rta_2022

There's a lot of text here, but in a nutshell:
- There's nothing dramatic in the text, I just like discussing my thoughts
- I finished revisiting the speedgames I wanted to before this, and thought about it a lot
- I simply don't want to speedrun much anymore, and want to spend time elsewhere

I've been speedrunning since summer of 2013. It's been a great ride, but 9 years later I'm ready to put it to rest. I need to put my foot down for me personally and wrap it up, for a bunch of reasons I'll discuss. I'm not going anywhere, still going to stream, happy to do a race every now and then, maybe boot up for an annual run of something. But the goal setting, routing preparation and practice part of my life is coming to an end. I went into playing Dragon Quest III one more time this year knowing I was going to try my absolute best to finish speedrunning on a PB in a game I cared about- there's always more time to cut, but I'm content and that's what matters (and also not willing to dump more time into it). A PB came quicker than I thought (considering how long the last grind took) but I'm already ready for it to conclude

Retirement isn't every really necessary, there's no reason to say you're literally never going to do it again. Then why do I feel like I have to make the distinction now to stop? Why not just take a break for a few months, a year, whatever, and if you're feeling it come back? It's absolutely a mental thing to make a cutoff. For the last 9 years I've always been having this idea of, whether it was actively running something or backburner, the idea of "what's next" - what's the next project, when am I planning to do this in 1 month or 3 months, what preparation do I need. And this is a signal of that stopping. I've spent so much time "keeping up" with speedrunning even past what I play- watching VODs, seeing what people are up to, trying to learn as much as I can. It's been fun, but it's too much, and taking it way more casually but still 'involved' sounds even worse to me, in a way similar to being less & less relevant over time. The most important part to me was closing out on my terms, as a result of thinking about this for a long time. This wasn't some idea I just spurred last week. The last year of what games I picked up/returned to was part of this idea, of finding the right time to put it to rest. I also feel like if I just stop running for awhile but am still around, I'd always feel like I'm on the sidelines and missing out when I could still play/improve, and that feeling of not putting enough time into it would never go away. I also can't just casually pick up games and get a time I'm not happy with- that's just not me

In the last few years it's all been part of a personal endeavor to end what I started. I most definitely set some goals I didn't hit. But the majority of them I did, and I feel pretty good about them. The ones that I didn't, sometimes it was just raw time investment I didn't want to do, sometimes it was ridiculous random things ending runs, but I don't look negatively on all of that. I also tried working on projects that I wanted to do before I finished- things like writing the comprehensive DQIII guide, or the recent DQ series speedrunning video. On a scale of having fun, to not having fun, I absolutely had way more fun than not, and that's a good way to reflect upon it ending.

Recalling the past a bit, I watched SGDQ 2013, and was part of that wave that really got interested around this time. I had known about speedrunning for awhile before this, mostly through SDA forums, but the idea of strict verification turned me off. But the timing was good anyways when I really got into it, I jumped in when Twitch was mostly new, and there was a lot of good things happening. Early growth of the whole speedrun scene was a lot of fun. I started by joining the Classic Mega Man community, which had many runners already, then also branched into helping setup the early parts of the Dragon Quest community growing. These are the main two places I've been since.

There was an early part of the whole scene where everything was exciting, the quest for better times, watching simultaneous grinds, marathon preparation and representation of games you cared about. In my mind that lasted until about 2016/7, and a lot started to slowly change. I started to find myself caring less and less about the big public representation of what's happening in speedrunning, since it was both getting too large, and I felt was straying from a lot of its roots. Speedrunning is a really hard, technical, rote way of playing, and modern marathon format (understandably) began focusing on things like hype commentary and donation driving content to fit their schedules, rather than (in my mind) a lot of the inner technical workings that used to drive conversation and draw new players to the hobby. I am all for monetization of stream content to support the broadcaster, but it also invariably changed the way that the hobby and its players evolved (in my opinion, you simply can't deny this, whether you think it's good or bad or you're indifferent). The landscape changed, and so did my perception & enjoyment of many parts of it.

Still, I really like speedrunning. So despite all of that, I still enjoyed putting time into something and getting a reward out of it. My personal perception of my time and performance over the course of my speedrunning career is that if I set out to do something, I end up well above average (in terms of how fast my times are, relative to time spent) in most of what I set out to do, but I rarely pushed myself to sit down and grind and put myself into the very top echelon, because quite simply I felt like getting that last ~5% or so of time save was just not worth the effort/fun/literally didn't matter. My number of run attempts for pretty much any game I played was always low compared to other people as a result of a ton of time labbing things in advance. But typically I would crank out a time that I felt was decently representative of my ability to play, then move on. There are some exceptions where I played a lot more though.

In the last few years, I began feeling like I can't just pick up a game and run it for fun. As in, what's the point. I already generally know that if I pick up a game, and lab it for a bit, I can probably get an alright time. But I began feeling more and more that the time should just go towards my main games. But then there were times where I wasn't particularly motivated to revive an old game either, and other times where I did try to revive an old game and it straight up wasn't fun or exciting or anything. And that spiral of really not finding too much interest in... anything is part of how I landed where I am now. It's easy to say this in theoretical, but like many others probably feel- of course if you just grind a game forever you're probably going to get a really good time. And for a slew of reasons that just wasn't in the stars for me anymore, both interest wise and time wise.

That being said, I still was having fun when I did it the last few years. This idea above is indicative of how I decided my speedrun slate in the last year or so. I began thinking around then that it was time to "do the things I've had on the backburner/said I was going to do". I set out to finish a few games that I said I would either route & pick-up at some point (DQVI) or come back to (ARF, DQM, DQIII, RM5, RM8). There were a few games I considered playing, but dropped. Rockman 5 was the perhaps the most elucidating example of my mentality recently. For context, I practiced a bit over fall/winter, did some runs in winter 2022, then put it down for just a bit while I did some other things. Then upcoming coming back (mid-April) I started practicing, and decided to do a few sessions of runs. And I sat there, kinda getting lit up and not doing great, really not having a good time, and wondered - what the hell am I doing? I'm kinda stressing out, putting a lot of time into practicing and blocking out time to do runs, for what? Even if I do push further and get a goal I had in mind, I'm never sitting here and pushing towards a super fast/top 5 time. Does anyone care? Do I even care? I used to never think this sort of thing, because as I was describing before, when it was an earlier era in the hobby, things were fun & fresh, and if a game didn't jive, all your pals online were working on other things, so you could switch it up and be inspired. Or maybe you could just take a break and get back into it. But that's just not how it works anymore, both as someone getting older and as someone surrounded by people not exactly passionate about the hobby anymore.

It's all about time. I've had the benefit of time to spend on it over many years, and still will have a bit of free time through the early summer, but that is going to start to change. I've found myself developing other skills/talents that I want to continue cultivating or figure out what's worth pursuing, and the concept of speedrunning is really just a thing to move on from at this point in the game. The way I think about it, for what I can get out of it anymore, there's really not much left. It's sort of like a fruit that's already been squeezed, and there's not much juice left. There's definitely a part of me that has liked having a part of my stream having random segments of speedrunning content and doesn't want to let it go. But the time and preparation aspect is just not suitable for where I'm going in life anymore. I'm getting older, a lot of my pals and the general communities I've frequented quietly dropped off over time, and with the kind of standard I would want to set for myself, it's not the right call to try and keep going. I don't want to be the kinda jaded semi-ex-speedrunner who may or may not speedrun much anymore that is never happy with it all- I just want it to be clear. I used to really enjoy and thrive on the competitive aspect of it during the more exciting times, but the exciting part is definitely not there for me anymore, and if I'm going to spend a lot of time trying to get good at something (both gaming and not gaming), this isn't the place

There's one other aspect, that sometimes gets talked about, but it's worth mentioning. Not even just the raw time hours into the hobby, but the way speedrunning really forces you to block out time. Even shorter games and trying to get some runs going, you're committing blocks of time if you want to be efficient. Generally doing a long stream with breaks for literally anything except speedrunning is much taxing. It's really just less and less conducive to adult lifestyle, at least the one I want to lead

I'll miss how speedrunning allows you to study, prepare and improve upon some "thing" and get better over time. But I already know of other areas of playing games where I can get that same sort of progression, either on my own or through competition. As I mentioned in my last paste- although speedrunning was definitely a part of my streams, I think both me & people around generally have a better time with most other content. So it's hardly like there's a big a void that needs to get filled if I don't do runs anymore, but I'll miss it. And there's a lot of speedrunning adjacent stuff like the occasional race/randomizer that sound fun. This is minor, but sometimes it feels like no one is ever happy with what I'm doing, so I know some people will be sad to see speedrunning go, but others more supportive, and it'll be easier for me to manage

I've had a very good time, made many actual real friends and a lot more acquaintances through it all, and plan on being a lifelong fan of the hobby. And I'm definitely not going anywhere, and the rare run with a timer sounds great. But it's time for a mental shift and time to move on

Thanks all