Questions to speedrunners and glitchers
7 years ago
Île-de-France, France

Hello everyone ! I did'nt really know where to post this, I hope I'm in the right place.

Well, my name is Antonin, I'm a French student in audiovisual in Paris Sorbonne (If you find some english mistakes, that's why), and I'm currently writing a long essay about "Glitch as a way to revolt in Video Games" . The third part of this essay will be about bending the rules of the game with intentionnal glitching, and, of course, I will write about speedrunning.

To do so, I would like to understand why people glitch their games, so I wrote some questions that I would like to ask you. If you're interested in helping me for my work, I would be delighted if you could answer these questions in this thread !

  1. Introduce yourself (Name or nick, what game(s) do you speedrun, anything you find relevant)
  2. Why did you start speedrunning ?
  3. What do you think about glitching in speedrun ? Do you think that 's cheating ?
  4. Do you feel like you're breaking the game while speedrunning ? And when you use glitches ?
  5. Does the speedrunner play the same game as the « normal » player does ?
  6. Do you think that glitching is a way to break the game or to create a new one ?
  7. Would you consider speedrun as an aesthetical work ?
  8. Are'nt you affraid that learning the game by heart for speedrunning will destroy all the fun in it ? Is speedrunning still playing ?
  9. Is it possible to speedrun with style ? To recognize a speedrunner to his way to play the game ? What freedom does the speedrunner have to play with style when he is researching the perfect move to finish the game ?

It would be great if you could keep the numbers of the questions before your answers !

Thanks a lot to people who will help me and answer, do not hesitate to debate about these questions ! ^^

United States
  1. John. I speedrun Toy Story 2, 102 Dalmatians, and A Bug's Life
  2. I started speedrunning because I didn't have any fun playing casually anymore
  3. Absolutely not. Glitches are a part of the game. It's not like you are altering the games code.
  4. A game is broken inherently. Nobody can break a game. They can only find the brokenness in a game.
  5. Not exactly. The timer adds a whole new layer to the experience.
  6. Going back to 3 and 4. Nobody breaks a game unless they corrupt the data itself.
  7. Not sure I understand the question. 8)There are a few games that I refuse to speedrun. These games are Spyro 1, Midnight Wanderers, and Chariot. Other than that, I don't care about ruining my casual experience. And the second question is an obvious yes.
  8. Speedrunning is not an art form so I don't think style is a factor. It's like asking is there a style to doing math. No, but there are varying levels of skill as well as an efficient way of doing math. You can have different handwriting but in the end does that really matter?
Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany
  1. I am Tom aka Hdot. I run a bit of everything I'd say, games of the Digimon series are a big part of it, though.
  2. I saw some speedrunners at the GDQ events and was really amazed by their skill. Then I wondered if it's not something you could pull of yourself.
  3. Casual players might call it cheating, but for us it's like 'if it is in the game, it's legit'. No hardware manipulation or cheating devices and you're good to go. Speedrunning is about bringing the game to it's limits and glitches are part of those. For people who say that we are only good at games because of glitches: No. Nearly every game also has a "glitchless" category.
  4. Beating the game very fast always feels like breaking the game or in other terms destroying it, dominating it etc.. It is the feeling that you have strong knowledge of the game and just found the best way to beat it as quickly as possible what makes casual players really gape. Glitches are not necessary for that, but they most of the time add a lot to that feeling of breaking the game, bc they sometimes go with some visual effects like different palettes or messed up sprites etc. so the part of breaking the game becomes indeed visible.
  5. Obviously not. Both play to have a good time. The normal player usually also wants to "break the game" but by different means i.e. get good items, gain a high level or just beat the final boss. When we go for any% categories, we don't care at all about all the collectables, in this case it is actually about going with the least possible and make the best out of it.
  6. Answered in 4). Also about creating a new one. Glitches are able to do lots of more things than you might think. SMW runner SethBling used a set of glitches to execute 'Code Injection' which made him able to code the well-known game 'Flappy Bird' right into Super Mario World. No hardware manipulation at all, he just used glitches to put new code into the game and execute it.
  7. Aesthetical need to be defined in the first place. While doing what it takes to speed through the game in a perfect way execution wise sounds aesthetical, sitting in front of the PC for 7 hours straight does clearly not. :)
  8. It's just a new way of playing. It is fun and if it's not anymore than you still can go back and throw the speedrun strats overboard. You just have to get rid of the "How can I do this the fastest way" mentality. Yes, speedrunning is still playing. We are a friendly community and while it all looks astonishing, we are also goofing around a lot. It's whole different then all the competitive and e-sports scenes. I think you could ask this questions on those communities.
  9. It's not really important at all, but still you can add a few things to get a personal style to your speedrun, even if it's only small things of eye candy. Known in the community as 'Swag' or what not. Yoshi's Island speedrunners doing crazy shit during the autoscrollers, Pokemon speedrunners to name their characters 'I' and 'U' to let the game narrate it itself. Or just a plain different, maybe more risky strat you are using. You can work on your own play style but it's not one of the things you intentionally focus on.

_

Thanks for your interest, Antonin. I liked your questions and answering them. I hope you have great success with your essay and if you should finish it I'd love to read some passages :)

Edited by the author 7 years ago
European Union
  1. Kev (HowDenKing) - I don't really speedrun, I just pretend to :D
  2. I've seen HerrDekay do a Harp Run on Zelda: Skyward Sword and thought it might be fun to do something like that.
  3. Defenitely not cheating, as it's already in the game and cheats usually require code execution outside the game to set values in the game.
  4. Not really, everything stays in the boundaries that the game has.
  5. I guess they do, but with a different goal in mind, in this case, finishing the game as fast as possible.
  6. Some glitches may break the game, but I don't think glitches in themselves are not a way to break a game.
  7. Imagine yourself, sitting there, in the dark room, only illuminated by your monitor for 12 hours straight. No, I don't think it's aesthetical. But I'm stupid, I guess I don't get the question.
  8. I think it creates a bond between the player & the game, making it ultimately a more fun experience for the player.
  9. Like battleonfan1 said, it's like adding style to math. Sure, there are places you can create a difference in entertainment for the viewer, i.e. telling jokes or messing around while theres an autoscroller, but in many places, every player has to execute the same "style" of play to reach the same time.
New Jersey, USA
  1. Hi :D

  2. I started speedrunning to add replay value to games.

  3. It's not cheating, as long as the glitch is allowed. I am grateful that there are alternate categories for people who are not interested in glitches.

  4. For me, speedrunning fixes the game. Speedrunning makes games more fun.

  5. I don't think so. The average player is mostly concerned with the superficial aspects of a game. For example, many players find short games to be a less worthwhile investment, since the experience is so short. A casual player might complete a game in an hour and be done with it. However, from my perspective as a speedrunner, I can find many more hours of enjoyment within the same game. That idea also applies to games that some people find boring or too easy. When speedrunning, the challenge of the game continually increases, because there is always a way to play it better or faster.

  6. I consider glitches to be something along the lines of "pushing", rather than breaking a game. It doesn't create a new game, but it does create a new way to experience and play the game.

  7. Speedruns are definitely fun to watch. Watching a good Super Mario 64 run is like watching an unimaginable parkour exhibition, or a dance recital. It depends on the game, but speedruns do have the potential to be an aesthetic experience, especially if a viewer is not familiar with a particular run or strategy. Even the most mundane glitches can cause an average player to rethink the way a video game works. In the same way that watching a cheetah simply run might be a beautiful experience, so too can a speedrun be beautiful to watch. Aesthetics deals with beauty, and beauty deals with anything that provokes a sense of pleasure, or fun. What's more fun than watching a chubby Italian plumber perform incredible acrobatic feats?

  8. Speedrunning is the only reason that I am able to find video games enjoyable. I started playing video games in March 2016, after a ten-year hiatus. For me, there is no value in casually playing a video game (except when it is a shared experience). They are boring and a waste of time. This March, I went in search of the reason that I lost interest in video games, and I was able to re-ignite the wonder and sense of exploration of my youth. With speedrunning, not only am I able to enjoy video games during an initial playthrough, but I also have an entirely new layer of experience.

  9. I don't think that style is very present in speedrunning, at least not in the game itself. Once an optimal strategy is created, runners try to perform consistently and with as few errors as possible. The choices that a runner makes are based on execution, rather than style. However, style can be found in the way that a player approaches the game, particularly in the way that they use a controller.

  10. that's hilarious

Edited by the author 7 years ago
Washington, USA
EmeraldAly
She/Her, They/Them
7 years ago
  1. Introduce yourself (Name or nick, what game(s) do you speedrun, anything you find relevant)

My name's Aly, I mainly run the Infamous series -- www.speedrun.com/infamous -- but my goal long-term is to be a 'variety speedrunner.' I want dozens and dozens and dozens of runs in my arsenal.

  1. Why did you start speedrunning ?

It looked like fun, and it is! It's another way to enjoy great games. It's completely different from casual play -- not to say that either is better or worse, but I enjoy how different they are. You can only have a casual first playthrough once, but you can have amazing experience speedrunning every time you do it.

  1. What do you think about glitching in speedrun ? Do you think that 's cheating ?

Absolutely not, and I'd be astonished if anyone here said yes. Glitches are the heart and soul of speedrunning. To do things fast, you usually have to do them differently than the game's developers want you to, if it's possible.

  1. Do you feel like you're breaking the game while speedrunning ? And when you use glitches ?

You draw a distinction where one really doesn't exist. While there are glitchless runs, and games for which glitches haven't been found (one of which I really enjoy running), glitching IS speedrunning. And there are certainly times when you break the game to little pieces. It's awesome when you do.

  1. Does the speedrunner play the same game as the « normal » player does ?

Ideally not. As I said, they're different experiences.

  1. Do you think that glitching is a way to break the game or to create a new one ?

Interesting question! Certainly a speedrun has different aims and goals, but it's still the same game. Some runs bear a passing resemblence to a casual playthrough; some don't (I think of Fallout 3 -- 50+ hours a casual playthrough easily, with diverse and interesting quests. The speedrun? Clip out of bounds and run forward for 20 minutes)

  1. Would you consider speedrun as an aesthetical work ?

????

Are'nt you affraid that learning the game by heart for speedrunning will destroy all the fun in it ?

Not at all. As I said you can only have a casual first playthrough experience once in your life. I would never just go straight to speedrunning a game. Every game I've ever run and ever will run started with a casual, dev-intended playthrough. If I want to play the game without a ticking clock, there's always challenge runs.

Is speedrunning still playing ?

Of course it is. What an absurd question.

  1. Is it possible to speedrun with style ? To recognize a speedrunner to his way to play the game ? What freedom does the speedrunner have to play with style when he is researching the perfect move to finish the game ?

It depends on the game and how optimised it is. Some games have no room for interpretation whatsoever. Others, especially if they have autoscroller levels, do.

New Jersey, USA

@EmeraldAly

"What an absurd question."

It's actually not so far-out. A distinction can be made between "play" and "perform". A distinction can also be made between the definition of "play" as recreation and the seriousness which some players engage when "playing" a game. To say "performing a game" or "seriously engaging a game" doesn't ring true of general nomenclature, but "doing a run of" or "performing a run of" or "casual run" or "WR attempt" or "serious runs"--these phrases all reflect different levels of "playing" a game, to the point that they could be considered outside of definitive play.

EDIT: I might have thought too much up there. Basically, at a certain point, speedrunning becomes about making correct actions (performing), rather than creativity and exploration (playing). "Playing" became a general term for "doing" when it comes to video games, and it doesn't reflect all of the levels of "doing" that gaming actually encompasses. That said, all runs start out un-optimized, and all glitches/tricks/strategies must initially be discovered, so there is play involved in speedrunning.

Edited by the author 7 years ago
Italy
  1. Hi :) i'm DJPao86, I speedrun Final Fantasy games and Mafia 2, at the moment
  2. I started speedrunning for the reasons that many other runners point out: adding replay value to the game and competition
  3. Glitching is often compared to Cheating, but it's quite different. As long as you don't input codes (like no-clip cheats, invulnerability cheats and so on), it's just abusing the game bugs and simply using game mechanics (intended or not) to your advantage. Often, glitches require mechanical skills to be replicated, while cheats ... are just cheats :)
  4. Depends from glitch to glitch. In Mafia 2, one of the games i run, glitches save up to 20/30 seconds, in a 3h+ run. The community nowadays is big enough that, in most of the games, separates runs between glitched runs and glitchless runs ... so if somebody doesn't like glitching the game, he can simply compete in the glitchless category.
  5. To me, it's the same game, but the goal is different.
  6. Yeah, glitching is trying to find ways to break a game, every runner that is deep into his games try to find skips, glitches, tricks and optimizations every moment he can.
  7. Didn't really understand the first part of the question ... but I'm not comparing speedrunning to arts, if that was the point. Sometimes speedrunning is frustrating, but that's not the games' fault, it's the competition behind it. To me, speedrunning has gave more life to games that would be dead, if speedrunning didn't exist.
  8. Depends from game to game ... but I don't really associate a style to a particular runner. Most of the time, the runner has close to 0% room, it's unlikely to exist 2+ different strategies that lead to the same result ... usually 1 is strictly faster than the other.
Brazil
  1. Rafael. I run only Digimon World 4, no intentions to run anything else right now (outside of some memes for special occasions...).
  1. Because I REALLY wanted to see a run for a game I liked a lot, but no one would do it. Then I decided to do that myself, getting really motivated after I found glitch that would cut 40min of gameplay.
  1. If the runner plays the "normal" game first and then speedruns it, I'd say regular players and runners are playing the same game. But there are a few folks that never get to play a game and jump straight into learning a run for it; in that case, then it definitely feels like there are 2 separate games here.

8)Being fast is the name of the game when speedrunning. However, you can still do it in style. If not during sections in which you don't lose time by doing things your own way (not every game has those), you can at least add a lot of personality to a run (or game even) with your commentary, stream overlays or chat interaction. There are a few games in which I watch certain runners but don't watch others for that very reason: I like / don't like their runs.

Edited by the author 7 years ago
Île-de-France, France

Thanks all of you for your precious answers. You can still answer these questions or edit your answer, it is not too late ! :)