Hi, especially with AGDQ going on, I've had this question running through my mind.

So I know the #1 advice is "pick a game that you love." But imagine there are 3 games that you love, and the only difference is:

• The first has NO existing runs
• The second has an relatively inactive community with a few pretty decent WRs
• The third has a massive community, people stream and race every week and new strats are always being found

Obviously each has their pros and cons. If a game has no runs, you can immediately set WR by default, but that's obviously not satisfying. On the other extreme, with a massive community like Super Meat Boy, there's plenty of people to compete against, but just your average runner obviously can't expect to set a WR without HUNDREDS and HUNDREDS of runs.

So the question is, what is it about speedrunning that you enjoy, and how does that affect your choice of game to speedrun?

How often do you run a game just for the thrill of improving, and without a long term goal of WR?

Or, do you enjoy a large community more than setting a record?

I personally would never run Super Mario Bros just because of the ridiculous level of optimization that that game is at.

However I grew up on Super Mario Sunshine and I LOVE that game, so, even though that game is really competitive, I would absolutely consider running it. Of course I would continually set goals for myself, but I don't think I would even really be worried about the WR for a long time (if ever), just because I don't really have the time to spend hours and hours every day practicing.

I enjoy speedrunning because I have fun doing it and reaching certain goals. WR can be one but doesn't need to be one, I wanted to speedrun other games since months but kept coming back to the one game to get that sub 25...

I actually don't mind if a game has a huge community or not, as long as i'm having fun doing it.

I'd probably pick game #1, start a board and hope other people learn to love the game as I do through running it. Plus making your own routes seems like a very fun challenge.

If I have a crappy, uncontested "WR" in something (which, by the way, I do), it's never gonna be very motivating to go back and do more runs. I do believe, and firmly, that as a speedrunner the only person you're truly competing against is yourself, but without a community, without a sense of others going on the journey with you, it just doesn't feel the same.

Now I've never run anything with hundreds and hundreds of runners (the most populous board I'm on is only that way because the game launched with a speedrunning contest and is deader than dead nowadays), but I don't think it would hurt my soul too much to be in 85th place or 212th place or 350th place or something on a board for a really, really, really, massively enormously popular game. If the run is fun, I'll do it~! Regarding games like SMB(1, presumably?) that are optimized to the frame and the sub-pixel, nothing says you have to do your own runs to that level of exactitude. (But it's also okay to think it wouldn't be fun to do less exacting runs).

So definitely the more the community, the better! Running something once with no competition just to say you have a WR (so you can go on to say "I have 500 WR's" or something) is lame as hell.

Does anyone know why my first embedded link that post works but the second one doesn't? I'm at a loss.

Dumb. But thank you.

I'd run a game if it was fun no matter what the level of community around it. That being said, I do enjoy routing and finding skips so I personally would lean towards the unoptimized games.

IMO you shouldn't worry too much about WRs and should focus on beating your PBs for a game that you enjoy running. It all depends what your aims are, if you want WRs in a competitive game them concentrate on one game and practice thousands of hours. If you are more casual then run a game that you enjoy.

I completely agree with coolesto and emeraldaly. I would probably tend to prefer smaller games, but if the game has no community it's probably not worth running (unless it was your childhood favorite or something).

But imagine how great it would feel to get WR in a game with tons of competition and optimized tricks like Sunshine?

I mostly enjoy filling out data forms correctly and researching obscure and dumb games, so most of the stuff I play there is very little competition.

Sometimes I play a game once and never go back. Sometimes I pay a game once and come back a few times. Sometimes I play a game a once and come back only when one someone beats my score. Sometimes I play a game because I think I can get a WR real quickly for little competition. Sometimes I play a game with lots of competition with no expectation of getting close to the WR. Sometimes I grind a game to no avail.

There is far too much focus on WR culture in speedrunning.

Yeah see, I completely agree. I have run a few games super casually on and off, but primarily I've been watching speedruns for about 2 years now, and lurking on the reddit. I feel like the "front" or whatever that newcomers/the outside world sees is all about the WRs. Obviously nobody wants to get on a forum and filter through thousands of PBs every day, because its the WRs that get all the attention. Everyone wants to be the guy to get a WR or that guy who helped notably develop a game..

Run games you enjoy. Don't think about the community too much.

Interesting topic! 2 of the 3 games I have run are games that didn't have any runs before mine. I did think it was a lot of fun to figure out the route and such, and it was also fun to be able to set up a board without having to discuss with other players. However, for more complicated games, I think it would actually be nice to have some past runs already, so you don't have to do everything from scratch. As you said, both have their pros and cons, so I'd really just focus on the game, not the community, when making a choice like this. ;)