I watched this video, and at 14:18 of the video, the author mentions that I should play two different games in order to be good at speedrunning in general. I know that it's his opinion, but is learning just one game enough to know how speedrunning works? :)

I haven't watch the video, so I can't really comment on exactly what they said, but I'm not sure what you mean by "to know how speedrunning works".

There is no understanding it in a broad sense - speedrunning is the act of completing a game as fast as possible. That's it, there is nothing else to understand beyond that. Any further understanding would be understanding how the game(s) you want to run work. You need to understand the games you want to run so you can, well, learn them and get good at them. Whether you run one game or 12 games, you'll need to understand them each in order to run them to various degrees of success.

If you choose to run more than one game at the same time, they better be connected significantly otherwise it'll be increasingly difficult to be good at either of them. For example, if the mechanics between the two games are significantly different, then becoming good at either will be hard to do because you'll be constantly switching between styles of gameplay. A 2D Mario and a 3D Zelda might both be interesting games to you, but the games are incredibly different from one another so doing both at the same time might hurt you more than help. The gameplay is so different between them that the skills aren't transferable and you'll probably get better at one of them quicker by focusing just on that game.

How many games you want to run at the same time is ultimately up to you. It might help you, it might hinder you, it'll all be dependent on your skills, the games, and a number of other things.

Oh what I mean by ''how speedrunning works'' is basically get a good fundamentals on speedrunning and the mindset. If I pick up another game, I won't be playing both of them at the same time, but I will just switch whenever I feel burned out from the other. I only run Mario 64 at the moment, but it's something I wanted to consider in the long run. I may pick up another Mario game to run or a new franchise (Sonic and DKC comes to mind), but I'm just not certain. I could even just stick to speedrunning SM64, because I just find this game very fun alone. :)

Look, when it comes to these things: Just let things happen naturally.

"Speedrunning looks fun, I wanna try it"

runs first game

"I've had my taste, I need moar!!!"

speedruns every game known to man

There's no real value in talking hypotheticals, best way to go about it is just to jump in headfirst and get your hands dirty.

Yes, it is very helpful. Learning the mechanics of a second game might help you think of strategies for the first game that nobody had considered before.

It can also be a hindrance from a "muscle memory" point of view, if you are trying to learn two very different physical techniques at the same time, however from a mentality standpoint, learning multiple games absolutely helps you learn "speedrunning" in general a lot better and faster.

usually people tend to stick to a genre of game or game series e.g. someone who runs super mario bros. may also run super mario world, because being good at one platformer generally means you'll be good at another. again it doesn't always work like this, and many people only run 1 game, or run wildly different games.

do what you enjoy the most

I really like to run short-ish 2D platformer games of several kinds. I can't say that running a specific game helped me directly improve in other games, because mostly all games are inherently different - they all have different mechanics, difficulties, tricks and glitches, general gameplay and so on. I can say that after running several games, it is more easy for me to start running new games - I know how to "learn" the game fast, practice segments of the game efficiently, and then combining everything to a full game run.

So, there is a "meta-experience" when you run different games, but if your goal is to be good at a specific game - you will need to run and practice only this specific game.

In my opinion, the best practice to prevent burn out is to take one serious game you want to get really good at and one meme/easy game that you don't really care about but is fun and you can fall back on it when the serious game is taking too much out of you. That's the best way to handle speedrunning as a whole, but anything beyond that is your prerogative.

Oh I kinda have a game like that, but the other game I play besides Mario 64 is not a speedrunning game. It's basically competitive Smash, but I don't really care to be the best at Smash. I want to be good at it, but not the best. :)

I agre with what Timmiluvs said, but I have to do a little comment about not being able to learn very different games at the same time: if you already are knowledgeable about the games and just need to learn the route and refine your play style, I think it's even good to try learning more than one game at once because you won't get burnt out after some time. You'll be able to enjoy the games more by switching between them when you feel tired or frustrated about one.

Oh I see. So there are definitely some advantages and disadvantages for running multiple speed games. It just depends on what you value most and our own enjoyment then. Got it. :)

I may do more research on other games to run, but it will be for long term. :)

So I actually watched the video to understand context. It's not about actual number of games played; what he means by saying "play 2 games" is to not spread yourself too thin. When you're new to speedrunning and haven't really found your niche yet, there's this tendency to think "oh I wanna speedrun this and this and that one looks cool too!", etc. There may be a whole list of games you're interested in, but you have to narrow it down and focus your attention on one or you won't get good at any of them anytime soon. He advises choosing two for the reasons listed above- burnout, frustration, bad string of rng, etc- so you have another project to work on when the first stops being fun. That's not saying you can't branch out over time, but this video is intended for people new to speedrunning.

Oh I just got into speedrunning a few months ago and I already chose my game. I am aware to not spread myself too thin, which is why two seems to be a perfect number, because three or more seems a bit too chaotic. I play Smash and Mario 64, but mainly playing SM64 for the time being. If I get burned out in Mario 64, I switch to Smash and vice versa. If I`m burned out in both, I play something else.

At this point, any other game that I would want to speedrun, I would just do casual races and not really care for good runs.