ok so There are 888 runs on the leaderboard right now (so basically 888 unique people who have beaten smb1 and posted it on src) And then there are 90,000+ people who have watched Kosmic's tutorial on how to sub 5 There are also 3.2 million people who have watched Kosmic's 455 and many more ok so What's up with that? Why are there so many people just watching and such a low conversion rate to people actually playing and making their first run? inmahujihu

people are just not ready to speedrun, some people just watch speedruns

There are approximately 1,664 players in the NFL, yet 98.2 million people watched the last Super Bowl. People may enjoy watching the NFL but not wish to play, or may not have the necessary skills to play. This is the same for speedrunning - a high amount of viewers shouldn't define how many runners the game has. Instead, people should run because they want to and would gain pleasure and enjoyment out of it. If the extent of their enjoyment is limited to just watching, then so be it.

@JJReed Ok, but it's really easy to start, you just go like "o hey I want to start speedrunning this game!" whip out your computer, download an emulator, find a rom somehow, and boom. When you say some people, that means out of the 3.2 million people who have watched Kosmic's 455, 99.98% of those people don't consider or decide not to speedrun smb1. If it was more like 98% or something that could make sense, but 99.98%?

@JUNO117 The lack of players compared to people who watch make sense in this case. The level that you have to play at is absolutely ridiculous in order to be one of those 1664 players. That takes years of grinding and perfecting your skill while going through whatever hard stuff you have to go through. Very high barrier to entry, and I'm assuming there are also limited spots for these players as well (so if someone is better and gets in, someone who would have gone in is no longer able to) 99.98% inmahujihu

Edit: Convincing a percentage of a large group to buy an online course, say for $997 is converts like 40X better (1% of people buy) than the percentage of people who have watched the smb1 WR to people that decide to start playing. This is kinda where I'm basing this off of.

Maybe they don't want to spend most of their time grinding or speedrunning at all. not everyone is gonna be like "I want to start speedrunning this game." The people who don't speedrun but have watched speedruns just like to see the reactions, or see the satisfying gameplay made by the speedrunner without having to struggle with recreating that run themselves.

and also thats only any% runs. Most people maybe don't want to run any% (crazy as that may seem). But total there are 1,019 players. And the people above me have great points, it is a huge time commitment to take the time in order to get good at something. Most people probably don't have that free time to spend on speedrunning.

I don't mean get good, I mean just complete a run and post it on src. @youtubeman06 I'm not expecting everyone, I'm just expecting like 1% of people to start. That's 1/100th of everyone. @ImDangerous20 Ok that's tru, I didn't know if there was a statistic like that Ok so you're saying most people = 99.98% of people that watch Kosmic's WR wut And I'm just saying complete a run, not quicc or anything. inmahujihu

@Lul_ecks_dee I have smb1 on Wii, so after watching all you pros hit 456 and 455, I fired it up and gave it a shot. I couldn't even make it to the first damn underground at full speed! So that was that.

Yet I come here every morning to read the latest posts, and check the leaderboard to see if Kosmic or somewes or taven or gasp darbian or maybe even YOU have posted that new WR. Keep rollin' buddy, and watchers will keep watching. Some might even give it a try.