Is it worth it? I've long considered community to be the very best thing about speedrunning and of the few small ones I've managed to find in my time, they've usually been quite nice to be a part of. There's another game I've been looking at learning one or more runs for, but as I interact with the community I find that the lot of them are a bunch of absolute d-bags I can't really stand to be around. Makes me a little tepid to run the game. Anyone have experience as a 'lone wolf' runner?
Well, for me, having a community is the best thing in speedrunning. If the community has some d-bags like you said, then ignore those idiots.
How about games you want to run but nobody ran them yet? do you stop running the game because there is no community? no you run the game, because you want to. so just run your game. if you are lucky you might even build an own community without the d-bags in it who already built one. option two would be to give them a chance. one of my friends (IRL though), I hated him a lot when we first met. he turned out to become a really close friend of mine. situations can change. when you really can't get along with them you can still continue to run the game alone.
My current main game has only 1 other runner, but I find the game itself a lot of fun [to run] so it's not really an issue, although it's not really competetive since it's not their main game.
I think the main downside to running games with no community is that there's no real motivation or even point in optimization.
I only do this as a bit of craic not many people run the games I run and I am ok with that. I am not trying to be the best of the best at everything I play. Having some competition in a few games does give me motivation to improve my own runs but I am not driven by any need to engage or interact with anyone thats running the game.
Community's a big deal. I feel like the biggest reason this hobby gets so much flak is because the focus is on "playing games" and not on "a way to hang out with friends / like-minded people", but the friendly competition and encouragement is what I like most about it. Sometimes I enjoy watching and encouraging someone going for a WR or PB just as much as I enjoy going for one myself.
I think that one's a common misconception too. To be fair, we wouldn't be streaming if we didn't want people to interact / watch our streams, but you can't say that's the ¤only¤ reason we're here.
Most of my games are uncontested but there are three or four with at least one other runner, and my best experiences in speedrunning have all been when there has been a sense of co-operation in optimising a run or at least some competition driving the runs on. For me, it is worth doing a speedrun of a game you enjoy even if you are the only one, as it is fun to do the initial routing and there is always the possibility that someone will see it and compete. However, I don't enjoy/bother grinding run after run unless there is someone to compete with. The only exceptions are if there is a personal target (e.g. sub-60).
Another thing to consider is helping form a community for a game that doesn't have one. Although you'll need to find the right people, you might just bring life to a new speedgame. It's something I'm doing for my first and only game I run, and even though I've only gotten one more person to pick up speedrunning, it's fun to collaborate.