If you a commercially licensed emulator box like the Nintendo classic consoles and it hooked up to the internet, could that work? Is it also possible with consoles? I was thinking of doing competition with switch online or Microsoft game pass.

Is there any technology out there that can make sure that a machine or software isn't tampered with? I am curious. I want to do competitions for games like Speedruns and am curious what is done. Because I am looking to run leagues and tournaments that would work like a seasons, I want to reduce the need to eyeball every single thing to verify results.

In speed run competitions, where it is head to head, as opposed to going for records, isn't there a way to use a seed that all participants would use to be able to have random events happen the same for both of them?

I am in the process of getting a consulting company off the ground to deal with Esports. I want to focus on areas where people are competent at more than one game, and also games where people don't need to play online at the same time. I saw Speedrunning as a category that can be developed. Just like the way going for world records at high scores, which is the dominant form of challenges for retro videogames, it appears speedrunning is in a similar situation. As it mainly is now, neither one is in a place where too much is being done for Esports. I think that can change. What I would work on would be aside to the other communities, but I would welcome for people to jump over. I would like to see people be able to compete both for fastest time and high score, or a mix of both.

Too early to say on anything. More work needs to be done.

I will work on it. Speedrunning is just one thing I am looking at. I am also interested in planning a large-scale Esports and competitive games festival in the eastern part of NY State. I want to develop competitive game playing in this area, with Esports being one part of it.

Zenic, thank you. I am trying to juggle a lot of things, a bunch theoretically, while also jumping into see what works practically. I actually was looking at a number of combinations and possibilities, and saw speedrunning as a way to broaden my perspective. I actually am interested in hearing what people say that strong disagree and why, so it can modify what I have in mind. I also hope maybe some new ideas come out, and I can have feedback on what I had not working in the past, so I know what might be able to be tweaked.

I am actually interested in working on all of the above. When I looked at tournament configruations, I saw some things like this: Goals: Fastest time Complete Game % Game complete/level Sub-goal completion fasted Target score/target resources acquired High score Run out of lives/resources Within a time limit (Caravan) Kill screen/target level/% complete Misere’: Low score. Games with negative scores like Astrosmash support this. May be best with timer. Points for goals completed. Endurance: Longest lasting time Combined with misere’. Endurance plus low score. Battle Royale: Last remaining player as players who don’t meet threshold are knocked out Regular interval Based on lead player Artistic performance; How players play in game is rated. By judges during or after. Nero: By audience during. Can be an elimination. If player fails to sufficiently entertain, they are eliminated. Last player left standing wins.

Parameters Number of continues None 1 or more Can they earn more? Continue point Number of lives: Do they earn more? Single life to start? Starting level Difficulty level Can player gain resources (lives, continues, etc…) as they play? Weaknesses: Is player set back resources/lives/time/etc… at start. This can be used for handicapping.

Field structure: Individual player Team play (score one point for each opposing/team member defeated) Take top result of top player on team. Take top X results for a team Decide if it is for beating all players in field or only opponents. Crowd (Randomly assigned to teams and play): Fixed teams, Drop out, Defects.

Hybrid Event types: Fastest time to target score. If no one gets to score, then highest score wins. If tied, then fasted time to that. Also run Battle Royale and reduce the number of players as time goes on to eliminate players targeting score only. Or drop lives. Players play a set number of minutes. Average of scores is target of score (Median, average of median, etc..) to reach in the following round. Player with top score and then down picks seating in next round. Next round consists of players trying to reach target score with the fastest time.

The context I have thought through on things, and worked, is a separate area from what Speedrunning is currently, and its community. It is a case of developing eSports around games that are played single player and compete against others via best time or best score. It is an attempt to focus on tournaments, rather than world records. It is what would be needed to have arcade style games from the past function as eSports, rather than their current state. I am attempting to understand what is done in the Speedrun space to better understand how things worked in this space. What I have in mind may be one, or multiple off, from what is currently in the speedrun space. I see similar with Pinball, and have discussed with the IFPA and PAPA their take on video pinball. It is one off from what they do. They are next to it but distant. Their communities are not too fond of it, but they see value in it.

This is where I am coming from. I am interested in having fastest time to target states of games also be connected to best score in a certain time, and more. This is not what you are used to. I want to be able to work with this, as I also do game design, and have it connect but also experiment differently. I am up front with this, so I hope this is more clear. I am seeing the eSports space growing large, and I am looking to support. My interests aren't to be done by myself alone, but hoping I can connect with others on this.

I notice in some of the conversations, I am seeing a number of concerns, and realizing that the context I come from as an outsider, is that it isn't the same. My hope is things can develop without what I do undermining anything here, but also strengthen it.

There was a post on here about the problem with RNG and speed running. I can have single screen games, have events happen at the same way in a games, and other things to normalize the race.

In this you raised an interesting point that connects to a possible tradeoff between what skill demands and what people want to watch. I see chess has issues generating spectators because it gets played out. On the other hand, if you go purely random environment, people may find the chaos fun to watch but players feel like they are not mastering anything. People watch to see upsets happen.

I will add here also that there is talk of risk vs reward in good game design. I hold this can be a place that makes for both the test of skills and also makes things interesting to watch.

Related to what I wrote, I am interested in seeing how quickly people can adapt to new situations. In one sense, I am interested game changing as a competition. The partly comes out of what would be needed to have a competition for modern indie and classic style arcade games. That is my focus in this, the ability if players to switch between games and how different demands of games impact the ability to perform.

It relates to this quote... Jack if all trades, master of nine, but oft better than a master of one.

I would like to find out how true that is. It is more about finding glitches in people, rather than in games.

I would like humans to learn how to maximize their potential and be able to see how quickly they can adapt. I will put this next to your Skynet comment in that, I see it would be of benefit for humans to end up learning how to out-adapt machines.

An example of one form of competitive play would be: Players play for a set number of minutes. Average of scores is target of score (Median, average of median, etc..) to reach in the following round. Player with top score and then down picks seating in next round. Next round consists of players trying to reach target score with the fastest time. This is arbitrary goals based around what players develop, then the way a game is naturally designed. and trying to complete it.

There is other cases to, of having another target. For example, players race to be the first to acquire a certain amount of gold in a game. This is a race that isn't based on reaching a point in the game. It is a race to a target, but not a location.

Pardon any confusion I am generating here. Combine my being an outsider to this space, looking to learn from it, with my use of a phone to post that generates typos. Chalk up any confusion or being wrong as an outsider, who sees things differently.

Not all sports are about groups of players competing together. There are a number of sports and games, like motorsports, which has a single racer but a team supporting them.

A reason why I am interested in the competitive level, is I want to see how people can change games, and play different games at a top level or near the top. I am also interested in putting different games next to each other. It is also to identify what make top players tick or think differently so we can learn from it.

What I am doing would be in addition to what else is going on. This is about testing and improving human performance. That is what I am interested in and being able to generate sufficient income so players can commit to this space full time and see what is going on. There is also the area of indie developers and giving them a broader audience and being able to encourage them to design games particularly suited for speed running and competition even if it means less storytelling elements. This is my interest in this. It is also engaging audiences and increasing people who watch. It is growing things in new ways. It is also putting the old next to the new, so classics and modern are played together.

I apparently did an arbitrary post to try to explain the benefits of arbitrary conditions. In this, if my interest is not on seeing who is fastest at a game of all time, but am interested in seeing who us the most skilled among a pool of players at a certain time, the ability to change conditions such as target score helps. I can also tweak number of lives. I can also do handicapping. I can look at the entire field of players and change target score for them based on a target score they set prior.

My interest here is to test skill.

Things like pinball does not feature a single game, nor does golf feature a single course. There are a number of athlons that involve mixing a number of games together. Poker is also a family of games and not just one game. You have chessboxing which is a thing and is played competitively. Anything that can be done to see who is best can become a competition, like eating food is.

All races that do not have player interference are indirect also. This it what people are seeing in speedruns.

My interest is in testing skill. The ability to have flexibility in configuring I see as a strength. I can see what makes sense flowing out if the players competing rather than the nature if a game itself. I am interest in the best at a certain time rather than the best of all time.

There is an interest in having competitive game playing becoming viable as actual competition. People see competition with speedrunning and think it may be viable. Other race events are sports. Other single players compete against an environment are sports. Speedrunning is seen as possibly fitting that and it us a reason why I am interested.

On that note, I have a loose definition as to what eSports is.

Anyone do speedrunning to target scores? I come from a best score background and see fastest time to a target score as a way to have speedrunning in a new area. I want to speedrun pinball. I spoke to pinball and they did this.

While I do not see this as useful for World records, I do see it as useful for tournaments.

It could be possible to chain multiple games together. If a player failed to reach a target score after set number of lives, the reset and try again. The clock keeps running for them. Even if they pause, the clock would still be running.

I am new to this space and have been interested in working with retro style indie and classic arcade games on best score for esports. I now realize it would be of benefit to jump into speedrunning and learn more.

On this note, I am curious how much speedrunning is done to reach a target score. For points based games, the idea is to have the fastest tine to a target score. Someone could speedrun a pinball machine or Galaga.

Has much been done in this area?

I would like to grow speedrunning further as an esport. I am new to speedrunning, but I have worked with other competition formats. I am interested in jumping in and supporting however I can. I would like to do things like increase prize pools and help organize people who speedrun fir tournaments. I am in Albany, NY. I also am interested in working on documentation and learning the best practices.

I go way back with games. I witnessed the crash in the 1980s. I am approaching this professionally, as I seek what to do to have a lasting positive impact and I would like it to relate to what I do for a living.