EPT
What’s the longest time you’ve ever taken to beat a game? If I were to consider the games that have an actual endpoint (you know, not League of Legends, DotA2, Starcraft 2, Guild Wars 2, etc.), my longest play time is probably between 80 and 100 hours (on Persona 3 or 4, Final Fantasy VII, X, or Tactics). That’s downright paltry compared to some. It’d be easy to break that record with heavy side-quest, multiple ending, or grind-oriented games like Skyrim, Pokemon (any generation with EV training), or Tales of the Abyss. I once spoke to a girl in Japan who had spent over 300 hours playing Star Ocean 3. THREE. HUNDRED. HOURS. Even for me, that is insane*. Those games that we play for hours and hours and hours are the ones that normally stick in our memory, the time spent an indication of how much we favor the game.
* lol ive totally done dat
So let’s flip it: what’s the shortest time you’ve ever taken to complete a game?
Shortest completion time isn’t something most gamers consider. Usually, if you’ve completed a game unusually quickly it’s because the game was very short, you ignored the side quests, or you just didn’t care to spend the extra time on it. There are only a few short games I’ve really enjoyed; games like The Act, Bastion, Portal which are memorable in part because of their brevity. Their narrative beauty is designed to be conveyed in short bursts. Yet these games are the exception, rather than the norm. Typically, the reason we don’t think much of the games that don’t last very long is that most gamers view video games as a way to experience an sweeping, epic storyline, unique, complex gameplay, or incredibly-rendered graphics. If you didn’t want to take any time truly experiencing the game, it must not have been worthwhile. Right? What other way could you view the game, if not as a gameplay and/or narrative experience?
What if you played the game as if it were a race? A race in which you skip anything that might take up precious seconds. Where you advance past every cutscene, rush every dialogue box, ignore every sidequest, and cut every corner (occasionally with a sword). Where you take the fastest path possible to get to the end of the game, with as few frills, unessentials, and… well… intended gameplay features as possible. Instead of playing for the gameplay or story, one would play the game to find the optimal path through it, beating not just the game but even the idea of how to play it. As fast as humanly possible.
It’s called a speed run. They’re awesome.
I’ll start with an example. All of you have (probably) played Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. It’s widely regarded as one of, if not the, best video game ever created. Whether or not you’d personally assign it that superlative, it remains one of gaming’s greatest achievements: a wonderful and whimsical fantasy story, an innovative, next-gen take on classic Zelda gameplay, and a beautiful and expansive world, the likes of which had never been seen before (3D OMG). I was rather young when it came out, so I spent a long time on the game (the Water Temple can still go fuck itself). Even to the older gamers, Ocarina of Time could yield hours of fun. And I’m just considering the primary storyline; one could spend far longer collecting the various extras in the game, from every Heart Container to all the Golden Skulltulas.
The record for fastest 100% completion of of Ocarina of Time is six hours and 35 minutes. SIX. AND A HALF. HOURS. If you’re not going for the 100%, you can cut it down to under an hour and a quarter. And with certain techniques… 20 minutes.
That is bonkers. If you don’t believe me, take a look (though reserve a good chunk of time, this is addicting).
Madness I say. Any gamer could attest to the difficulty of all tasks performed, to say nothing of the insane matter in which they were completed. How is this game-race accomplished and why?
For a successful speedrun, there are three requirements: exceptional game-playing skills, a memorized and extensively-planned route, and the ability to exploit various glitches or optimizations. The first is obvious: if you can’t play the game extremely well, there’s no way you’ll manage a record breaking run. You may think you’ve seen someone who’s good at video games, but it’s doubtful that you’ve seen a true master until you’ve seen a speedrunner. Have you ever made a fatal twitch of the joystick? Do you ever accidentally jump or roll into an enemy? A practiced speedrunner never will; they’ll only take action exactly when necessary. Or at least they do once they’ve practiced, which may be the most impressive part. The amount of practice required to know precisely when to attack, what time the character must jump, or how to complete a room without taking damage is mind-blowing. Speedrunning demands consistency, so a runner must completely understand the game to make a competitive run. I cannot imagine taking the time to achieve that level of competency on an easy game like Ocarina, much less a challenging one like Dark Souls. Comprehending the essential effort, however, makes watching speedruns that much more gratifying.
Of course, no amount of skill can fully prepare a runner for a level they’ve never played; you can only do so much when you lack information. Which is why speedrunners memorize and plan every in-game moment. “Oh, this room? It has two guards: one with a machete, one with a gun. The former will start by moving left, the latter, right. You can beat them in ten seconds by taking two steps to the right, firing once, doing a dodge roll, then firing again.” A speedrunner knows their game with that level of detail: every treasure, each obscured enemy, and all of the special powerups are known to them. Of particular note will be the elements of the game determined by random chance, which, as you might imagine, are a speedrunner’s worst enemies. Many runs are stopped by the poor outcome of an RNG (random number generator). Yet that rarely stymies the enthusiasm of a runner, who will proceed to memorize the set of possibilities for those encounters. Using this compiled knowledge, speedrunners create “routes” through the game, series of steps which, when followed exactly, will complete a game in a fraction of the typical playtime. Routes are constantly refined, for minute changes are often the difference between a world record and just another run. These routes must also be practiced and memorized: after all, time spent thinking is time on the clock.
Unadulterated skill and comprehensive routes cut down on run time to a point, but the true magic of speedruns lies within the exploitation of the game. Yes, you can maximize your skill or knowledge of the game’s events to a certain extent, but even then you are playing confined by the rules created by the developers. In other words, you’ll only ever be as fast as the game’s rules allow. Luckily, video games are written in code, and code, regardless of how well constructed it is, always contains glitches and unintended results. Discovering and taking advantage of these programmatic quirks is integral to the art of speedrunning, as these bugs become techniques used to decrease run time. Exploitable glitches run the gamut from graphically “slicing” through walls with a sword to input sequences that prompt a door into loading an entirely unexpected area. One glitch technique employed in Super Mario 64 allows Mario to perform a “backwards long jump,” allowing him to pass through theoretically impassible areas (such as the Endless Staircase) with ease. In other games, certain algorithms or programming techniques have unintended results that are manipulated by speedrunners. One example is in Final Fantasy IX, where the number of consecutive continuous steps increases the risk of a monster encounter. The simple solution: if you pause (very) briefly between each step, your chance of random encounters stays extremely low. Occasionally, triggering these glitches is as simple as talking to the correct sequence of people, but there are also glitches that can only be activated in certain frames, requiring split-second timing. A speedrunner playing by the “rules” is one thing, but when they break the game, shit gets real.
Considering all the work needed for a record-breaking speedrun, learning how demands intense dedication. Naturally, the love for this specific gaming accomplishment created a vibrant speedrunning community (as nerds do so often). On one hand, the speedrunning community is based in intense competition: if you don’t hold your game’s record time, then you’ll practice, theorize, and route-plan until you do. In spite of this, the community appears to be extremely friendly, willing to congratulate and learn from those who prove themselves to be the speediest. Knowledge tends to be widely shared in the community, empowering any interested player to begin a speedrunning habit. The most impressive demonstrations of the greatness of the community are the yearly SpeedDemosArchives charity marathons, during which hundreds of thousands of dollars are raised for cancer research while great games are broken to pieces and good times are had by all.
If there’s one thing that writing this blog has taught me, it’s that I love discovering gaming subcultures. Of all those I’ve chanced upon so far, the speedrunning community may be my favorite. While I’ve been acquainted with the idea of speedrunning for a while, I became fully aware of the community while watching one of the aforementioned charity marathons: the 2013 Awesome Games Done Quick Marathon. It was honestly one of my favorite nerd experiences in recent memory. Bundles of happy thoughts and positive reinforcement, coupled with inspiring gaming skills and strategic intelligence. Not to mention that seeing the main character of Pokemon: Yellow walk out of his house and into the Pokemon League Hall of Fame (literally) was one of the coolest things ever. I pledged during those (many, many) hours watching the marathon that it would not be the last speedrunning event for which I tuned in. You can be damn sure I’ll keep that promise.
The next time you’re playing a game, try to envision it as a race track, with your avatar as the car and your fellow gamers as other racers. Test to see if you find a rush in spotting the fastest path from point A to point B. Figure out if you are pleased to uncover the small developmental errors that allow you to proceed past the bridge without giving the guard his bottle of fish. Look deep, and determine whether or not you’d like to see your name at the top of a long list, sporting the shortest timestamp of them all.
If so, you might want to go for a run.
You can read many more posts about many more nerdy subjects at the N3rd Dimenion
