Speedruns and My Fondness For The Gaming Community in General
It’s no secret that I like video games. Truth be told, I love them. Some of my earliest memories are of video games. I can remember the fun of exploring the tombs and it’s now simple puzzle solving in the original ‘Tomb Raider’. I can remember squealing with laughter as I charged around on foot and on a skateboard in the original ‘Spyro the Dragon’ games and I can never forget being traumatised by Nemesis from ‘Resident Evil 3’ which gave me a serious case of Kinemortophobia, which is a fear of zombies, as briefly mentioned in my ‘Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs’ blog, which I will leave a link to below for you to read at your leisure.
From my early childhood memories, you can probably take a good stab at my age. I am a 90s Kid, and I feel I have been around long enough to truly appreciate how games have evolved in terms of graphics/presentation, soundtracks (which I own many of by the way) as well as the general growing appreciation for games as a form of art and means of telling stories. Part of that has to do with the rapid evolution of technology, as well as a change of how we interact as a society. Don’t know how to kill that tough boss that all your friends and followers on social media are gloating about? Go to Reddit and find out how to do it (legitimately or otherwise). Heard a piece of video game music in that tragic death scene but have no idea what it’s called? Shazam it, or, go to YouTube and type <<insert game soundtrack here>> and you will probably find that soppy tune in minutes. Want to know the next Triple-A fuck up? You will find that and so much more on the internet!
I know I do these sort of things all the time and you probably do too. Other than music and a bit of archery, video games are pretty much my only other hobby. It is a borderline obsession to be wholly truthful and I thought that I have experienced every way to enjoy a video game (with the exception of VR)…or so I thought.
Like many other video game devotee, I watch many a review and Let’s Plays on YouTube, to see if a game is worth my money and time. One night right at the beginning at 2018, a video by IGN was recommended to me, claiming a player has spent 3000 hours on FromSoftware’s ‘Bloodborne’, which is one of my favourite games. Intrigued, I began to watch the video and this player goes by the name of ‘HeyZeusHeresToast’, who is one of many Twitch Streamers who plays games for the sole purpose of finishing it as fast as possible. Twitch and speedruns, in general, were quite alien to me but I was simply astounded by the supporting footage from an attempt to get a world record. His character was fighting one of the bosses in the game, Lady Maria of The Astral Clocktower, who is found in The Old Hunters DLC, which is extremely tough, especially for those who were toughened up by Bloodborne’s already intense difficulty. Many fans would deem her to be one of the best fights in the franchise.
The Soulsborne games are known for their gruelling boss encounters, so seeing this Zeus guy obliterate her in seconds literally made my jaw drop to the floor…almost.
Of course, seeing this short clip, I knew I had to sit down and watch his proper speedrun. This was the first time I would watch a speedrun of a game. I had no idea what to expect, but what I saw, definitely opened my eyes to a whole new world within the gaming community.
I don’t intend of giving a blow-by-blow account of everything this Zeus guy did at 2018's first batch of GDQ (Games Done Quick) runs, as he does a pretty fine job all by himself, explaining his glitches and exploits that would not occur to a casual player such as myself. As engaging and inspiring as the run was, that did not have my full attention. In the screen with the runner and the couch behind him, a large crowd of people was formed and I was somehow surprised to see how many people were watching him play. It was in a hall that looked pretty packed and people, with not many vacant seats. People actually paid to watch someone else play video games.
On the bottom right of the screen was a lot of money that was in the millions. Throughout the night, viewers to the original stream on Twitch (I watched an upload of it onto YouTube) were donating money for charity, which was one of many charities fighting to eliminate cancer. I was expecting this money to be a combination of the people in the audience who paid to attend the event and whatever pocket change those who were watching it on Twitch and yes, a lot of it was ranging from five to fifty (US) dollars and I just thought a lot of people were donating similar amounts. If this was true, that would still be amazing, but then came the announcement that someone donated $5000. Yes, you read that right, five THOUSAND big ones! I was stunned, rewinding the video to make sure I heard that correctly. There were several over donations like this, some were $1000 and $2000, whilst the biggest one after that was $4000. I can only presume that either these people have a considerable amount of money, or were some game related company and just happened to have 5K to donate! Either way, that is still a lot of money to donate. When was the last time you donated to charity and how much did you donate?
But it wasn’t just the large amount of monies being donated and raised and the impressive gameplay that made me smile and think twice about the human race. It was also the genuine cheers and thanks Zeus gave when he was playing the game to the various other streamers/runners of the game who contributed to Bloodborne’s speedrunning community and how friendly he seemed to invite people to said community where various people from around the world exchange tips and tricks about strategies and glitches to make the various runs as smooth and quick as possible, which (again) surprised me as the whole concept of speedrunning is incredibly competitive as you are trying to be better than the one before you and any that come after you and yet, there are no secrets in these categories.
What Zeus did in this year’s GDQ was the ‘All Bosses’ run, which is pretty self-explanatory. There are others, that you can read here if you wish.
‘This could have all been a one-off’. I laughed to myself (probably internally). ‘He was really entertaining and engaging, Bloodborne is a really great and popular game. There has to be some magic to what he’s doing, some science that is making people donate this much money!’ I added, having no idea that this sort of donations happened all the time at GDQ.
Like some sad and lonely junkie, I started binge-watching speedrun after speedrun on YouTube of any game that I love. ‘Skyrim’, ‘Dark Souls’, ‘Metroid Prime 3: Corruption’, ‘The Darkness’, all of these games (and every other one in existence) has been or will be torn apart by the gaming community to poke at its flaws in its design/coding so people can reach from beginning to end as quickly as possible. Might I emphasise that these runners rarely say ‘Ha, look how buggy and poorly built this game is!’. They do what they do because they enjoy playing that particular video game and are finding new and totally unique ways of enjoying these game. There is something fascinating about watching speedruns that I cannot put into words. How people manage to find these glitches and exploits in games is beyond me.
Coda
As a loud vocal person within the gaming community, there is a lot of love of what game developers do. There is a lot of love for our favourite YouTubers who just play video games for a living, and there is a lot of love for folks like me and you who just talk about video games, revelling in our stories of valour and to that one boss character and the all the times we have died by the sudden force of gravity suddenly stopping.
The last couple of years have bought many wonderful games as well as secrets about games that have been out for years and years. For example, some cut dialogue to ‘Bloodborne’ was unveiled by the fanbase, giving fresh and interesting takes on characters we already knew about, as well as some bosses that never made its way into the game. Some of them looking pretty near to completion, but all of them are obviously rather buggy and glitchy. If you are into ‘Bloodborne’ and it’s Lovecraftian lore, go and check those out and see what you make of it. I simply cannot wait for what 2019 and beyond brings, in terms of video games as everything else in the real world just looks pretty bleak.
Here is a link to HeyZuesThatsToast speedrun of Bloodborne, almost a year ago at the time of typing.
Do you enjoy watching speedruns? If so, do you have a particular favourite runner? What games do you enjoy watching being broken? Are they ones you play, or do they belong to other franchises?
Are you a speedrunner? If so, why got you into speedrunning? I’d love to hear all about it, and I may even do a follow-up blog if I get enough responses. Heck, I may even do several if a vast number of you lot get in touch, a sort of Q&A thing with anyone who is particularly keen, I don’t know, I’ll have to see what happens. Drop me a message on my Twitter if you fancy sharing your thoughts.
Let’s start a conversation, people!
PS: Happy New Year! \[T]/
