There is an argument to be made (by people like Mark from TheElectricUnderground) that the increased interest in speedruns partially stems from the decline in score-play.
Score has been phased out of most modern games meaning that the majority of (new) games lack an objective metric for performance.
You could make the argument that score-play is a "dev-sanctioned" way to play while speedrunning promotes ruthless efficiency, but the truth is that we often see speedruns work within arbitrary restraints anyways. While scoreplay can include as many exploits as speedrunning it can also support methods of gameplay which has less friction with the core game design, which might be a good thing.
I would urge anyone who likes speedrunning to check out a high-skill run of Hyper Demon or superplay of any CAVE shmup.
It makes me think of people who "jailbreak" AI, trying to push it to go beyond its inbuilt rules.
I think the appeal of jailbreak and speedruns is often the same: pushing the boundaries of what's possible.
And I think that's roughly the essence of play: exploring possibility space for the sake of it. Normal play is within the possibility space of the game's rules, but a speedrun (or jailbreak) is exploring a larger possibility space.
I always thought the crazy techniques used in speed runs were interesting because they are essentially technologies developed within the game itself, using the laws of nature of the game (i.e., the games code) to produce a desired but unexpected effect, much as real-life technology exploits the laws of physics of our actual universe to produce effects that it's not obvious you would be able to cause.
I’ve never considered why speedruns are so oddly compelling, but this is wonderfully unpacked.
A personal favourite was watching the ‘Outer Worlds’ developers react to a player speedruning their effort, all the while laughing and musing at the genius of someone to so cleverly unpick their well made work. There was a lot of respect in their appraisal.
We Australians love a subversive rule breaker, and thumbing a nose to authority (when tastefully executed) is perhaps a big part of my own enjoyment with these.
Tabletop roleplaying games, like Dungeons & Dragons, fit readily into your theory. They would have been my first, go-to example to illustrate it, even.
Players at one extreme just want abstract tactical wargaming, whereas at the other extreme players want narrative joint story-telling. It can be bad if a D&D group has a mix of players who want different things out of the game.
An interesting and compelling analysis. An analogy might be to reading a whodunnit in the traditional way vs. skipping ahead to the last chapter to see who the criminal is. You can “speedrun” the book by skipping ahead, but you’re doing something distinctively different from reading the book. Kenny Easwaran: this is an example of speed running outside of a gaming context.
Can the prelusory goal be an end state which is agreed upon by the community? Seems to me that those can largely be game states if that is the case. Let's take the Dark Souls example, and let's say that the end goal is not the Victory screen but the opening of a certain chest at a hard-to-reach portion of the game. That could be evaluated by markers in the game data, but can also be verified visually. Granted, most speedrun communities probably don't ask for your game file to check the metadata, but it could be done in theory. In fact, different aspects of it have been used to evaluate cheating claims (as included in your article).
This is not romantic or glamorous, but I think game states described in code are less opaque now than they were when Dark Souls released in 2011. In fact, in some communities that is the barrier to entry in order to speedrun a specific category (like SM3 or older Pokémon titles).
Just curious as to your thoughts. Maybe I'm conflating the prelusory goal with the constitutive rule.
I think you're absolutely right: the goal could be any game state the community likes. This seems to be the essence of most meme runs -- like "menderbug%" in Hollow Knight, where the goal is to kill the Menderbug (who has a 2% chance of spawning when you first enter the Forgotten Crossroads). Great points about SM3 and Pokemon.
In the article, I deny that reaching the credits (or any other game state) is *THE* prelusory goal of Dark Souls. But that's just because Dark Souls -- the thing you can download -- isn't really a single game. It's a framework within which you can play all kinds of games, depending on which goals and rules you adopt.
So even if reaching the credits (or the chest) isn't *the* goal of Dark Souls, it's still *a* legitimate goal you could have. If you're gunning for the credits, while I'm just trying to get to the chest, we're both playing games -- just not the same game.
Thinking about this some more, I’m realizing that competitive games, and speedrunning, both rely on coming up with necessary and sufficient conditions, because participants are often aiming to optimize things, which often means pushing boundaries, so you have to have a precise definition of where the boundaries are. Philosophy then seems to get this obsession from its connection to legal argument, where it is also important for the same reason.
There are some passages where Thi Nguyen talks about games as works of art, and says that you only properly appreciate works of art by interacting with them in the intended way (ie, by looking at a painting or reading a book or eating a meal, rather than any other permutation). I’ve thought that speed runs are a potential exception to this, but I think you make a compelling case for thinking of this as a separate sort of aesthetic activity one can engage in with the same object designed for one purpose - the way that instagramming a meal or putting a symphony on as background music at a dinner party could be.
I think your account also makes clear why video games are the only things people speedrun (apart from athletic courses like ski runs and car races, which are designed for that purpose).
I love the idea that speedrunning a game is like eating a painting.
Interestingly, some developers are now designing their games with speedruns in mind (e.g. Celeste). Which makes the speedrun a bit more like a ski run.
There is an argument to be made (by people like Mark from TheElectricUnderground) that the increased interest in speedruns partially stems from the decline in score-play.
Score has been phased out of most modern games meaning that the majority of (new) games lack an objective metric for performance.
You could make the argument that score-play is a "dev-sanctioned" way to play while speedrunning promotes ruthless efficiency, but the truth is that we often see speedruns work within arbitrary restraints anyways. While scoreplay can include as many exploits as speedrunning it can also support methods of gameplay which has less friction with the core game design, which might be a good thing.
I would urge anyone who likes speedrunning to check out a high-skill run of Hyper Demon or superplay of any CAVE shmup.
That’s an excellent point. Maybe hitless runs are an extreme version of playing without the threat of losing “lives”?
It makes me think of people who "jailbreak" AI, trying to push it to go beyond its inbuilt rules.
I think the appeal of jailbreak and speedruns is often the same: pushing the boundaries of what's possible.
And I think that's roughly the essence of play: exploring possibility space for the sake of it. Normal play is within the possibility space of the game's rules, but a speedrun (or jailbreak) is exploring a larger possibility space.
Great analogy. Pure play (as opposed to playing some particular game) seems like exactly the right concept to be thinking about.
I always thought the crazy techniques used in speed runs were interesting because they are essentially technologies developed within the game itself, using the laws of nature of the game (i.e., the games code) to produce a desired but unexpected effect, much as real-life technology exploits the laws of physics of our actual universe to produce effects that it's not obvious you would be able to cause.
I’ve never considered why speedruns are so oddly compelling, but this is wonderfully unpacked.
A personal favourite was watching the ‘Outer Worlds’ developers react to a player speedruning their effort, all the while laughing and musing at the genius of someone to so cleverly unpick their well made work. There was a lot of respect in their appraisal.
We Australians love a subversive rule breaker, and thumbing a nose to authority (when tastefully executed) is perhaps a big part of my own enjoyment with these.
A wonderful piece Dan!
Cheers, Ricky! Is this the one?
https://youtu.be/ZIK2uceHow8?feature=shared
It is! Here’s the longer version:
https://youtu.be/wqpYIrP_IRc?si=lieEFi8mzDD5j6mV
Tabletop roleplaying games, like Dungeons & Dragons, fit readily into your theory. They would have been my first, go-to example to illustrate it, even.
Players at one extreme just want abstract tactical wargaming, whereas at the other extreme players want narrative joint story-telling. It can be bad if a D&D group has a mix of players who want different things out of the game.
An interesting and compelling analysis. An analogy might be to reading a whodunnit in the traditional way vs. skipping ahead to the last chapter to see who the criminal is. You can “speedrun” the book by skipping ahead, but you’re doing something distinctively different from reading the book. Kenny Easwaran: this is an example of speed running outside of a gaming context.
!!!
Question:
Can the prelusory goal be an end state which is agreed upon by the community? Seems to me that those can largely be game states if that is the case. Let's take the Dark Souls example, and let's say that the end goal is not the Victory screen but the opening of a certain chest at a hard-to-reach portion of the game. That could be evaluated by markers in the game data, but can also be verified visually. Granted, most speedrun communities probably don't ask for your game file to check the metadata, but it could be done in theory. In fact, different aspects of it have been used to evaluate cheating claims (as included in your article).
This is not romantic or glamorous, but I think game states described in code are less opaque now than they were when Dark Souls released in 2011. In fact, in some communities that is the barrier to entry in order to speedrun a specific category (like SM3 or older Pokémon titles).
Just curious as to your thoughts. Maybe I'm conflating the prelusory goal with the constitutive rule.
Thanks for the question, Ari!
I think you're absolutely right: the goal could be any game state the community likes. This seems to be the essence of most meme runs -- like "menderbug%" in Hollow Knight, where the goal is to kill the Menderbug (who has a 2% chance of spawning when you first enter the Forgotten Crossroads). Great points about SM3 and Pokemon.
In the article, I deny that reaching the credits (or any other game state) is *THE* prelusory goal of Dark Souls. But that's just because Dark Souls -- the thing you can download -- isn't really a single game. It's a framework within which you can play all kinds of games, depending on which goals and rules you adopt.
So even if reaching the credits (or the chest) isn't *the* goal of Dark Souls, it's still *a* legitimate goal you could have. If you're gunning for the credits, while I'm just trying to get to the chest, we're both playing games -- just not the same game.
Thinking about this some more, I’m realizing that competitive games, and speedrunning, both rely on coming up with necessary and sufficient conditions, because participants are often aiming to optimize things, which often means pushing boundaries, so you have to have a precise definition of where the boundaries are. Philosophy then seems to get this obsession from its connection to legal argument, where it is also important for the same reason.
There are some passages where Thi Nguyen talks about games as works of art, and says that you only properly appreciate works of art by interacting with them in the intended way (ie, by looking at a painting or reading a book or eating a meal, rather than any other permutation). I’ve thought that speed runs are a potential exception to this, but I think you make a compelling case for thinking of this as a separate sort of aesthetic activity one can engage in with the same object designed for one purpose - the way that instagramming a meal or putting a symphony on as background music at a dinner party could be.
I think your account also makes clear why video games are the only things people speedrun (apart from athletic courses like ski runs and car races, which are designed for that purpose).
I love the idea that speedrunning a game is like eating a painting.
Interestingly, some developers are now designing their games with speedruns in mind (e.g. Celeste). Which makes the speedrun a bit more like a ski run.