Really liked the Link to the Past segment, and the randomizer talk. I help run a speedun-focused twitch channel and the ALTTP Randomizer tournament is our biggest draw. I have a ton of fun doing commentary for the matches.
Weird seeing such strong reactions one way or the other about raiding. For me, this looks like a ton of fun, especially being the runner. My friends and I were kicking around the idea of getting into Destiny 2 and we ended up not. This video makes me wish we did.
I...LOVE this. It's like listening to Seth Killian do fighting game commentary!
Thanks for the post, duder!
Klaige is one of those runners who utterly devotes themselves to a single game, despite a serious lack of competition and already having a pretty fantastic run. He's the kind of runner that other runners admire because of it, and everyone would get pretty psyched whenever he'd improve the record (again!?).
I am a speedrunner, but it wasn't love for a game that brought me here. It was love for speedrunning itself and for the speedrun community.
Back in 2003 I was drawn towards the speedrunning community in a very similar way as Austin describes in his article, thanks to a viral video of a Super Mario Bros. 3 Tool-Assisted Speedrun. It wasn't marked as such. TASes didn't even really exist at that point and there certainly wasn't the community around it that there is today. So most people, myself included, were mystified and thought it the work of a superhuman. It sparked a fascination in me.
It wasn't long before I found my way to Speed Demos Archive (the community from which AGDQ has grown) and dove deep into speedrunning. With the rise of livestreaming I found myself spending even more time than ever watching speedruns, including speedrun practice. It was interesting to have the curtain pulled back just a little further, seeing exactly how a speedrun is born, but more importantly it dispelled a myth I had been holding onto for years. While a speedrun often transcends normal gameplay and becomes something special, the person behind it does not. It doesn't take a gifted individual born with perfect dexterity or the ability to see code, it just takes time and patience.
I began to think maybe I could actually do a speedrun myself. I took the plunge in 2013 by joining a weekly speedrun competition show that some runners put together. It was called Speed Gaming League and the idea was 4 players compete by learning to speedrun short (2-4 min.) sections of gameplay from games they have no prior experience with. It ended up being a great way to get started, even though I had to go through the nerve-wracking experience of speedrunning in front of an audience, mic'd, during a live broadcast!
From there I continued learning how to speedrun the rest of the game we were given, came back for more appearances on SGL, and eventually even joined the production staff for the show in 2014. Today I am an active member of the community, co-running the SpeedGaming channel on Twitch as well as helping to plan, coordinate, and host events like the recent Best of NES Marathon. For me, being a part of this community is a huge source of energy, pride, and happiness. I love it. And I show that love by giving back to it.
After watching the Persona 4 Endurance run in it's entirety 3 times, I decided to finally play P4 myself. I wanted to see all the social link stories so I followed a Max Social Link guide and really enjoyed my experience.
Some time after that, I decided to look into Persona 3. I decided this time I would go for a more fluid experience, spending time with the characters that interested me and managing relationships on my own. I found it surprisingly stressful. The completionist in me knew I was being suboptimal (gasp!) and that I was going to miss out on lots of things. It ended up burning me out entirely.
I went back to it a year later, this time once again following a Max Social Link guide, and absolutely loved it. Persona 3 is now on a short list of special games that gave me something to take with me after I stopped playing.
And if I didn't shift my focus and try again, I would have missed that experience entirely.
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