



We do NOT see any reason to choose one speedrunning site over the other. We see SDA submissions as serving a different function compared to live streams and posting runs on Speedrun.com (SRC) or YouTube. SDA runs are intended for viewing by anyone, not just people already invested in some way in the game in question. Here's a brief "TLDR" of the differences between SDA and SRC:





* Each game has a different set of moderators and game specific rules on SRC, while SDA has a generic set of rules, monitored by the staff. Most of the time, the end result is the same. Both ways of functioning have pros and cons. Game specific moderators will often know the game better than a group who just has generally a lot of speedrun experience. On the other hand, having a generic rule set as a basis ensures that there is more coordination between the rules in different games (and makes them less arbitrary and disputable) and the site users will know what to expect and what decisions are based on.



* SDA hosts the speedruns on their own servers (as well as mirroring them on archive.org), while any video host will suffice for SRC. There may be long-term value in not having to rely on a commercial 3rd party video host. Who knows if any given video will still be fully and freely available a few years from now? On SDA, the video avoids any unwanted blocking or monetization, and also restrictions on video quality. Also, you may feel high-quality runs "belong" on SDA, dedicated solely to this purpose.



* SDA has certain A/V and gameplay quality requirements, while there are virtually none on SRC. The SDA requirements make the site viewer-friendly: anyone will know they're not wasting their time watching a sub-par run that may have overlays or other information that they may prefer not to have to look at. This can sometimes conflict with how a runner wants to record their run. For example, they might prefer to have splits or donation announcements cover the game play area or have commentary over the game audio. Those examples would not be acceptable for an SDA-submission but it's not difficult to avoid any overlays on top of the actual game window, and also to double the game audio output in a separate track. Submitting such a video is enough since it can be cropped.



* On SDA, runners are encouraged to write dedicated comments and/or record an audio commentary track to make their runs accessible to an audience that doesn't know much or anything about the game in question. These are always much-appreciated.



* Other than checking for the run to be legit, SDA verification also looks at how optimized it is. If there are too many mistakes or if significant route mistakes are pointed out, the run will be rejected in verification, regardless of if it's the record or not. This also means there is often more technical feedback for a run submitted to SDA. Some runners like this feedback loop and see it as a challenge to achieve a run clean enough to be accepted. Of course, the more a game has been run before, the less of a reason this becomes for submitting. Note that SDA runs don't have to be WRs. The WR holder won't necessarily ever submit anything.



* Each run accepted on SDA will be featured in a front page update, while a run accepted on SRC will be listed in a "latest verified" list on the frontpage that has a quick turnaround time.



* Due to more steps in the verification and publication process on SDA, the handling is considerably longer on SDA than on SRC (and relies on more volunteering). Then again, only the "cream of the crop", not progressive PBs, are expected to be submitted on SDA anyway. Remember that, while someone (or you yourself) may already have improved on the run in question by the time it comes out on SDA, the SDA audience doesn't really care because they weren't going to watch every run anyway. Only a very small number of people on this planet will care, in fact. It's not that different from how a marathon run is not expected to be a WR either.



* Only the fastest submitted run in each category is hosted on SDA (even old SDA runs are not currently shown due to technical limitations). This will exclude other runs that could be of general interest. The old runs are still available on archive.org.



* Some runners may think there's prestige in having completed and published an SDA run, or that it makes speedrunning in general more dignified to share deserving runs in this viewer-friendly way.



* Segmented runs are allowed on both sites, but in practice, due to its implicit emphasis on competition, virtually non-existent on SRC. This is a shame, since segmented running should appeal to runners who don't care about competition or how good they can do in a single-segment run, but instead care about what the best (humanly achievable) outcomes are in general. As of writing this, segmented runs have become increasingly obscure for multiple reasons, including the massive visibility of marathon runs.



It's individual on how people value these points (and possibly other differences they feel are important) but we hope reading this allows you to appreciate what value we see in SDA submissions.









Now, about things relating to SDA that came up in the survey answers.





EDIT: It seems some people would like to be able to both stream their running with splits etc. and do SDA-oriented local recording with clean video and audio. I know at least OBS nowadays supports this without compromising either. Check out





"SDA timing (Speed Demos Archive timing) - an older timing method, which is typically RTA but defines that one specifically starts timing on ‘first control’ and stop controlling on ‘last input’."



Hmm... I don't think "last input" is correct, unless it means "last time the game polls for inputs where that can still alter the result" which is a bit vague but in practice usually turns out to be exactly how runners were timing it themselves. "Last input", i.e. last actually given input, not just the possibility of giving them, is TAS-timing and may cause TAS timers to stop before the last hit on the boss or whatever. The starting point being start of control seems to be what defines SDA timing. Here's some general thoughts about this: With SDA timing, there's no difference between starting a new game from the menu vs. from a reset, which certainly is more handy with games that offer that option, but I'm guessing other communities would also have timed from control in that case (but this means they're not being as consistent from game to game). With SDA timing you can leave in (or even splice in) the opening cutscenes which might make for a more satisfying watch in general. Also, if you're going to time those cutscenes, which is usually just mashing to skip it, why wouldn't you also time the end cutscenes in principle? Just like after beating the boss you usually can't lose anymore, you can't really lose or go wrong in the opening cutscenes either. It's not 100% the same (in the end cutscenes you've definitely already beat the game so maybe it shouldn't be timed for that reason) but there may be some kind of symmetricity there... maybe. Other than this I don't really have a strong opinion. I guess SDA timing slightly skews the actual run lengths in cases where the intro is particularly long.



As a side note, PC runs might have variance in the loading time between hitting start and gaining control, so SDA timing makes a lot of sense with those.



Of course SDA doesn't always use "SDA" timing if there's good reason not to, like if it's impossible to know exactly when control starts. I don't know what's been done historically with any given title but it's more flexible in general than people are assuming. With other kinds of rulings, we seldom see a reason to mess with whatever the communities seem to be okay with, but we have to have global baseline rules in place as well if there e.g. isn't really a community, so we don't have to reinvent the wheel every time.



"SDA isn't required for publishing runs anymore"



Most people totally miss what SDA is actually about – to provide a stream of quality runs the same way a news site doesn't cover every news story in the world, but people don't want to read about them all anyway. It's a curated feed of speedruns that are far likelier to be a complete package and actually worth your time than an average new PB/WR on SRC. Those who don't want to go through any extra effort to get their runs properly published (I will adress the "big community" question later) are less likely to want to write detailed comments either that specifically more random viewers would appreciate, which is why I'm assuming this wouldn't be very popular to do on SRC. I don't know what the percentage of people watching each run is on SDA who genuinely don't know anything about the game (we should probably do some polling of our own) but I'm fairly sure there are those who aren't superparticular when it comes to it, and there is some evidence of this in the survey responses as well. And it's not like there aren't viewers of GDQ's etc. who will watch whatever happens to be on. This kind of "ecumenical" nature of the site is, AFAICS, not incredibly emphasized on something like SRC even though it has one big listing of everything that's new – it doesn't actively highlight or describe any of that content (I'll respond to TheKotti's idea to do this further down). I'm not in any way demeaning SRC here, as even we find its leaderboards to be handy for some quick referencing for verifications. It's unfortunate SRC has its problems – as anything of its nature will – but its architecture is obviously good for certain things.



It might as well be pointed out that on SDA at least, the runs will never be commercialized, no ads, no paid subscriptions.



"SDA verification isn't needed to legitimize runs"



SDA doesn't do verification to "officialize" runs (check for cheating and filling the requirements for the category) as much as to check for their A/V and these days especially gameplay quality: that it's a good-enough run to publish on the front page without betraying the site's standards. It always had these other two aspects included, and those, obviously, haven't gone anywhere. If you don't care about good presentation [being guaranteed] and documentation [being likely], you can usually find more and faster runs on SRC for specific games, especially the more popular ones.



"Modern verification is faster"



Apples and oranges: firstly, if there were as many active users on SDA as SRC, verifications wouldn't ever be left waiting for so long (something the new public verification system has helped immensely anyway). Secondly, SRC doesn't verify the run gameplay quality at all, something that often has to be scrutinized and debated on in SDA verifications. Thirdly, verifications on SDA also give the runners helpful feedback on their runs and running even when they get turned down at first... another thing "modern" verification doesn't explicitly do. So this is a complete misunderstanding. It used to be very tardy from what I've heard, back before I became an admin here, and this is in part because SDA wanted only knowledgeable verifiers, which is only natural. Another reason being the asymmetry between how much volunteering people are ready to put into SDA vs. the amount required to offset the processing of their runs. It's ironic that SDA is being accused of being outdated when so many people have outdated or plain wrong ideas about it themselves...



"SDA runs are obsolete"



For the most part, with all the most popular games, this is a true statement if you only want the fastest runs available per category. There are individual runs where the execution was so dang strong that they actually look better than new ones with more tricks or whatever, but seeing as SDA's verifications have gotten [to my knowledge] steadily more strict up to this day, not all older runs, naturally, will be the bee's knees anymore from even that point of view. We're going to look into making it more obvious that SDA runs aren't WRs, possibly in the FAQs somewhere (done). To clear a particular misconception, SDA doesn't "update" the game pages autonomously with anyone else's runs and never has. Only the communities for those games can, if they'd like to.



"SDA isn't required for archival anymore"



It makes more sense for there to be a central repository nevertheless. It gives the runs and the entire hobby more dignity. And indeed storing runs on Archive.org (which is done with every SDA run) as well as SDA's server gives them a longer life expectancy compared to just some YT upload, though in practice not many will go and delete their old uploads even though they could. Still, the way YouTube has been going as of late (takedown requests and such) makes one uneasy.



"SDA couldn't possibly keep up with publishing everyone's runs when speedrunning is so much more popular now"



Well, this is mainly just a product of two things:

a) What kinds of runs people choose to submit, and to a lesser degree, SDA chooses to accept.

b) How much work people are willing to put into making it happen.



If the submissions count was greatly increased, SDA could maybe impose a rule by which only one run per game per category could be submitted inside a one-year period. We currently accept whatever progressive improvements come in after the first accepted submission but with this rule in place, we could at least cut out all such runs – how many runs will the larger audience really want to see for each game? If they had the time or interest, they'd already have bookmarked their favorite SRC pages. Beyond this, we could also change the wordings on our rules page etc. to make sure people are aware of what kinds of runs we want to archive.



The minimal amount of work every runner should put into SDA to offset each one of their submissions can be "calculated" like this: we prefer there to be at least two verifiers, so you should, in return, verify two runs yourself, preferrably of the same length as yours. Of course each community can agree to "send us" a different person to do that "on the runner's behalf". And you obviously don't have to submit runs in order to verify them. The communities participating in the verification of their own runs is ideal, even though it might seem tautologous to them. How is SDA supposed to know what you know about the run and what's lead up to it?



Another thing we could do is simply to keep people better informed as to what the queue is like so they can more easily decide when it's time to make a submission and how polished it should be. You can already see this if go to the verification summary page which could just be linked in the FAQ or submission form as well.



"My community is too big and records change hands constantly: there's no good opportunities for anyone to submit a run"



First of all, congratulations, because your game is in a very small minority. To quote one of the respondents:



Quote from jelmeree: maybe other "milestone" runs can be published there as if it was a museum, where every community can showcase some runs/tricks.



"Museum" is not a bad term for it actually and this is exactly what I feel truly organized communities could well do. It's up to each community to decide which runs are worth submitting but I don't think that's mutually exclusive with everything else they might want to be doing. If anything, it's respectful for your game itself to give it the best treatment and doing a bit of self-effacement, both on the level of the individual and the community as a whole. It's a way to turn to the audience that doesn't check up on the game every day even though they've played it (which is, as a side note for those with head stuck in ass, MOST OF the audience). Generally speaking the SDA-submitted run is going to be one with particularly clean execution, because we know strats can and do change, even if people are working hard to uncover the best ones. The fairly recent



"SDA front page updates are too wordy"



Follow the





EDIT: This answer was added later:

"I don't like the top-down management of SDA, I prefer how sr.com lets the users themselves manage the games, as someone creates an sr.com page for the game and adds moderators



This approach has famously created problems of its own that are almost entirely of a kind that SDA doesn't have. The games will, probably not often, but sometimes, be left at the mercy of poor/irresponsible moderators who may create arbitrary rulesets that every future runner is locked into because of having started an unfortunate legacy (or abuse their power in a different way). SDA's



Take the comments section underneath





EDIT: It seems some people would like to be able to both stream their running with splits etc. and do SDA-oriented local recording with clean video and audio. I know at least OBS nowadays supports this without compromising either. Check out this page . It's very flexible.Hmm... I don't think "last input" is correct, unless it means "last time the game polls for inputs where that can still alter the result" which is a bit vague but in practice usually turns out to be exactly how runners were timing it themselves. "Last input", i.e. last actually given input, not just the possibility of giving them, is TAS-timing and may cause TAS timers to stop before the last hit on the boss or whatever. The starting point being start of control seems to be what defines SDA timing. Here's some general thoughts about this: With SDA timing, there's no difference between starting a new game from the menu vs. from a reset, which certainly is more handy with games that offer that option, but I'm guessing other communities would also have timed from control in that case (but this means they're not being as consistent from game to game). With SDA timing you can leave in (or even splice in) the opening cutscenes which might make for a more satisfying watch in general. Also, if you're going to time those cutscenes, which is usually just mashing to skip it, why wouldn't you also time the end cutscenes in principle? Just like after beating the boss you usually can't lose anymore, you can't really lose or go wrong in the opening cutscenes either. It's not 100% the same (in the end cutscenes you've definitely alreadyso maybe it shouldn't be timed for that reason) but there may be some kind of symmetricity there... maybe. Other than this I don't really have a strong opinion. I guess SDA timing slightly skews the actual run lengths in cases where the intro is particularly long.As a side note, PC runs might have variance in the loading time between hitting start and gaining control, so SDA timing makes a lot of sense with those.Of courseif there's good reason not to, like if it's impossible to know exactly when control starts. I don't know what's been done historically with any given title but it's more flexible in general than people are assuming. With other kinds of rulings, we seldom see a reason to mess with whatever the communities seem to be okay with, but we have to have global baseline rules in place as well if there e.g. isn't really a community, so we don't have to reinvent the wheel every time.Most people totally miss what SDA is actually about – to provide a stream of quality runs the same way a news site doesn't cover every news story in the world, but people don't want to read about them all anyway. It's a curated feed of speedruns that are far likelier to be a complete package and actually worth your time than an average new PB/WR on SRC. Those who don't want to go through any extra effort to get their runs properly published (I will adress the "big community" question later) are less likely to want to write detailed comments either that specifically more random viewers would appreciate, which is why I'm assuming this wouldn't be very popular to do on SRC. I don't know what the percentage of people watching each run is on SDA who genuinely don't know anything about the game (we should probably do some polling of our own) but I'm fairly sure there are those who aren't superparticular when it comes to it, and there is some evidence of this in the survey responses as well. And it's not like there aren't viewers of GDQ's etc. who will watch whatever happens to be on. This kind of "ecumenical" nature of the site is, AFAICS, not incredibly emphasized on something like SRC even though it has one big listing of everything that's new – it doesn't actively highlight or describe any of that content (I'll respond to TheKotti's idea to do this further down). I'm not in any way demeaning SRC here, as even we find its leaderboards to be handy for some quick referencing for verifications. It's unfortunate SRC has its problems – as anything of its nature will – but its architecture is obviously good for certain things.It might as well be pointed out that on SDA at least, the runs will never be commercialized, no ads, no paid subscriptions.SDA doesn't do verification to "officialize" runs (check for cheating and filling the requirements for the category) as much as to check for their A/V and these days especially gameplay quality: that it's a good-enough run to publish on the front page without betraying the site's standards. It always had these other two aspects included, and those, obviously, haven't gone anywhere. If you don't care about good presentation [being guaranteed] and documentation [being likely], you can usually find more and faster runs on SRC for specific games, especially the more popular ones.Apples and oranges: firstly, if there were as many active users on SDA as SRC, verifications wouldn't ever be left waiting for so long (something the new public verification system has helped immensely anyway). Secondly, SRC doesn't verify the run gameplay quality at all, something that often has to be scrutinized and debated on in SDA verifications. Thirdly, verifications on SDA also give the runners helpful feedback on their runs and running even when they get turned down at first... another thing "modern" verification doesn't explicitly do. So this is a complete misunderstanding. It used to be very tardy from what I've heard, back before I became an admin here, and this is in part because SDA wanted only knowledgeable verifiers, which is only natural. Another reason being the asymmetry between how much volunteering people are ready to put into SDA vs. the amount required to offset the processing of their runs. It's ironic that SDA is being accused of being outdated when so many people have outdated or plain wrong ideas about it themselves...For the most part, with all the most popular games, this is a true statement if you only want the fastest runs available per category. There are individual runs where the execution wasthat they actually look better than new ones with more tricks or whatever, but seeing as SDA's verifications have gotten [to my knowledge] steadily more strict up to this day, not all older runs, naturally, will be the bee's knees anymore from even that point of view. We're going to look into making it more obvious that SDA runs aren't WRs, possibly in the FAQs somewhere (done). To clear a particular misconception, SDA doesn't "update" the game pages autonomously with anyone else's runs and never has. Only the communities for those games can, if they'd like to.It makes more sense for there to be a central repository nevertheless. It gives the runs and the entire hobby more dignity. And indeed storing runs on Archive.org (which is done with every SDA run) as well as SDA's server gives them a longer life expectancy compared to just some YT upload, though in practice not many will go and delete their old uploads even though they could. Still, the way YouTube has been going as of late (takedown requests and such) makes one uneasy.Well, this is mainly just a product of two things:a) What kinds of runs people choose to submit, and to a lesser degree, SDA chooses to accept.b) How much work people are willing to put into making it happen.If the submissions count was greatly increased, SDA could maybe impose a rule by which only one run per game per category could be submitted inside a one-year period. We currently accept whatever progressive improvements come in after the first accepted submission but with this rule in place, we could at least cut out all such runs – how many runs will the larger audience really want to see for each game? If they had the time or interest, they'd already have bookmarked their favorite SRC pages. Beyond this, we could also change the wordings on our rules page etc. to make sure people are aware of what kinds of runs we want to archive.The minimal amount of work every runner should put into SDA to offset each one of their submissions can be "calculated" like this: we prefer there to be at least two verifiers, so you should, in return, verify two runs yourself, preferrably of the same length as yours. Of course each community can agree to "send us" a different person to do that "on the runner's behalf". And you obviously don't have to submit runs in order to verify them. The communities participating in the verification of their own runs is ideal, even though it might seem tautologous to them. How is SDA supposed to know what you know about the run and what's lead up to it?Another thing we could do is simply to keep people better informed as to what the queue is like so they can more easily decide when it's time to make a submission and how polished it should be. You can already see this if go to the verification summary page which could just be linked in the FAQ or submission form as well.First of all, congratulations, because your game is in a very small minority. To quote one of the respondents:"Museum" is not a bad term for it actually and this is exactly what I feel truly organized communities could well do. It's up to each community to decide which runs are worth submitting but I don't think that's mutually exclusive with everything else they might want to be doing. If anything, it's respectful for your game itself to give it the best treatment and doing a bit of self-effacement, both on the level of the individual and the community as a whole. It's a way to turn to the audience that doesn't check up on the game every day even though they've played it (which is, as a side note for those with head stuck in ass,the audience). Generally speaking the SDA-submitted run is going to be one with particularly clean execution, because we know strats can and do change, even if people are working hard to uncover the best ones. The fairly recent Vice City run is a good example, coming from a big community with its own leaderboards etc.Follow the Twitter feed instead. Other than that... the amount of people who will look at the update, see where the salient-enough links go, and require further information to be able to make a decision between watch/don't watch can't be very big.EDIT: This answer was added later:This approach has famously created problems of its own that are almost entirely of a kind that SDA doesn't have. The games will, probably not often, but sometimes, be left at the mercy of poor/irresponsible moderators who may create arbitrary rulesets that every future runner is locked into because of having started an unfortunate legacy (or abuse their power in a different way). SDA's base level rules exist so we don't have to reinvent the wheel with each new game. If there was no universal definition for what are considered speedruns to begin with, we would all suffer from subjective definitions we don't necessarily agree with. Despite the extent of the rules page, we often adapt the rules to fit the games better, e.g. making exceptions to the rule not to allow unofficial patches if the game has become difficult to get running without them. The highest guiding principle is common sense and to the greatest reasonable extent, where leeway exists, we will gladly allow it to be used for making better categories.Take the comments section underneath this article as an example of how gnarly definitions are to come up with. If every community comes up with its own definitions, it'll dilute the meaning of the word "speedrun" with every non-standard concession, and drive away anyone who didn't agree with the ruling (making it seem like it's more unanimous than it really was).



I think I'll also respond to some specific comments even though the key points have been laid out already:





Quote from ingx24: I think SDA should rebrand itself as a place for hosting 1) segmented runs and 2) RTA runs that are "clean" (i.e. few mistakes) and have text or audio commentary explaining what's going on. To put it another way: SDA could be a place for showcasing runs that are "recommended viewing for newcomers", so to speak - sort of like GDQ runs, except cleaner.



[Newer] SDA runs ARE, supposedly, sufficiently clean. The requirement for commentary is a bit difficult to impose, because if someone does that against their will, the quality won't necessarily be great either. We do often repeat it in verification threads etc. that people appreciate getting those comments. As for segmented vs. single-segment: as per what I said earlier in this post, you'll understand why no such distinction needs to be made just because SRC is all real-time runs. I agree with you that competition isn't necessarily an interesting way to approach speedrunning, at least not for everyone, and it would be great if people didn't get the impression that's what everyone does.



Quote from BossCrab: I think the current culture of the speedrun community at large has progressed to the point where livestreaming runs and maintaining videos of PBs on leaderboards / chatting about runs has helped to give a better representation of a community of runners, instead of the speedrun itself.



"Better representation" is the problematic expression here. Any bigger community will have both people who enjoy racing and socializing and casual running, and those that really just care about the run (i.e. one ideal run per category) itself. Except that those who just care about the run are probably going to hang around such communities less on average. The only reason anything needs to be represented is so people interested realize it exists. SDA thus promotes that "other" side of speedrunning which I'm going to call pure speedrunning. For a given community, because most SDA runs come from before Discord chats or SRC were popular, those are not linked in the run comments and thus the SDA game pages don't represent those aspects of the present-day communities that well. The critical part is: it's up to those communities themselves to make sure they've got a run up on SDA with relevant links given in the run comments (or the wiki or at least forum thread). SDA is supposed to be their window to the broad audience. I know there's going to be those that want to avoid it all the more after I've said that but that's just arrogant ("Our community is special! You have to come to us!").



Quote from BossCrab: One of my main problems with SDA's page is the slow verification and video requirements often discouraged people from submitting videos of their good times, and thus resulted in a lot of outdated times



This ties in to the last point: if you want your game's speedrunning to be well re-presented on SDA, make it presentable. The problem isn't SDA's quality requirements any more than those are a problem for TV channels or any form of media. The verification point I addressed.



Quote from BossCrab: while an SDA run can be a good presentation of a great run, the hobby is to continue to collectively push it further and further, and even an amazing run can simply be obsoleted. While "WR Culture" can be toxic and lead to not appreciating some good runs, I think SDA's approach was not the best either, and felt more like putting the weight on One Run of a game instead of the overall community



People who come to SDA generally don't want to see more than one run for a given game and category in any short span of time. Again, you can link whatever you like in your run comments etc.



Quote from BossCrab: I think GDQs are a much better general "presentation" of speedrunning than SDA's website itself



Well, yes and no. Depends what you mean. If there's a lot to say about the game being run with really knowledgeable commentators presenting it well, this implies there's probably even more knowledge out there. If they've taken the time to document it in an accessible way (in a wiki), then the wiki represents something as well. Besides, a marathon run doesn't usually answer the question "how would this look if it went almost perfectly", and segmented strategies are missing completely – apparently we used to get proportionally more segmented runs in the past so probably the marathons have actually hurt that side a bit. Depending on the marathon, especially if you look at just the GDQs, entire genres of games might be missing. Adventure games and 4X/turn-based strategy games at least, some because they're not so marathon-safe, some because they're deemed too nichey or uninteresting. In the end, I don't understand why there needs to be, by your words, some one general presentation, so long as people are aware of the alternatives. It's very good if these different sites are still being advertised during marathons.



Also you're making it sound like "weight put on commentary, explaining the games, and explaining what goes into it, and presenting a speedrun / the hobby to a large audience" is somehow opposed to what SDA is looking for. You're right if you mean the marathon setting forces there to be some kind of commentary... but you're never going as in-depth as you can in written notes, and in a way it's being distracted from (I don't mean this as criticism) by the charity stuff, donations etc.



Quote from vaxherd: think SDA verification is useful more as a long-term activity in the sense of preserving known-good runs for posterity; for the shorter term, I feel like (at least for games with an active community) individual communities and leaderboards do a better job of managing video records of top-level runs.



Spot on. Let's remember most games have basically no community at all, at least as far as speedrunning is concerned.



Quote from vaxherd: As for the SDA front page -- I honestly don't think I've ever seen it...



:´(



Quote from Aexoden: There's a lot of outdated stuff over there, and it might confuse people as to the state of the art.



Several people said this. If you mean the game entries themselves: as tonic points out, SDA was never claiming to be a WRs site. SRC's structure is better if you just wanna quickly share a new record run, for sure. Also SDA's collection/forums/guides are whatever you want them to be: of course the less people submit, the less of the runs are "state-of-the-art" (which is kind of not the point either). The real distinction to make, then, is one of philosophy, in which regard SDA hasn't really changed that much. SDA is for people who'll take "second best" if it means it's a clean video with (hopefully) a bit of commentary. That's what I believe the games themselves deserve as well.



A change was made to the SDA FAQ page to make it clearer not all SDA runs are WRs.



Quote from Broedgeman: if they focus on making great GDQs that's the best bet



SDA is no longer directly affiliated with the GDQs although a lot of the people involved in it come or came from an SDA background.



Quote from Krygowski: I really think SDA could have been great had it continued to keep up with the community, but these days I think it's impossible with the advent of discord and speedrun.com



What might you mean by this? Discord and SRC both cover a part of the spectrum of what benefits the speedrunning of games, whereas SDA is, as per its name, an archive, a repository, for what ideally should be the créme of the crop.



Quote from Surreal_: the amount of workload is too much for the "staff" there with how many runners we have nowadays



I don't know why the quotation marks. Guess you mean we're all volunteers. The amount of work would be too much if there were no volunteers, only selfish demands for service. SDA is what you make of it. But yes, there could probably be improvements made to the site architecture, and even if every single run was the best imaginable for its game, there would be too many runs for the current staff to handle. I'm fine with being left with time on my hands, personally, cause it means one day I'll finish a run of my own finally, but I'm also fine with continuing to put that time into SDA if there is any semblance of a balance between runs/volunteering.



Quote from herreteman: any info found [on SDA] can be obtained by many other means at this point.



That's a weird and incorrect statement. If someone has made a good Strategy Guide in our



Quote from CartinaCow: [SDA has a] verification method that is way too strict and honestly doesn't prove runs are legit. I actually believe some SDA runs for sure have to be cheated, its inevitable, even with their scrutiny.



I'm not sure what you mean by too strict, perhaps for A/V quality? It is true there have been cheated runs. There's no way to prevent that but some at least have been caught after the fact. It's the best you can do, and the quality of the verification depends on how many volunteers we have, and what kind of effort they put into it, so it's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy whatever you say about SDA/anything.



Quote from Billnye_fan: Why would anyone want to watch a "high quality video" when a decent quality video which is verified to be the fastest is available on the leaderboard?



Ask everyone who specifically does that. The finishing time isn't everything. Also for a lot of smaller games especially, the SDA runs, especially new ones, are actually WRs as well, we just don't believe that's relevant in any explicit way. If you have to frantically mash your remote control to find the BEST channel on TV, your problem isn't in the TV or the remote.



Quote from Countdown: The knowledge base is a good idea on paper but isn't adequately updated to be considered useful. A very small fraction of the overall community still submits, so the front page is also increasingly useless.



Then update it and submit if you think it's a good idea It's also like you're saying "because it doesn't have every run, all the runs that come up are worthless".



Quote from tomdiamond: Just because something was verified on SDA didn't make me feel any different about the speedrun or what I was watching.



The "no cheating" bit in the 5-second intro isn't as central as knowing you're getting good clean quality is.



Quote from RibShark: SDA tries to use a "one-ruleset fits all" mentality which just isn't practical, hence the rise of community-lead leaderboards.



Most categories on those community leaderboards, especially ones that the runners would seriously call speedrun records for their games, are more or less the same as SDA has: SDA doesn't try to control the rules for each game any more than makes sense to for there to be a baseline understanding of what a speedrun is. This is a common misconception. We often have discussions about whether we'll allow some gray area thing for some game and the existing community's (if present) standards are basically always taken into consideration. Whenever that community doesn't really exist, we obviously have to participate in creating the rules ourselves.



Quote from FellVisage: i think every popular front for speedrunning as a whole needs to be kept as up-to-date as possible, since new runners can be misinformed due to outdated resources.



As I said to someone above, SDA is what you make it into. Everyone is saying "it should be kept up to date" as if that was a matter of someone in power making some single decision. Nowhere on SDA does it say the runs are WRs. That assumption might be made by some new runner if this was the only site they came by... Most runners seem to be able to find the other, newer runs etc. on the Internet anyway. You obviously should be looking for any and all resources and if you're not actively doing that, I guess you wouldn't have been able to come up with anything particularly good anyway.



As mentioned, the FAQ page now explicitly mentions not every run is the WR.



Quote from rozer: sda is outdated in their ruling for games, and their bias. The ontly games you would see on the front page, would be popular games by popular runners.



Are you referring to some long-since past state of affairs? Feel free to expound on this.



Quote from faulty: SDA is pretty dead at this point. The idea of the single "official speedrun" for a game is rather dumb now that speedrunning is becoming more popular, and the centralized, manual process is far too slow to keep up.



It's not so much at odds with there being one verified WR that most people (just looking at a leaderboard) will promptly click on, is it? We do want to eventually implement keeping old runs with their comments visible in some way. The manual process is slow because... it's manual. And because most people just want their fun stuff.



Quote from Joka: Runners doesn't want to wait weeks for a couple of people that doesn't even know/run the game, to verify a run and then another month or so before it's published.



What does that tell us about the runners if it's really such an issue to wait a few months? Also if everyone takes that attitude with verifications, then yes, the people who do eventually show up to do it (e.g. SDA admins) won't necessarily know your game: that's not on SDA though, that's on your own community. You have to see SDA as a feed that joins together every community, more or less lively, so they can sometimes send something out to those people who don't actively follow that game (i.e. most non-runners) who would nonetheless not mind seeing a classy run on occasion... in a high-quality, well-prepared package. Which brings us right back to verification. Those two months or whatever it is may obsolete the run, but only the runners and the most active viewers will care, honestly, if it's 1% faster or slower. If you think otherwise, you're absolutely fooling yourself.



Quote from TheKotti: Everything SDA tried to accomplish could be done better by allowing run highlighting on SRC.



Okay, so I suspect you're one of those young'uns who thinks they've got the simple solution for everything and by god if others could be as clever as you... But let's test how "through" you've actually thought that idea. I'll pose to you some simple questions:



How are the highlighted runs getting chosen? If there's a button that lets you highlight something and let's say it takes two mods (if present) clicking on it, and that you can only highlight a run that's the current fastest on the leaderboard (for its platform), that might work on some basic level but never can hope to amount to the same kind of filtering that SDA's process is designed for. What if there's just one runner? Are they allowed to highlight their own run? Who is going to check if the run is really worthwhile to highlight? What are the standards supposed to be like anyway? Are they supposed to be the same for games with less competition as for ones with more of it? How often can you highlight runs for the same game? For the same category? Do the highlighted runs also have to come with any amount of commentary? What if the mods don't agree on whether some run is good enough? I guess it has to have the majority vote. Trusting everyone to use the system in a responsible way sounds kinda like trusting all the mods to act fairly to begin with, which I suppose for the greatest part they are. I'm not totally skeptical about this, it would probably work somewhat better than just the feed as it stands, but I think ultimately there is either poor/uneven quality control or someone has to put in the same kind of work that goes into SDA verifications, bringing us to square one more or less. Also even with runs that don't come with any commentary on SDA, there's at least a little bit in the update and the game page about it, which I feel (I would) makes every run feel more "official" and meaningful, for the same reason every show tends to have a host instead of just the acts unceremoniously walking out on stage one by one. Then there's a bit of interaction between the runner and verifiers as well, which makes it less lonely for those who run a game by themselves. Ultimately I feel SDA and SRC serve different audiences and we're definitely interested in sticking to what this site works for best while moving away from ideas that SRC's architecture can handle better.



BTW if by "fiasco in verifications" you mean the Max Payne 2 ILs, I won't go in-depth into it here, but after reading the threads, I think it's not a black-and-white situation and perhaps it's not useful to condemn the whole site if you disagree on one decision which seems to be kind of subjective anyway, depending on how exactly you define a speedrun (and tradition seems to be on SDA's decision's side). You and the other runners certainly didn't see the whole picture. After some thought, and I think this is where we were left in the verification thread, I think I see no other way than accepting that the IGT category might be repetitive and cheesy... But don't run it then! Don't watch the runs! You're making it sound like every speedrun is without grinding or other boring stuff when quite the opposite is true. Think about some 100% runs for example. It does not mean the category isn't legitimate if the in-game timer is the timer you're optimizing for. I think you did point out a certain inconsistency in the way SDA has been handling "bad" improvements that UA also acknowledged in that same thread, and it's probably one of these things that's just up to somebody's discretion at the end of the day.



Quote from emptyeye: I'd say SDA's primary audience now is less "people who want the absolute latest videos" and more "People who want reasonably modern videos that is JUST THE GAME, with none of the ancilliary elements that come from, EG, a live stream".



Correct. That's our target demographic, more or less. Except they do appreciate any commentary tracks included, but then those tend to be 100% on the run/game. Also SDA is good if you sometimes will watch runs for games you don't really even know. I don't know how rare that is but it happens. I've seen tons of really cool shizzle in verification and such myself. It's not so different from watching a marathon except it's even more focused on just the game and run.



Quote from CavemanDCJ: Nobody is going to read a huge wall of text filled with LotBlind's (whoever that is) stale ass memes. I complained about this once, and they actually did, for a single time, update the front page with a post that just had new accepted runs, the times, and the runners. It was great and everyone liked it, there was even a forum discussing such. For whatever reason, this was never done again as far as I know. With Games Done Quick being the most visible aspect of the speedrunning community, SDA will, for better or worse, always be something people interested check. Having this ugly, drab ass website filled with the ramblings of a literal who talking about runs that are probably not the world records anymore can only be damaging to how we as a community are perceived.



I just had to include you in full CavemanDCJ, whoever you are... Thanks! You've made my day... Sorry it's not for you (or for anyone as per your words) but we're being accused of being pointless already so turning our front page into SRC's front page couldn't help now could it.



Protip: you can still just skim though the links, and there's generally just three of them, one of them is the name of the game in question, the second one tells you who ran it and the one with the run time will magically transport you directly to the run itself. I know this isn't the most convenient but cavemen are notoriously hard to please.



Quote from Flip: I'm not a big part of the scene anymore, but it seems that the community-at-large is more interested in the leaderboard style of SRC. Allows for more participation for runners who can't get the WR.



I get what you wrote in your response isn't your own view necessarily, but there is everything wrong with it in either case. For starters, not everyone has to be a runner at all to participate. Sometimes the runners definitely think a bit too highly of themselves. We need someone who can execute, sure, and who will memorize all the low-level details of the route/levels etc. but we don't need TONS of people just trying to get some time on the leaderboard cause they're too thick to come up with anything new. Instead, there are so many games you could be looking at if only from a theoretical point of view, doing testing, routing, spreading the workload...



Quote from Flip: viewer tastes have moved away from simply having a high quality encode to watch, and more towards wanting to watch the battle for WR of their game.



So few people have "a game". Most of us don't want to have just one game. How many people will only watch one TV show? What percentage of people are even going to only follow one esport really, and that's more expansive than the speedrunning for a single game I'd argue? But perhaps you've got some empirical evidence for this? In either case, that's exactly what SDA isn't for. (Again, I realize this isn't you saying this)



Quote from Flip: at this point video quality is not a sticking point for viewers anymore.



It seems we're getting less runs that get rejected for A/V reasons, so I'm assuming this is true... in the sense that the base quality of the stream or whatever it was recorded as tends to be good, and so people don't need it to be even better. Ofc it still matters on the whole.



Quote from Yoshi348: ESPECIALLY important for games that aren't super popular with the masses, things besides your Marios and Zeldas and Sonics and stuff. Plus quite a few people are turned off by having to watch face cam stream rips.



Yup, some of us are into speedrunning, not people's stupid faces. And we can appreciate a good thought-out speedrun whether it's by our favourite band or not.



Quote from PLANET: I wish it was updated more often



Just send in your polished runs... we can't update if there's no runs. I expect there might be some more again once this has come out, which means the time to publication will increase if we get no more volunteers to match.



Quote from ReverendTed: This is what keeps me coming back - the front page, though I wish it was more to-the-point and less "creative writing exercise".



Hahaha. Judging by your words, you're still an active visitor and thus I'm assuming you're talking about the most recent updaters. If so, your words have been noted, but ofc how much there is to say about a given run varies greatly from run to run... either the run comments are already taking care of... well, commentary, or the game is really simple, or it's been covered once already in the none-too-distant past, or everyone and their two doggone dogs knows what it's about. You might recall I once jokingly started one of my updates by pretending I was going to spend time educating people on what Grand Theft Auto was. There's even the game page intro (at the top of every game page) to cover the basics. Take the recent Marble Blast runs for example: they were both very short, came with audio commentary, and the game is as simple as could be really. When writing "to the point" is tautologous, I don't feel too bothered if I bring up ancillary or even somewhat far-fetched topics. I like to think it doesn't take anything away from the runs if it shows people that you can approach anything from any angle instead of it being just another game (so many games don't even try to stand out!). Plus this stuff isn't supposed to be super-serious: if I couldn't spice it up a bit (and let's face it - my style is moderation - the middle way - by comparison with what was once going on and what some people, evidently and myself too at the time, still didn't really mind), I'd keel over and die of BORING. While I'm in charge of the front page, we're not going to have just bullet points (probably not what you meant) because that's SR.com and I at least feel this should be every runner's reward, but I'm playing with the idea of trying a slight modification nonetheless. We'll see. If someone feels strongly this way or that, feel free to post about this: I'm always ready to philosophize on this stuff. Just remember there's the



Quote from Fistbutter: overall it gives more casual fans a simple and concise place to view full, verified, record breaking runs without having to search specific content or slog through hundreds of videos of single segment times or whatever.



Couldn't have said it better myself! Except I wouldn't necessarily run with "record-breaking".



Quote from ilCrowli: The ~6 month delay between content being created and posted means everything on the site is too old to matter



Nope. The only people for whom half a year is "too old" is that handful who runs it, who should be greatful they have the time for that to begin with. And it only works as well as actual physical people help to make it work as I keep reiterating.



Quote from kirbymastah: Back in the day, speedrunning was not so competitive, and submissions were seen as a collaborative project to demonstrate the run. With how much bigger speedrunning has gotten, however, this isn't a realistic expectation to maintain given how frequently runs are being improved and updated.



Even for that handful of games that has a big community (believe me, a gigantic majority of games do not see any "updated" times virtually ever), this shouldn't be a matter of anything other than a bit of coordination. Not everyone running the game has to participate in creating that submission: you just need to take a round of hands, set a target time, and maybe split into segments/ILs if it's possible. If it's SS, I guess it's just whoever gets the first sub-something-major who gets the honors... but please don't leave it to anyone else to make SDA work, in concrete terms, if you like it on paper. [Newer] SDA runs ARE, supposedly, sufficiently clean. The requirement for commentary is a bit difficult to impose, because if someone does that against their will, the quality won't necessarily be great either. We do often repeat it in verification threads etc. that people appreciate getting those comments. As for segmented vs. single-segment: as per what I said earlier in this post, you'll understand why no such distinction needs to be made just because SRC is all real-time runs. I agree with you that competition isn't necessarily an interesting way to approach speedrunning, at least not for everyone, and it would be great if people didn't get the impression that's what everyone does."Better representation" is the problematic expression here. Any bigger community will have both people who enjoy racing and socializing and casual running, and those that really just care about the run (i.e. one ideal run per category) itself. Except that those who just care about the run are probably going to hang around such communities less on average. The only reason anything needs to be represented is so people interested realize it exists. SDA thus promotes that "other" side of speedrunning which I'm going to call pure speedrunning. For a given community, because most SDA runs come from before Discord chats or SRC were popular, those are not linked in the run comments and thus the SDA game pages don't represent those aspects of the present-day communities that well. The critical part is: it's up to those communities themselves to make sure they've got a run up on SDA with relevant links given in the run comments (or the wiki or at least forum thread). SDA is supposed to be their window to the broad audience. I know there's going to be those that want to avoid it all the more after I've said that but that's just arrogant ("Our community is special! You have to come to us!").This ties in to the last point: if you want your game's speedrunning to be well re-presented on SDA, make it presentable. The problem isn't SDA's quality requirements any more than those are a problem for TV channels or any form of media. The verification point I addressed.People who come to SDA generally don't want to see more than one run for a given game and category in any short span of time. Again, you can link whatever you like in your run comments etc.Well, yes and no. Depends what you mean. If there's a lot to say about the game being run with really knowledgeable commentators presenting it well, this implies there's probably even more knowledge out there. If they've taken the time to document it in an accessible way (in a wiki), then the wiki represents something as well. Besides, a marathon run doesn't usually answer the question "how would this look if it went almost perfectly", and segmented strategies are missing completely – apparently we used to get proportionally more segmented runs in the past so probably the marathons have actually hurt that side a bit. Depending on the marathon, especially if you look at just the GDQs, entire genres of games might be missing. Adventure games and 4X/turn-based strategy games at least, some because they're not so marathon-safe, some because they're deemed too nichey or uninteresting. In the end, I don't understand why there needs to be, by your words, some one general presentation, so long as people are aware of the alternatives. It's very good if these different sites are still being advertised during marathons.Also you're making it sound like "weight put on commentary, explaining the games, and explaining what goes into it, and presenting a speedrun / the hobby to a large audience" is somehow opposed to what SDA is looking for. You're right if you mean the marathon setting forces there to be some kind of commentary... but you're never going as in-depth as you can in written notes, and in a way it's being distracted from (I don't mean this as criticism) by the charity stuff, donations etc.Spot on. Let's remember most games have basically no community at all, at least as far as speedrunning is concerned.:´(Several people said this. If you mean the game entries themselves: as tonic points out, SDA was never claiming to be a WRs site. SRC's structure is better if you just wanna quickly share a new record run, for sure. Also SDA's collection/forums/guides are whatever you want them to be: of course the less people submit, the less of the runs are "state-of-the-art" (which is kind of not the point either). The real distinction to make, then, is one of philosophy, in which regard SDA hasn't really changed that much. SDA is for people who'll take "second best" if it means it's a clean video with (hopefully) a bit of commentary. That's what I believe the games themselves deserve as well.A change was made to the SDA FAQ page to make it clearer not all SDA runs are WRs.SDA is no longer directly affiliated with the GDQs although a lot of the people involved in it come or came from an SDA background.What might you mean by this? Discord and SRC both cover a part of the spectrum of what benefits the speedrunning of games, whereas SDA is, as per its name, an archive, a repository, for what ideally should be the créme of the crop.I don't know why the quotation marks. Guess you mean we're all volunteers. The amount of work would be too much if there were no volunteers, only selfish demands for service. SDA is what you make of it. But yes, there could probably be improvements made to the site architecture, and even if every single run was the best imaginable for its game, there would be too many runs for the current staff to handle. I'm fine with being left with time on my hands, personally, cause it means one day I'll finish a run of my own finally, but I'm also fine with continuing to put that time into SDA if there is any semblance of a balance between runs/volunteering.That's a weird and incorrect statement. If someone has made a good Strategy Guide in our Knowledge Base , then that's where your info is at. If they haven't, it's not.I'm not sure what you mean by too strict, perhaps for A/V quality? It is true there have been cheated runs. There's no way to prevent that but some at least have been caught after the fact. It's the best you can do, and the quality of the verification depends on how many volunteers we have, and what kind of effort they put into it, so it's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy whatever you say about SDA/anything.Ask everyone who specifically does that. The finishing time isn't everything. Also for a lot of smaller games especially, the SDA runs, especially new ones, are actually WRs as well, we just don't believe that's relevant in any explicit way. If you have to frantically mash your remote control to find the BEST channel on TV, your problem isn't in the TV or the remote.Then update it and submit if you think it's a good ideaIt's also like you're saying "because it doesn't have every run, all the runs that come up are worthless".The "no cheating" bit in the 5-second intro isn't as central as knowing you're getting good clean quality is.Most categories on those community leaderboards, especially ones that the runners would seriously call speedrun records for their games, are more or less the same as SDA has: SDA doesn't try to control the rules for each game any more than makes sense to for there to be a baseline understanding of what a speedrun is. This is a common misconception. We often have discussions about whether we'll allow some gray area thing for some game and the existing community's (if present) standards are basically always taken into consideration. Whenever that community doesn't really exist, we obviously have to participate in creating the rules ourselves.As I said to someone above, SDA is what you make it into. Everyone is saying "it should be kept up to date" as if that was a matter of someone in power making some single decision. Nowhere on SDA does it say the runs are WRs. That assumption might be made by some new runner if this was the only site they came by... Most runners seem to be able to find the other, newer runs etc. on the Internet anyway. You obviously should be looking for any and all resources and if you're not actively doing that, I guess you wouldn't have been able to come up with anything particularly good anyway.As mentioned, the FAQ page now explicitly mentions not every run is the WR.Are you referring to some long-since past state of affairs? Feel free to expound on this.It's not so much at odds with there being one verified WR that most people (just looking at a leaderboard) will promptly click on, is it? We do want to eventually implement keeping old runs with their comments visible in some way. The manual process is slow because... it's manual. And because most people just want their fun stuff.What does that tell us about the runners if it's really such an issue to wait a few months? Also if everyone takes that attitude with verifications, then yes, the people who do eventually show up to do it (e.g. SDA admins) won't necessarily know your game: that's not on SDA though, that's on your own community. You have to see SDA as a feed that joins together every community, more or less lively, so they can sometimes send something out to those people who don't actively follow that game (i.e. most non-runners) who would nonetheless not mind seeing a classy run on occasion... in a high-quality, well-prepared package. Which brings us right back to verification. Those two months or whatever it is may obsolete the run, but only the runners and the most active viewers will care, honestly, if it's 1% faster or slower. If you think otherwise, you're absolutely fooling yourself.Okay, so I suspect you're one of those young'uns who thinks they've got the simple solution for everything and by god if others could be as clever as you... But let's test how "through" you've actually thought that idea. I'll pose to you some simple questions:How are the highlighted runs getting chosen? If there's a button that lets you highlight something and let's say it takes two mods (if present) clicking on it, and that you can only highlight a run that's the current fastest on the leaderboard (for its platform), that might work on some basic level but never can hope to amount to the same kind of filtering that SDA's process is designed for. What if there's just one runner? Are they allowed to highlight their own run? Who is going to check if the run is really worthwhile to highlight? What are the standards supposed to be like anyway? Are they supposed to be the same for games with less competition as for ones with more of it? How often can you highlight runs for the same game? For the same category? Do the highlighted runs also have to come with any amount of commentary? What if the mods don't agree on whether some run is good enough? I guess it has to have the majority vote. Trusting everyone to use the system in a responsible way sounds kinda like trusting all the mods to act fairly to begin with, which I suppose for the greatest part they are. I'm not totally skeptical about this, it would probably work somewhat better than just the feed as it stands, but I think ultimately there is either poor/uneven quality control or someone has to put in the same kind of work that goes into SDA verifications, bringing us to square one more or less. Also even with runs that don't come with any commentary on SDA, there's at least a little bit in the update and the game page about it, which I feel (I) makes every run feel more "official" and meaningful, for the same reason every show tends to have a host instead of just the acts unceremoniously walking out on stage one by one. Then there's a bit of interaction between the runner and verifiers as well, which makes it less lonely for those who run a game by themselves. Ultimately I feel SDA and SRC serve different audiences and we're definitely interested in sticking to what this site works for best while moving away from ideas that SRC's architecture can handle better.BTW if by "fiasco in verifications" you mean the Max Payne 2 ILs, I won't go in-depth into it here, but after reading the threads, I think it's not a black-and-white situation and perhaps it's not useful to condemn the whole site if you disagree on one decision which seems to be kind of subjective anyway, depending on how exactly you define a speedrun (and tradition seems to be on SDA's decision's side). You and the other runners certainly didn't see the whole picture. After some thought, and I think this is where we were left in the verification thread, I think I see no other way than accepting that the IGT category might be repetitive and cheesy... But don't run it then! Don't watch the runs! You're making it sound like every speedrun is without grinding or other boring stuff when quite the opposite is true. Think about some 100% runs for example. It does not mean the category isn't legitimate if the in-game timer is the timer you're optimizing for. I think you did point out a certain inconsistency in the way SDA has been handling "bad" improvements that UA also acknowledged in that same thread, and it's probably one of these things that's just up to somebody's discretion at the end of the day.Correct. That's our target demographic, more or less. Except they do appreciate any commentary tracks included, but then those tend to be 100% on the run/game. Also SDA is good if you sometimes will watch runs for games you don't really even know. I don't know how rare that is but it happens. I've seen tons of really cool shizzle in verification and such myself. It's not so different from watching a marathon except it's even more focused on just the game and run.I just had to include you in full CavemanDCJ, whoever you are... Thanks! You've made my day... Sorry it's not for you (or for anyone as per your words) but we're being accused of being pointless already so turning our front page into SRC's front page couldn't help now could it.Protip: you can still just skim though the links, and there's generally just three of them, one of them is the name of the game in question, the second one tells you who ran it and the one with the run time will magically transport you directly to the run itself. I know this isn't the most convenient but cavemen are notoriously hard to please.I get what you wrote in your response isn't your own view necessarily, but there is everything wrong with it in either case. For starters, not everyone has to be a runner at all to participate. Sometimes the runners definitely think a bit too highly of themselves. We need someone who can execute, sure, and who will memorize all the low-level details of the route/levels etc. but we don't need TONS of people just trying to get some time on the leaderboard cause they're too thick to come up with anything new. Instead, there are so many games you could be looking at if only from a theoretical point of view, doing testing, routing, spreading the workload...So few people have "a game". Most of us don't want to have just one game. How many people will only watch one TV show? What percentage of people are even going to only follow one esport really, and that's more expansive than the speedrunning for a single game I'd argue? But perhaps you've got some empirical evidence for this? In either case, that's exactly what SDA isn't for. (Again, I realize this isn't you saying this)It seems we're getting less runs that get rejected for A/V reasons, so I'm assuming this is true... in the sense that the base quality of the stream or whatever it was recorded as tends to be good, and so people don't need it to be. Ofc it still matters on the whole.Yup, some of us are into speedrunning, not people's stupid faces. And we can appreciate a good thought-out speedrun whether it's by our favourite band or not.Just send in your polished runs... we can't update if there's no runs. I expect there might be some more again once this has come out, which means the time to publication will increase if we get no more volunteers to match.Hahaha. Judging by your words, you're still an active visitor and thus I'm assuming you're talking about the most recent updaters. If so, your words have been noted, but ofc how much there is to say about a given run varies greatly from run to run... either the run comments are already taking care of... well, commentary, or the game is really simple, or it's been covered once already in the none-too-distant past, or everyone and their two doggone dogs knows what it's about. You might recall I once jokingly started one of my updates by pretending I was going to spend time educating people on what Grand Theft Auto was. There's even the game page intro (at the top of every game page) to cover the basics. Take the recent Marble Blast runs for example: they were both very short, came with audio commentary, and the game is as simple as could be really. When writing "to the point" is tautologous, I don't feel too bothered if I bring up ancillary or even somewhat far-fetched topics. I like to think it doesn't take anything away from the runs if it shows people that you can approach anything from any angle instead of it being just another game (so many games don't even try to stand out!). Plus this stuff isn't supposed to be super-serious: if I couldn't spice it up a bit (and let's face it - my style is moderation - the middle way - by comparison with what was once going on and what some people, evidently and myself too at the time, still didn't really mind), I'd keel over and die of BORING. While I'm in charge of the front page, we're not going to have just bullet points (probably not what you meant) because that's SR.com and I at least feel this should be every runner's reward, but I'm playing with the idea of trying a slight modification nonetheless. We'll see. If someone feels strongly this way or that, feel free to post about this: I'm always ready to philosophize on this stuff. Just remember there's the Twitter feed Couldn't have said it better myself! Except I wouldn't necessarily run with "record-breaking".Nope. The only people for whom half a year is "too old" is that handful who runs it, who should be greatful they have the time for that to begin with. And it only works as well as actual physical people help to make it work as I keep reiterating.Even for that handful of games that has a big community (believe me, a gigantic majority of games do not see any "updated" times virtually ever), this shouldn't be a matter of anything other than a bit of coordination. Not everyone running the game has to participate in creating that submission: you just need to take a round of hands, set a target time, and maybe split into segments/ILs if it's possible. If it's SS, I guess it's just whoever gets the first sub-something-major who gets the honors... but please don't leave it to anyone else to make SDA work, in concrete terms, if you like it on paper.



------



There were a lot of statements that were simply too vague/adolescent to be able to respond to them. Also other people may have brought up the same exact things. I couldn't bring myself to take anonymous comments seriously either (although not all of them were bad) but feel free to post here instead if you really don't think your "thing" was addressed. The SDA ban on guest posting has been lifted for now.



A few small notes about the survey itself:





The question "Considering outside opinions in categories/timing etc. rules": what surprised me here is... isn't there more a question about whether those on, say, SRC need to come and check what's been done on SDA/somewhere and ask for their opinion or vice versa? I think the question of "should we ask non-speedrunners" is a somewhat strange one. Yet that seems to have been the question so many respondents primarily or solely answered. Thinking about the viewers is one thing that may sometimes contradict what the runners would like to be able to do, but even in those cases it doesn't seem necessary to go out and start asking questions from "bystanders" – just try to see it from that perspective yourself.



Resources and guides: well, sounds like people would love more wiki-style resources but only few actually want to do it. Which sort of sucks because that goes solidly against the idea of a wiki. Personally I'm going to tolerate being almost the only person updating the wikis for games I've studied if and only if the others are actually being useful and doing the "fieldwork" I'm asking of them, or at least doing something useful... Sometimes I feel some runners are more in the way with their PBs and their Twitch channels, their lonely egos and laziness. Which is a shame. It should be noted that SDA's [url=Knowledge Base[/url] is very, very easy to edit and you can get away with a lot of copy-pasting to get started, past which it sort of acts as you keeping your notes online instead of just your hard drive. I understand that there are times where you won't want to do every edit in real-time, but if there are any others interested in the game, I do make it a habit to keep it up-to-date. [plug] BTW: If we could find someone to devote to developing the wiki, we could do even better than current in accessibility etc. Doesn't require special technical skills really.



"No definition for an accurate emulator" – I'm sorry if I read this hastily, but there IS a definition... that's simply whether the same inputs result in the same outputs on the emulator and the real deal. It's exactly how TASVideos finds out which emulators they will allow. This should mean that at least a part of the legitimacy question has been taken care of since others can then run in real-time on those same emulators, however it doesn't really address the controllers, nor are there such verified emulators for every platform. The question "Considering outside opinions in categories/timing etc. rules": what surprised me here is... isn't there more a question about whether those on, say, SRC need to come and check what's been done on SDA/somewhere and ask for their opinion or vice versa? I think the question of "should we ask non-speedrunners" is a somewhat strange one. Yet that seems to have been the question so many respondents primarily or solely answered. Thinking about the viewers is one thing that may sometimes contradict what the runners would like to be able to do, but even in those cases it doesn't seem necessary to go out and start asking questions from "bystanders" – just try to see it from that perspective yourself.Resources and guides: well, sounds like people would love more wiki-style resources but only few actually want to do it. Which sort ofbecause that goes solidly against the idea of a wiki. Personally I'm going to tolerate being almost the only person updating the wikis for games I've studied if and only if the others are actually being useful and doing the "fieldwork" I'm asking of them, or at least doing something useful... Sometimes I feel some runners are more in the way with their PBs and their Twitch channels, their lonely egos and laziness. Which is a shame. It should be noted that SDA's [url=Knowledge Base[/url] is very, very easy to edit and you can get away with a lot of copy-pasting to get started, past which it sort of acts as you keeping your notes online instead of just your hard drive. I understand that there are times where you won't want to do every edit in real-time, but if there are any others interested in the game, I do make it a habit to keep it up-to-date. [plug] BTW: If we could find someone to devote to developing the wiki, we could do even better than current in accessibility etc. Doesn't require special technical skills really. Apply here .[/plug]"No definition for an accurate emulator" – I'm sorry if I read this hastily, but there IS a definition... that's simply whether the same inputs result in the same outputs on the emulator and the real deal. It's exactly how TASVideos finds out which emulators they will allow. This should mean that at least a part of the legitimacy question has been taken care of since others can then run in real-time on those same emulators, however it doesn't really address the controllers, nor are there such verified emulators for every platform. Links to the survey and analysis found in this post . Use that post for talking about the survey in general and let's keep this one about SDA. This is just meant to clear any misunderstandings about the role SDA can play in speedrunning so you can make an informed decision about how it fits in with your individual efforts.We do NOT see any reason to choose one speedrunning site over the other. We see SDA submissions as serving a different function compared to live streams and posting runs on Speedrun.com (SRC) or YouTube. SDA runs are intended for viewing by anyone, not just people already invested in some way in the game in question. Here's a brief "TLDR" of the differences between SDA and SRC:Now, about things relating to SDA that came up in the survey answers.I think I'll also respond to some specific comments even though the key points have been laid out already:------There were a lot of statements that were simply too vague/adolescent to be able to respond to them. Also other people may have brought up the same exact things. I couldn't bring myself to take anonymous comments seriously either (although not all of them were bad) but feel free to post here instead if you really don't think your "thing" was addressed. The SDA ban on guest posting has been lifted for now.A few small notes about the survey itself:

Thread title: Links to the survey and analysis found in [url=https://forum.speeddemosarchive.com/post/speedrun_community_survey_18.html#speedrun_community_survey_18]this post[/url]. Use that post for talking about the survey in general and let's keep this one about SDA. This is just meant to clear any misunderstandings about the role SDA can play in speedrunning so you can make an informed decision about how it fits in with your individual efforts. We do NOT see any reason to choose one speedrunning site over the other. We see SDA submissions as serving a different function compared to live streams and posting runs on Speedrun.com (SRC) or YouTube. SDA runs are intended for viewing by anyone, not just people already invested in some way in the game in question. Here's a brief "TLDR" of the differences between SDA and SRC: [hidden] * Each game has a different set of moderators and game specific rules on SRC, while SDA has a generic set of rules, monitored by the staff. [b]Most of the time, the end result is the same.[/b] Both ways of functioning have pros and cons. Game specific moderators will often know the game better than a group who just has generally a lot of speedrun experience. On the other hand, having a generic rule set as a basis ensures that there is more coordination between the rules in different games (and makes them less arbitrary and disputable) and the site users will know what to expect and what decisions are based on. * SDA hosts the speedruns on their own servers (as well as mirroring them on archive.org), while any video host will suffice for SRC. There may be long-term value in not having to rely on a commercial 3rd party video host. Who knows if any given video will still be fully and freely available a few years from now? On SDA, the video avoids any unwanted blocking or monetization, and also restrictions on video quality. Also, you may feel high-quality runs "belong" on SDA, dedicated solely to this purpose. * SDA has certain A/V and gameplay quality requirements, while there are virtually none on SRC. The SDA requirements make the site viewer-friendly: anyone will know they're not wasting their time watching a sub-par run that may have overlays or other information that they may prefer not to have to look at. This can sometimes conflict with how a runner wants to record their run. For example, they might prefer to have splits or donation announcements cover the game play area or have commentary over the game audio. Those examples would not be acceptable for an SDA-submission but it's not difficult to avoid any overlays on top of the actual game window, and also to double the game audio output in a separate track. Submitting such a video is enough since it can be cropped. * On SDA, runners are encouraged to write dedicated comments and/or record an audio commentary track to make their runs accessible to an audience that doesn't know much or anything about the game in question. These are always much-appreciated. * Other than checking for the run to be legit, SDA verification also looks at how optimized it is. If there are too many mistakes or if significant route mistakes are pointed out, the run will be rejected in verification, regardless of if it's the record or not. This also means there is often more technical feedback for a run submitted to SDA. Some runners like this feedback loop and see it as a challenge to achieve a run clean enough to be accepted. Of course, the more a game has been run before, the less of a reason this becomes for submitting. Note that SDA runs don't have to be WRs. The WR holder won't necessarily ever submit anything. * Each run accepted on SDA will be featured in a front page update, while a run accepted on SRC will be listed in a "latest verified" list on the frontpage that has a quick turnaround time. * Due to more steps in the verification and publication process on SDA, the handling is considerably longer on SDA than on SRC (and relies on more volunteering). Then again, only the "cream of the crop", not progressive PBs, are expected to be submitted on SDA anyway. Remember that, while someone (or you yourself) may already have improved on the run in question by the time it comes out on SDA, the SDA audience doesn't really care because they weren't going to watch every run anyway. Only a very small number of people on this planet will care, in fact. It's not that different from how a marathon run is not expected to be a WR either. * Only the fastest submitted run in each category is hosted on SDA (even old SDA runs are not currently shown due to technical limitations). This will exclude other runs that could be of general interest. The old runs are still available on archive.org. * Some runners may think there's prestige in having completed and published an SDA run, or that it makes speedrunning in general more dignified to share deserving runs in this viewer-friendly way. * Segmented runs are allowed on both sites, but in practice, due to its implicit emphasis on competition, virtually non-existent on SRC. This is a shame, since segmented running should appeal to runners who don't care about competition or how good they can do in a single-segment run, but instead care about what the best (humanly achievable) outcomes are in general. As of writing this, segmented runs have become increasingly obscure for multiple reasons, including the massive visibility of marathon runs. It's individual on how people value these points (and possibly other differences they feel are important) but we hope reading this allows you to appreciate what value we see in SDA submissions. [/hidden] Now, about things relating to SDA that came up in the survey answers. [hidden] EDIT: It seems some people would like to be able to both stream their running with splits etc. and do SDA-oriented local recording with clean video and audio. I know at least OBS nowadays supports this without compromising either. Check out [url=https://obsproject.com/forum/resources/obs-studio-high-quality-recording-and-multiple-audio-tracks.221/]this page[/url]. It's very flexible. [b]"SDA timing (Speed Demos Archive timing) - an older timing method, which is typically RTA but defines that one specifically starts timing on ‘first control’ and stop controlling on ‘last input’."[/b] Hmm... I don't think "last input" is correct, unless it means "last time the game polls for inputs where that can still alter the result" which is a bit vague but in practice usually turns out to be exactly how runners were timing it themselves. "Last input", i.e. last actually given input, not just the possibility of giving them, is TAS-timing and may cause TAS timers to stop before the last hit on the boss or whatever. The starting point being start of control seems to be what defines SDA timing. Here's some general thoughts about this: With SDA timing, there's no difference between starting a new game from the menu vs. from a reset, which certainly is more handy with games that offer that option, but I'm guessing other communities would also have timed from control in that case (but this means they're not being as consistent from game to game). With SDA timing you can leave in (or even splice in) the opening cutscenes which might make for a more satisfying watch in general. Also, if you're going to time those cutscenes, which is usually just mashing to skip it, why wouldn't you also time the end cutscenes in principle? Just like after beating the boss you usually can't lose anymore, you can't really lose or go wrong in the opening cutscenes either. It's not 100% the same (in the end cutscenes you've definitely already [i]beat the game[/i] so maybe it shouldn't be timed for that reason) but there may be some kind of symmetricity there... maybe. Other than this I don't really have a strong opinion. I guess SDA timing slightly skews the actual run lengths in cases where the intro is particularly long. As a side note, PC runs might have variance in the loading time between hitting start and gaining control, so SDA timing makes a lot of sense with those. Of course [b]SDA doesn't always use "SDA" timing[/b] if there's good reason not to, like if it's impossible to know exactly when control starts. I don't know what's been done historically with any given title but it's more flexible in general than people are assuming. With other kinds of rulings, we seldom see a reason to mess with whatever the communities seem to be okay with, but we have to have global baseline rules in place as well if there e.g. isn't really a community, so we don't have to reinvent the wheel every time. [b]"SDA isn't required for publishing runs anymore"[/b] Most people totally miss what SDA is actually about – to provide a stream of quality runs the same way a news site doesn't cover every news story in the world, but people don't want to read about them all anyway. It's a curated feed of speedruns that are far likelier to be a complete package and actually worth your time than an average new PB/WR on SRC. Those who don't want to go through any extra effort to get their runs properly published (I will adress the "big community" question later) are less likely to want to write detailed comments either that specifically more random viewers would appreciate, which is why I'm assuming this wouldn't be very popular to do on SRC. I don't know what the percentage of people watching each run is on SDA who genuinely don't know anything about the game (we should probably do some polling of our own) but I'm fairly sure there are those who aren't superparticular when it comes to it, and there is some evidence of this in the survey responses as well. And it's not like there aren't viewers of GDQ's etc. who will watch whatever happens to be on. This kind of "ecumenical" nature of the site is, AFAICS, not incredibly emphasized on something like SRC even though it has one big listing of everything that's new – it doesn't actively highlight or describe any of that content (I'll respond to TheKotti's idea to do this further down). I'm not in any way demeaning SRC here, as even we find its leaderboards to be handy for some quick referencing for verifications. It's unfortunate SRC has its problems – as anything of its nature will – but its architecture is obviously good for certain things. It might as well be pointed out that on SDA at least, the runs will never be commercialized, no ads, no paid subscriptions. [b]"SDA verification isn't needed to legitimize runs"[/b] SDA doesn't do verification to "officialize" runs (check for cheating and filling the requirements for the category) as much as to check for their A/V and these days especially gameplay quality: that it's a good-enough run to publish on the front page without betraying the site's standards. It always had these other two aspects included, and those, obviously, haven't gone anywhere. If you don't care about good presentation [being guaranteed] and documentation [being likely], you can usually find more and faster runs on SRC for specific games, especially the more popular ones. [b]"Modern verification is faster"[/b] Apples and oranges: firstly, if there were as many active users on SDA as SRC, verifications wouldn't ever be left waiting for so long (something the new public verification system has helped immensely anyway). Secondly, SRC doesn't verify the run gameplay quality at all, something that often has to be scrutinized and debated on in SDA verifications. Thirdly, verifications on SDA also give the runners helpful feedback on their runs and running even when they get turned down at first... another thing "modern" verification doesn't explicitly do. So this is a complete misunderstanding. It used to be very tardy from what I've heard, back before I became an admin here, and this is in part because SDA wanted only knowledgeable verifiers, which is only natural. Another reason being the asymmetry between how much volunteering people are ready to put into SDA vs. the amount required to offset the processing of their runs. It's ironic that SDA is being accused of being outdated when so many people have outdated or plain wrong ideas about it themselves... [b]"SDA runs are obsolete"[/b] For the most part, with all the most popular games, this is a true statement if you only want the fastest runs available per category. There are individual runs where the execution was [i]so dang strong[/i] that they actually look better than new ones with more tricks or whatever, but seeing as SDA's verifications have gotten [to my knowledge] steadily more strict up to this day, not all older runs, naturally, will be the bee's knees anymore from even that point of view. We're going to look into making it more obvious that SDA runs aren't WRs, possibly in the FAQs somewhere (done). To clear a particular misconception, SDA doesn't "update" the game pages autonomously with anyone else's runs and never has. Only the communities for those games can, if they'd like to. [b]"SDA isn't required for archival anymore"[/b] It makes more sense for there to be a central repository nevertheless. It gives the runs and the entire hobby more dignity. And indeed storing runs on Archive.org (which is done with every SDA run) as well as SDA's server gives them a longer life expectancy compared to just some YT upload, though in practice not many will go and delete their old uploads even though they could. Still, the way YouTube has been going as of late (takedown requests and such) makes one uneasy. [b]"SDA couldn't possibly keep up with publishing everyone's runs when speedrunning is so much more popular now"[/b] Well, this is mainly just a product of two things: a) What kinds of runs people choose to submit, and to a lesser degree, SDA chooses to accept. b) How much work people are willing to put into making it happen. If the submissions count was greatly increased, SDA could maybe impose a rule by which only one run per game per category could be submitted inside a one-year period. We currently accept whatever progressive improvements come in after the first accepted submission but with this rule in place, we could at least cut out all such runs – how many runs will the larger audience really want to see for each game? If they had the time or interest, they'd already have bookmarked their favorite SRC pages. Beyond this, we could also change the wordings on our rules page etc. to make sure people are aware of what kinds of runs we want to archive. The minimal amount of work every runner should put into SDA to offset each one of their submissions can be "calculated" like this: we prefer there to be at least two verifiers, so you should, in return, verify two runs yourself, preferrably of the same length as yours. Of course each community can agree to "send us" a different person to do that "on the runner's behalf". And you obviously don't have to submit runs in order to verify them. The communities participating in the verification of their own runs is ideal, even though it might seem tautologous to them. How is SDA supposed to know what you know about the run and what's lead up to it? Another thing we could do is simply to keep people better informed as to what the queue is like so they can more easily decide when it's time to make a submission and how polished it should be. You can already see this if go to the verification summary page which could just be linked in the FAQ or submission form as well. [b]"My community is too big and records change hands constantly: there's no good opportunities for anyone to submit a run"[/b] First of all, congratulations, because your game is in a very small minority. To quote one of the respondents: [quote=jelmeree]maybe other "milestone" runs can be published there as if it was a museum, where every community can showcase some runs/tricks.[/quote] "Museum" is not a bad term for it actually and this is exactly what I feel truly organized communities could well do. It's up to each community to decide which runs are worth submitting but I don't think that's mutually exclusive with everything else they might want to be doing. If anything, it's respectful for your game itself to give it the best treatment and doing a bit of self-effacement, both on the level of the individual and the community as a whole. It's a way to turn to the audience that doesn't check up on the game every day even though they've played it (which is, as a side note for those with head stuck in ass, [b]MOST OF[/b] the audience). Generally speaking the SDA-submitted run is going to be one with particularly clean execution, because we know strats can and do change, even if people are working hard to uncover the best ones. The fairly recent [url=http://speeddemosarchive.com/GrandTheftAutoVC.html]Vice City run[/url] is a good example, coming from a big community with its own leaderboards etc. [b]"SDA front page updates are too wordy"[/b] Follow the [url=https://twitter.com/SDAspeedruns]Twitter feed[/url] instead. Other than that... the amount of people who will look at the update, see where the salient-enough links go, and require further information to be able to make a decision between watch/don't watch can't be very big. EDIT: This answer was added later: [b]"I don't like the top-down management of SDA, I prefer how sr.com lets the users themselves manage the games, as someone creates an sr.com page for the game and adds moderators[/b] This approach has famously created problems of its own that are almost entirely of a kind that SDA doesn't have. The games will, probably not often, but sometimes, be left at the mercy of poor/irresponsible moderators who may create arbitrary rulesets that every future runner is locked into because of having started an unfortunate legacy (or abuse their power in a different way). SDA's [url=https://kb.speeddemosarchive.com/Rules]base level rules[/url] exist so we don't have to reinvent the wheel with each new game. If there was no universal definition for what are considered speedruns to begin with, we would all suffer from subjective definitions we don't necessarily agree with. Despite the extent of the rules page, we often adapt the rules to fit the games better, e.g. making exceptions to the rule not to allow unofficial patches if the game has become difficult to get running without them. The highest guiding principle is common sense and to the greatest reasonable extent, where leeway exists, we will gladly allow it to be used for making better categories. Take the comments section underneath [url=https://kotaku.com/new-trick-has-ocarina-of-time-speedrunners-debating-wha-1796849850]this article[/url] as an example of how gnarly definitions are to come up with. If every community comes up with its own definitions, it'll dilute the meaning of the word "speedrun" with every non-standard concession, and drive away anyone who didn't agree with the ruling (making it seem like it's more unanimous than it really was). [/hidden] I think I'll also respond to some specific comments even though the key points have been laid out already: [hidden] [quote=ingx24]I think SDA should rebrand itself as a place for hosting 1) segmented runs and 2) RTA runs that are "clean" (i.e. few mistakes) and have text or audio commentary explaining what's going on. To put it another way: SDA could be a place for showcasing runs that are "recommended viewing for newcomers", so to speak - sort of like GDQ runs, except cleaner.[/quote] [Newer] SDA runs ARE, supposedly, sufficiently clean. The requirement for commentary is a bit difficult to im