Many gamers pay little to none attention to speedrunning. It is understandable, because there the players must sacrifice the joys of the most important aspect of gaming process (in-depth walkthrough of game's story) for the sake of obtaining a better result. However, there is one thing of beauty to be found in this field - Games Done Quick.

Within the bounds of such a meeting of best speedrunners, the viewers have a chance to make a right thing. For each donation given during the festival is used for charity purposes – to be more specific, these are directed to the cancer prevention funds. As such, GDQ boldly present themselves as the largest organizers of such events across the states.

Note that the totals may be quite surprising, showing the figures most unexpected. For example, the last such event managed to raise almost $2.5 million. Still, apparently these guys aren't going to stop at this and are constantly announcing new events related to this festival.

The main feature to capture the viewer's interest is the marathon format chosen by the organizers. Because of it, almost all of the broadcast time is taken by the real gameplay – rather than replays of matches or numerous ad inserts. In addition, during their speeches, some speedrunners tend to reveal interesting secrets and/or their own ideas – information that cannot be found on the Internet. As a result, a gamer who accidentally entered a broadcast is prone to staying and spectating for at least several hours.

For the most part, the target audience of such a speedrun festival is composed of fans of this particular direction of gaming. However, due to the good intentions the festival is rooted in, people who are complete strangers to gaming sometimes also spectate the course of events. Here we will note even the small contribution by Twitch.tv, which lies in forcing the event's channel on platform's main page.

As for the trends, they are currently showing positive growth. Comparing the last two marathons, the peak of broadcasts reached a growth of more than 30 thousand spectators. This result demonstrates a growing interest not only to gaming in general, but also to events of this particular kind.

The fact that growth is shown based on indicators of all available languages is also good. It does not matter whether it is a Russian-speaking viewer or a Frenchman. All conversational groups have nearly same progress. The seats in the rear are still guarded by Chinese viewers, but we are confident that in the future, gamers from the Middle Kingdom will eventually rise to occupy the ranking's "pedestal" itself.

In conclusion, we would like to say that such undertakings have a positive effect on the image of the gaming culture. It is thanks to this, that players can become not mere cyberathletes, but selfless benefactors in the eyes of the common crowd – despite it being not well-versed in gaming as a whole.