So these are some thoughts that have been rolling around the forefront of my mind for the past few weeks. The observations themselves have come from experience from within the speed running scene through it's cataclysmic rise to fame, assisted by services like Twitch, and signal-boosted by mainstream gaming media outlets.

First, I'm going to be using a few references here. Among them will be particular streamers as well as the methodology used to select line ups for GDQs (Games Done Quick, the SpeedDemosArchive hosted bi-annual charity drive). Do not consider this in any way an attack on anyone or anything I mention, I am merely using them as sources to verify my observations and hunches.

As far as I'm concerned, since the day the first speed runner gained a partner status, this ball has been rolling. A drive to appeal to the widest array of audience members and maximise profit gained. Some people are directly guilty of perpetrating this (those people won't be named or shamed here), others are unknowingly falling into it. You see, there is an impossible to miss bias and hug box of brands and IPs within the Twitch community that has slowly been building since Day 1. Let me give an example.

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Case Study 1: The Streamer

Wersterlobe and the Pokemon fanbase

Werster is somebody who I've been on good terms with since the pre-Twitch days, we used to race Sonic Adventure 2 purely for fun if you'd believe that, considering neither of us actually do or have ever seriously ran the game (speed running a game without aiming to borderline be the world's best at it, what a thought right?). He has two franchises that he clearly has undying love for. First is Pokemon (the IP he led streaming endeavours with) and Sonic (an IP that still has a more than passable community, albeit a much more fragmented one). As Pokemon has one of the biggest communities in the entire gaming landscape, attention was very quickly thrown upon him, as one of the leading Pokemon routers and runners.

A few months ago he made a declaration that he would be weaning himself off of being a Pokemon-only streamer, which he had essentially been exclusively streaming for well over a year. Since then, he has been constantly harassed whenever he plays non-Pokemon games. "Why aren't you playing Pokemon?" the viewer inquires, interpreting him as a service, a business with a sole purpose which doesn't possess the ability to shift ideals and objectives. This exact message comes in a thousand forms, screamed at him by a thousand different faceless voices. I've seen it wear on him greatly, as much as he may shield himself from the brunt of it.

So why is he in this situation? The answer is pretty simple, although sad. Reputation and an expectation for a particular product. You see, since he is on a partner and subscription program, money has changed hands. Essentially, a product has been bought, the product of a top-tier Pokemon player.

Now you should be saying "No, they've bought the product of him as a streamer. The game played is irrelevant", and I wish I could agree with you. However, I see it through the perspective of a neutral non-streamer observing all of these happenings. The majority of people who have subscribed to him have done it during his Pokemon-only era. The fact he wanted to solely focus down a few of the Pokemon games has delivered the message that this is all he plays, and it is all that he will ever play.

"How did he not see this coming?" you may ask. Because when he started his endeavours this type of message was not possible to send.

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People weren't known as Pokemon Speed Runners or Zelda Speed Runners pre-Twitch popularity boom. They were simply Speed Runners: people who chose to play any video game at their disposal in a fast manner. This was and still is done as a play-style. The thing that separates us speed runners from so many other gamers is that it is a purely competitive medium, without the need for a competitive infrastructure within the game itself. However what has changed over the past half decade has been the ideal that doing this is a means to an end, the end in question being the runners personal idea of a reasonable time. Not World Record. Not a theoretical ceiling of human capability. Not striving to gain the fastest time ever achieved, but personal hurdles, determined by the individual. The environment as it is essentially discards the efforts of anyone who isn't the very best. You no longer deserve acclaim unless you have proven that no one can best you.

Now I understand that this has been caused by the introduction of money to the hobby, as well as the pack mentality and loyalty the audience has for the runner in question, which has slowly grown from a scene that used to purely be speed runners watching speed runners. There is now actually a huge audience demographic, far outweighing the actual speed running community itself.

Let's go deeper...

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Case Study 2: The Website

Twitch TV

I am completely confident in saying that subscriptions, in particular subscription emotes, is at the core of corrupting SOME speed runners. It's a giant sign in the ground reading "appeal to the largest demographic possible and you will reap the highest reward from it". This is why the site even without speed runners has a million Kappas and a million meme emotes, with nary an emote that only makes sense in the context of the channel it is sold in. It's a game of scope, in which you create the most general, non-contextual images possible. That pairs up with the emote and subscription model, essentially allowing subs to come for the emotes OR for the streamer, with more subs gaining more emotes, keeping the train rolling.

First let me verify that I don't have anything against Twitch TV as a streaming platform, a business or as a brand. What I DO have issues with however, is it's blatant monopolization over the entire speed running scene and where attention is diverted to.

What do I mean by this? Well look at the few instances of speed running they have promoted. We have the multiple site-wide shout outs towards people breaking Ocarina of Time and Super Mario 64 records and the like. Why these in particular? Why a handful of games released over 15 years ago? Simple answer: Like many of us, the people at Twitch with an interest in speed running are born and raised Nintendo Kids. Not just regular Nintendo Kids however. A special breed, a breed that exists in waves across the internet. This group of people haven't cared nor given the chance to anything that isn't directly correlated to their own childhood. What they played when they were 10 years old is considered the cream of the crop, because they can't detach themselves from the concept of child-like wonder and instead stifle variety by convincing themselves that "because I enjoyed this game the most, regardless of whether I was a child, it is objectively the best and most worthy of attention". This in itself is a problem that also exists within the speed running community itself, but it has been magnified tenfold by the website promotion. I have much more to say on the site but if I don't digress now I will be typing until 6am, so I'll leave it at that.

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You may wonder where this is going. What point do I have to make here? Well hopefully a few of said points have already got through to you, if not return to the start and read again. You've clearly missed something. Now, onto what has done the most damage to the hobby...

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Case Study 3: The Audience

Shitters and the comparatively small Core Audience

I open Speedrun TV right now and look at the top, and I see Cosmowright, someone who has worked tirelessly through the popularity boom, sitting pretty with about 15-20% of his usual viewership. "WHAT? WHY'S THAT?" you ask. Well that's a no-brainer, he isn't playing Zelda. Those that remain are known as the core audience, the people that actually view the stream to interact with and watch Cosmo, instead of only caring about the game in question. These are the people that I wish more runners would cater to, as they are the ones that truly care about the person in question. Those not present are the reason why streamers have been slowly manipulated into running particular games. "Nonono they don't have to do that". I know they don't, but they feel like they need to. When a streamer that usually peaks at 1k+ viewers sees that they have more than halved the people that care about what they are doing, it sends the message that they are doing something wrong.

Now I know Cosmo himself won't be affected by this, as he clearly knows the concept of the core audience, considering he has gone on entire stints without playing Zelda without becoming visibly concerned about viewership. Keep in mind Cosmo is someone who has dedicated himself FULL TIME to speed running, and the community it has. If he wasn't so savvy, he might be thinking he's about to lose his livelihood. Hell, if he played something other than Zelda for long enough, he very well may.

Why uncaringly use Cosmo as an example like that? Because unlike the majority of the biggest speed run streamers, he actually runs more than one game, even just within the Zelda series. He knows his core audience will stick with him. However, this unfortunately is not the case for the majority.

I think to myself "Where are the rest and when do they choose to turn up?". Well this comes back to Case Study 2. I'll tell you exactly where and when they turn up. Anywhere with people playing (who could've guessed it) Super Mario 64, Ocarina of Time etc. These are a large contingent of people that learned of speed running through Twitch itself. Now this isn't inherently a bad thing, sheep get led, this isn't a new concept nor a particularly terrible one. HOWEVER, this chain reacts with something else, which results in something far more damaging to the ability to be noticed as a speed runner.....

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Case Study 4: The Marathon

(Popular and Profitable) Games Done Quick

Now I am totally OK with the idea that SDA can personally govern what does and doesn't make it into it's own marathon. Hell, it's a right, it's THEIR marathon. H O W E V E R, the fact that the GDQs each year are gaining more popularity, garnering more donations and warranting more media attention, it is essentially the beacon of speed running to the internet at large. I couldn't even begin to presume the amount of people that have learned about speed running as a play-style through these marathons.

So let's observe the past and present mentality of screening submissions to participate in said marathons.

What is guaranteed:-

- Handful of core Nintendo games. THE SAME ONES EVERY TIME (SM64/Zelda/Megaman X/Super Metroid)

- 1 or 2 6+ hour RPGs to either fill graveyard or finale slots (usually both)

What is questioned:-

- The amount of money that can be reaped from incentives

- "How large the fanbase of said game is and how much nostalgia can be tickled from them"

- "Has it been ran before and if so how did it go?" - This is a big one that skews perspective. Just now I see SpikeVegeta talking about the possibility of KH not getting in due to a lacklustre performance last time. This essentially means if you do not play near-perfect, you are borderline condemning the game from marathon involvement for a good period of time for no reason other than those screening only ever seeing that one run.

What loses a game priority:-

- You can pretty much move a game further up the priority list the closer it is to that "golden era" of Nintendo games. A new game? Doesn't matter if it has the entire industries attention, it isn't from our childhoods. A great example of this is what happened the first marathon after Skyrim was released.

What means nothing:-

- "How entertaining the run is" - Entirely subjective

- "How difficult running the game is" - Although I don't think this is exactly a good bullet point for a run, it clearly matters not when someone always gets to runs a 6+ hour game of menu navigation.

- Cult popularity

- Large and involved game communities

- Dedication

This may seem like an extremely cynical criteria, but I honestly read this and it fits perfectly with the games already accepted, and those already rejected.

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So here it is, the GIANT underlying point to this 2500+ word mess that started 3 hours ago while conversing with fr0kenok.

Step 1: Audience gets introduced to speed running through GDQ

Step 2: Audience gains interest in the runs that are showcased, which are borderline the same each time, with the largest emphasis always placed on the SAME GAMES (Above)

Step 3: They follow biggest runners of said games, and never budge.

Step 4: Speed runners are unknowingly guilted into only playing said games, otherwise their accumulated "fans" attack them, expecting them to play those same games, presuming they are what matter the most because the GDQs put them front and center above all else.

Step 5: Up and coming speed runners realise the only way they will get a foot in the door of the scene is to play THOSE EXACT SAME GAMES.

Step 6: We end up with 5 years of the exact same games dominating any and all media coverage of speed running.

Thankfully though, there ARE still sub-communities out there, willing to support people, albeit within the reach of individual IPs.

A great example is Talon, DsS, Bertin and frokenok. All sit within the Sonic series, and most if-not all community is universal between these channels, albeit on varying volumes. But you still see the same people around, with said Sonic games ranging anywhere from Sonic R all the way up to 2013's Sonic Lost World.

Another superb, possibly the best example, is the Dark Souls community. Although this is merely an extension of the behemoth that is the Souls fandom, these fuckers will literally file in in the thousands if there is an even decent-quality speed run of any of the Souls games being ran. This is completely detached from GDQ and all the phenomenon that I have referenced here, and if it weren't for self-sustained communities like this, speed running would already be 100% Nintendo Exclusive, at least in the spotlight.

This all started with frokenok being taken aback when I said "GDQ used to be a speed running showcase, now it is a calculated money generator".

If anything, I hope I haven't stumbled over my words too much within this extremely lengthy rant. Also, if you are a speed runner, I hope you can take something away from these observations. I know I'm not the only one who recognises these things, so you may already be aware and be like "duh".