It’s The Perfect Time To Watch GDQ

Everything is bad, with new horrors revealing themselves by the day. But you know what isn’t bad? Speedrunning.

Summer Games Done Quick, the balmy, beachy (at least, by Minneapolis standards) edition of GDQ’s bi-annual charity mega-marathon, has been in full swing since Sunday. It could not be happening at a better and also worse time. The video game industry is on fire in the conflagratory sense; if not for this 24/7 reminder of the fact that games can be good and be used to do good, I’d be losing my mind.

If you’ve never tuned into a GDQ event or think that speedrunning is exclusively the domain of obsessive freaks (complimentary), let me spell out the appeal for you: People try to complete games as quickly as possible, often by way of routes, glitches, and strategies even developers never thought of. This makes for fascinating viewing because runners inevitably end up reverse-engineering how extremely specific portions of games function—albeit only after they’ve spent thousands of hours exploring well beyond games’ intended bounds.

Seeing it all come together on a stage in front of a live audience is just the sickest shit ever. Runners maintain a degree of composure that borders on remarkable while explaining the mind-bogglingly complex maneuvers they’re pulling off. Surrounded by friends and scene compatriots, they laugh, joke, and—when necessary—lock in. Then the run ends, and both the runner and the audience exhale. Occasionally, runners even break world records on stage, defying countless points where everything could go horribly wrong to do so.

All the while, people regularly chant things like “trans rights,” the organization itself tells ICE to fuck off, and viewers donate millions of dollars to Doctors Without Borders. GDQ may not quite have speedrun reaching this point—and it still has its issues—but the totality of the event stands in stark contrast to the cesspit that comprises much of modern online gamer culture.

With all that said, if you’d like to catch up, here are some of my favorite runs from this year’s SGDQ:

World record on the big stage! Afterward, the runner, Bdud, nearly in tears, reveals that he spent a month training for this moment every day—that’s how badly he wanted it—and thanks his rival turned best friend, who is on the couch, for pushing him to improve. This is what speedrunning’s about.

A unique twist on a race: One runner is playing the original version of Spyro: Year Of The Dragon while the other is playing the remake. Really cool way to experience all the little differences between the two.

Not only is Strange Scaffold’s I Am Your Beast an ideal speed game because of how cool it looks when somebody plays it at an ultra-high level, but director Xalavier Nelson is (virtually) on the couch for this one, providing all sorts of interesting commentary about the creation of the game.

If you’ve ever wanted to hear an audience shout “wheeeeeee” 100 times, you’re in the right place.

Same as above, but replace “wheeeeeee” with “awoo.” Also, the skill on display here is truly dazzling.

It’s always fun to watch someone run a newer game, because they’re still in the process of discovering skips and working out an optimal route. You get to hear people excitedly (or confusedly) chatter about their learnings. Sometimes people don’t understand why what they’re doing works, but it does, and that’s OK.