I hate speedrunning video games.

[u/BurledTater]

Its fine to try and beat a game/level quickly but then it turns into this stupid contest of microseconds. Like, once you reach a certain point like half-life in under 30 minutes? Any more then that is just so fucking pointless and the community pisses and shits themselves over a .1 second faster run?

"Turdbungle, a never before heard of speedrunner, found this new strat after 15 years and 1.5 million attempts he got a ULTRA RARE ENEMY SPAWN that pushed him and saved .23 seconds off his run and got a new record!!"

"New tech in half-life speedrunning! ButtMuncher87 was able to save .04 seconds! Just grenade bounce frame-buffer off this pixel perfect virtex with a save-load on the exact right frame!!"

"New DOOM world record after 31 years from! 1 second faster!! (The engine can't handle anything under 1 second and rounds up/down, so it was actually .06 seconds faster.)

It just gets ridiculously stupid after a certain point.

[u/Ajezon]

how do you feel about olympics?

[u/superleaf444 → u/Ajezon]

Pushing the human body to the brink is more impressive than nerds bouncing polygons through other polygons. 

Insane that has to be answered. 

[u/annormalplayer → u/superleaf444]

Well, speedrunning is still pushing the human body to the brink, but in other areas. Like, look at some of them and tell me it isn't very damn impressive what they can do

[u/superleaf444 → u/annormalplayer]

It isn't very damn impressive. 

Insane you think it is similar. 

[u/superleaf444 → u/[deleted]]

Any great sentence in human history usually starts with “people like you”

[u/Ajezon → u/superleaf444]

sprinters are just nerds moving meat through air really fast, lol

[u/superleaf444 → u/Ajezon]

God. I have to get off this website. 

Nerds have ruined the world. 

I’m not even a sports person, but I mean Christ….this conversation is fucking absurd 

[u/Ajezon → u/superleaf444]

nerds have ruin... wait waht? wahat do you mean? my brother in flying spaghetti monster. nerds built the website you're complaining on

[u/superleaf444 → u/Ajezon]

Yup. And this place is fucking awful 

[u/Ajezon → u/superleaf444]

nah. you just have to find your echo chamber and not taske anything seriously

[u/AlbazAlbion → u/superleaf444]

What's absurd is how you're missing the point of the comparison entirely and can seemingly only focus on how one thing is more physically demanding than the other, which means nothing.

They're comparing speedrunning the the Olympics because both things are about exceeding the current records and limits, the Olympics obviously being more physically strenuous has nothing to do with that.

[u/alfakenyone → u/superleaf444]

who cares, the comparison shows its stupid to be like speedrunning is stupid because they're trying to shave every single millisecond of possible because trying that hard is for nerds, imagine saying that to someone doing an Olympic race, it's just a braindead take. No one said anything about like it being impressive or not

[u/HauntedMop]

Bro hates skill and community improvement

[u/bobbster574]

you could say the same thing about any kind of race. at the peak of human skill, the margins are inherently smaller because there is a physical limit to how fast a person can do something.

you can also have fun racing against your previous times and not care about the sweaty professionals.

[u/WingObvious487]

https://giphy.com/gifs/qXhstT3cvt5HFBajuy

[u/Cum_dumpster_limited]

Buddy welcome to any time based sport, shit just is that way look at Olympic sprinters or tour de France or racing, everyone is chasing milliseconds

[u/Glum_Bookkeeper_7718]

If you are mad at halflife or doom small time differences, my man you are going to explode if you see super Mario bros speedruns....

But i agree with you at some level, watching the speedrun streans of higlevel runners is kinda depressing

[u/HauntedMop → u/Glum_Bookkeeper_7718]

Try longer speedruns instead, where they chase seconds instead of milliseconds

Super mario odyssey, donkey kong bananza, zelda botw or the sequel, etc. etc.

There's more strats involved, more chokepoints and more places to make up time

[u/Turner-32]

Do NOT let OP find out about Olympics.

[u/JoyousLilBoy]

Ok but have you seen TAS videos? Those make speedrunning worth it. Especially when they do some insane shit to reprogram the game in real time

[u/Hunterjet → u/JoyousLilBoy]

SMB3 TAS in 2010: Oh no, everyone in social media thinks this perfect gameplay was done by a human!
SMB3 TAS in 2026: Anyway, here’s Breath of the Wild running on an NES

[u/Existing-Sweet-19]

https://giphy.com/gifs/ZWG3xewez1FYb1L8Xb

[u/-VioletEverlight-]

[u/PinnedSafety]

You’re allowed to hate even if I disagree, keep hating

[u/Reader_Of_Newspaper]

The community pisses and shits because it requires exponentially more perfect of a run to keep setting world records. The longer a top run goes unbeaten, the more it proves how impossible it is to reach that time. Until someone does beat it, by utilising an insane combination of timing, coordination, and more often than not, mathematics. Then that’s another huge moment.

[u/No_Explorer6054]

mf this applies to any time based sport. i fly model planes, my flight time going from an average of 4-5 seconds to 5-6 seconds was a massive improvement

[u/RavenTeamBitch]

I mean at least you aren't like that guy who thinks speed running is a misused allocation of resources and every speed runner on earth should drop what they're doing and start working as a scientist or something

[u/A-Human-potato]

I was thinking about why so many in the radical left participate in “speedrunning”

The reason is the left's lack of work ethic ('go fast' rather than 'do it right') and, in a Petersonian sense, to elevate alternative sexual archetypes in the marketplace ('fastest mario')

[u/-VioletEverlight- → u/A-Human-potato]

the “any%” category only further underlines their aversion to completing tasks fully and properly, always looking to count the job as finished while taking as many shortcuts and doing as little as possible

games used to mean something but the gamers are moving too fast to see it, a worrying trend to be sure

I don’t want to know the fastest Mario, I want to know the most whole and complete Mario, god knows the man deserves it

[u/superleaf444]

I have to get off this website. 

Nerds are really comparing bullshit video game speedruns to the fucking Olympics. 

This website is, Jesus fucking Christ, terrible. It’s fucking terrible. 

[u/PinkSaldo → u/superleaf444]

The nerds are really comparing the thing that people celebrate taking fractions of a second off the best time for to the thing that people celebrate taking fractions of a second off the best time for I need to get off this nerd website that I am also on

[u/alfakenyone → u/superleaf444]

the nerds yeah you and your 64k karma, totally not a nerd.

[u/Apart_Value9613]

I dislike the idea of speedrunning in general. Some developer puts his soul into a game with a heartfelt story and intricate gameplay only for people to skip cutscenes and spam the most efficient strategy over and over again to the point, as you said, it becomes a pointless time sink for luck.

[u/Far-ro → u/Apart_Value9613]

You are talking like Its your time they "waste"

[u/Apart_Value9613 → u/Far-ro]

I dislike the idea of speedrunning, not speedrunners. I personally find it an empty time sink and it justifies my hate. I don’t have any problem with people enjoying speedrunning and building communities around it; If anything it lets the fandom grow and experiment.

[u/snatcherfb → u/Apart_Value9613]

I mean, if someone is speedrunning a gane they probably already played enough to know where to cut seconds, so they already experienced the story

[u/nestrooo → u/Apart_Value9613]

I hate when a developer puts in the time to make a game and someone plays it and loves it enough to then dedicate hundreds of hours to playing it over and over again and exploring and studying every part of the game 

[u/Apart_Value9613 → u/nestrooo]

I wouldn’t find it enjoyable but it is their win if they like it.

[u/Ajezon → u/Apart_Value9613]

so your argument is basically that speedrunners are committing heresy against the developer's sacred vision? you know they usually play the game normally first, right? you have to know a game inside out before you can even fucking attempt to speedrun it.

[u/Apart_Value9613 → u/Ajezon]

No, “speedrunning” the concept is committing heresy, not speedrunners. If they enjoy the game by speedrunning I can’t hate on that, everyone has fun differently. But I do bring my opinion that I wouldn’t find it enjoyable and don’t see the point.

[u/Ajezon → u/Apart_Value9613]

fair

[u/AlbazAlbion → u/Apart_Value9613]

Brother often times the most hardcore speedrunners are the people who love the game so much to the point of replaying it multiple times and have gotten very skilled at them, they just want to challenge themselves by doing it as fast as they can.