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Let's Slowdown and Talk about Speedrunning

The term "speed running" is a fairly self explanatory idea that originates from the more hard core side of the gaming community. Essentially, speed running is the act of completing a game, or parts of a game, in the fastest time possible. Usually these times are shared and compared with other members of the community surrounding a specific game. Speed running will often utilise strange breaks or glitches in a game that allow people to skip certain sections of gameplay, however some people see this as unfair and choose not to play with these exploits. But why do people speed run? Sometimes players fall in love with games and try to find new ways to play them over and over, trying to optimise their every move and slowly mastering every aspect of the game. Others appreciate the design and code that go into games, and use speedrunning as a tool to break them down and study them, such as when gamers discovered some of the fundamental laws of mobility in DOOM (1993) which helped in the further development of games using the Doom Engine in later titles. And some people simply like the adrenaline of racing against a clock.

The current world record speed run for level 1 of DOOM(1993). Done in 8 seconds, the average time for a play was just over 30 seconds. This was completed in late February, 2019.

Designing games for speed running

Sometimes developers want to purposefully give their game a reputation as a game to speed run. When doing this developers deliberately implement certain design elements that we will take a closer look at here. When developing a game for speed running, there are four things you need to consider: pace, punishment, complexity, and consistency. Close consideration of each of these four categories is imperative to producing a product that will immediately gain the reputation of a game that should be speed run.

Pace:

Pace covers a wide variety of aspects within the game and is probably the most important of the three categories. Pace basically covers how fast events might occur within the game, and how much control the player has over time scale. Pace generally falls under scripted actions and mobility actions. Scripted actions are things like cutscenes where the player has to wait for a character to finish talking, or a loading screen that might interrupt gameplay. Limiting the length or frequency of these events or giving players control over duration (particularly with cutscenes) can help to improve a speed running game. In terms of movement, pace is how fast your character moves in relation to the environment. Generally, if your character can move through a room or door at a fast speed or accelerate very quickly, it feels like you can push the player to play for better times. Things that help with this type of pacing are often objects of reference, crates, barrels and other things that you can compare to the character can help to give the player a sense of speed.

Super Meat Boy (2010), a classic speed running game demonstrates a brilliant sense of pacing in both the ability to skip intros and the speed at which the player moves. You don't need to watch all 1h but watch one or two levels.

Punishment:

The more a player gets to play, the more it will feel like a speed run-able game. That's not to say that the games you make shouldn't be difficult. But it all comes down to the punishment that you inflict on your players. For example, in a game like Minecraft, death means the loss of all current equipment and a swift return to the last position where you slept. Speed running becomes much more difficult and frustrating because of the significant loss of time that comes with losing. However, in a game like Cluster Trucks, death means a half-second game over screen and an automatic reset to an area that is probably less than 10 seconds behind where you died, providing less punishment for a mistake. So while Minecraft may be easier than Cluster Trucks, the difference in punishment makes Cluster Trucks better for speed running.

Complexity:

Often, one of the key themes of a speed run game is simplicity. This is in both the art work and gameplay of the product. In terms of the art work, the game is often stripped of all unecessary bells and whistles, leaving only the thematically necessary art in place. This is to help focus players on the single goal of progressing as fast as possible. This change in art work isn't always present, however, and a game can definitely include great art. What is almost always necessary, however, is the removal of most gimmicks and boiling down the game to the absolute essentials, including as few commands and variables as possible. This also extends to level design. Often games with large speed running communities are fairly linear and simplistic in form such as the aforementioned Super Meat Boy or Super Mario Bros.

Consistency:

This section ties fairly close to the previous one, as simplicity often leads to a higher consistency in your games. Still, consistency is very important. No speed runner wants to be going through your game only to encounter a random bug or crash that can result in significant time loss. So games that are intended to be speed run should have a heavy amount of QA (quality assurance) testing and a very dedicated support team to learn about and quickly remove any bugs that crop up.

Super Mario 64 (1996) is well reguarded as one of the most speed run games in history. The game is especially well known for its consistent operating speeds and few game stopping bugs.

To conclude, we should always acknowledge that what really makes the difference in whether people will speed run your games is whether or not they enjoy playing it. There is no doubt that a game could fill none of these four criterion and still become speed run game. Take for example Elderscrolls V: Skyrim. The game is intensely complex, with multiple in-depth systems and an open world that you can explore for hundreds of hours. The game is not consistent, as it has numerous bugs that can result in anything from infinite wealth to flying horses. Loss can lead to hefty punishments with all progress before a predetermined point erased. And the pace is very slow, with a normal human walking speeds and a detailed story that can't be skipped or accelerated. Even with all of this, Skyrim is still run, which just goes to show that in the end, what we developers really need to do is make something fun.


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