So You Want to be a Speedrunner- A Convention Panel

2010-08-08 11:44:10 am

Talk to the Hand

Hey everyone,

I'm going to be giving a panel titled "So You Want to be a Speedrunner: A Leisurely Guide to Playing Video Games in a Frantic Manner" at a small convention called Gobble-con. This is pretty exciting stuff for me--while there have been other speedrunning panels before (Heck, SDA has done a few), I'm pretty sure this is the first panel to actually delve into the process of making a speedrun, from deciding your end goal (Yes, this is even more important than game choice, for reasons I'll go into at the panel itself), to what to do with your run once you've gotten one recorded.

As I mentioned above, the panel is at Gobble-con in Milford, CT, which takes place from November 19-21 at the Hilton Garden Inn. I don't know how many people here on SDA are in the Connecticut area besides me, but it would be awesome to see some of you there! Just a note that it's a small, anime-centered convention. The other note is that, being as this is more of a how-to panel, while I'll make sure to mention SDA in the presentation, it won't be the focus as it has been in other panels.

And now, feel free to point and laugh at the concept of "Emptyeye, Public Speaker". Smiley

Thread title:

Hey everyone,

I'm going to be giving a panel titled "So You Want to be a Speedrunner: A Leisurely Guide to Playing Video Games in a Frantic Manner" at a small convention called [url=http://www.gobble-con.org/index.php]Gobble-con[/url]. This is pretty exciting stuff for me--while there have been other speedrunning panels before (Heck, SDA has done a few), I'm pretty sure this is the first panel to actually delve into the process of making a speedrun, from deciding your end goal (Yes, this is even more important than game choice, for reasons I'll go into at the panel itself), to what to do with your run once you've gotten one recorded.

As I mentioned above, the panel is at Gobble-con in Milford, CT, which takes place from November 19-21 at the Hilton Garden Inn. I don't know how many people here on SDA are in the Connecticut area besides me, but it would be awesome to see some of you there! Just a note that it's a small, anime-centered convention. The other note is that, being as this is more of a how-to panel, while I'll make sure to mention SDA in the presentation, it won't be the focus as it has been in other panels.

And now, feel free to point and laugh at the concept of "Emptyeye, Public Speaker". :)

dballin

2010-08-08 12:21:14 pm

Balls jerky

lol Milford

tjp7154

2010-08-08 02:14:36 pm

#Casual

I hope you have success, and I'm sure you've thought of this, but:

If it's a (1) small (2) anime convention, then do you think the work you'll put into it will be worth it?

mikwuyma

2010-08-08 04:27:51 pm

My feelings on The Demon Rush

Quote from Emptyeye:

And now, feel free to point and laugh at the concept of "Emptyeye, Public Speaker". Smiley

How could I? The entire hotel will hear you!

Seriously though, you've proven yourself as a very good speaker at the marathon, so I'm sure you'll do fine.

InsipidMuckyWater

2010-08-08 06:10:09 pm

Visit my profile to see my runs!

I don't mean to hijack (you'll see that this post is not worth starting a new thread, in a moment), but I just wanted to mention that the Tetris World Championship is being held today in Los Angeles. I won a small Goldeneye tournament out here not too long ago, and I happened to speak to the film crew which is making the documentary about the game and this tournament. I told one of them that I would mention the Championship on SDA ...

It's already 5:00pm here on the day of the tournament, though, so uh ... whoopsies. Oh, that silly memory of mine. Welp, if any of you are in the immediate vicinity and have access to a car, head over there and represent!!!

There. Though that may have been the most half-assed thing I've ever done. I apologize to you all for having to see that.

[/off-topic post for August, 2010]

Rakuen

2010-08-08 11:16:50 pm

Weegee Time

Quote from tjp7154:

I hope you have success, and I'm sure you've thought of this, but:

If it's a (1) small (2) anime convention, then do you think the work you'll put into it will be worth it?

There's a nice thing about panels. Once you've made them, all you have to do is keep the documentation. You can run the panel again, and all the work is already done except for a little bit of tweaking. There's no real reason not to debut a panel at a smaller con, if anything, you get more direct feedback from a small group of people than a large one.

Emptyeye

2010-08-09 05:33:21 pm

Talk to the Hand

Well, thanks for the support everyone!

dballin: What's wrong with Milford?! It's got Smiles (Formerly the Milford Amusement Center), and..this convention, and....oh! It was also the inspiration behind the Milford in long-running newspaper comic strip Gil Thorp!

...okay, I see what you mean.

tjp: Yes. Rakuen beat me to the reasons why, but to elaborate a bit: I don't want this first time presenting the panel to also be the last time. If you read my website *points to sig*, in the massive Connecticon 2010 post (Specifically, in the Sunday section of it), I mentioned that this panel is something I had thought about doing, possibly at Connecticon (Which is much bigger than Gobble-con, and more of a general "Geek Convention", covering anime, video games, tabletop gaming, etc). Well, also on Sunday, I went to a "How to Run a Panel" panel, where, besides what I talked about in the post, I learned another couple things:

1. Large conventions (Connecticon had about 8000 people all told this year) are more likely to give panel space to people with experience running panels. This makes sense. Smaller cons are, in general, more open to first-timers (And it's probably a good idea to try and debut at a smaller con if for no other reason than that way, if you bomb, you're only doing so in front of a fraction of the audience you could have).
2. Conventions generally stay in contact with one another.

So at least for this presentation, the payoff for me is mainly going to be learning about the process of putting the panel together, rehearsing, etc. and then actually getting some experience running the panel, doing the whole public speaking thing, and so on. Then, hopefully, I can approach a bigger convention (Like Connecticon) and go "Hey, I'd like to run this panel, I did it at Gobble-con and got a positive response." and when that convention's administration checks with that of Gobble-con, they hear "Oh yeah, he really knocked that out of the park, you should definitely give him a panel."

In any event, if you're interested in what I've been doing to get this thing together, I've been making daily posts on my site about it, which should continue for the next few days.

Well, thanks for the support everyone!

dballin: What's wrong with Milford?! It's got Smiles (Formerly the Milford Amusement Center), and..this convention, and....oh! It was also the inspiration behind the Milford in long-running newspaper comic strip [url=http://www.gocomics.com/gilthorp/]Gil Thorp[/url]!

...okay, I see what you mean.

tjp: Yes. Rakuen beat me to the reasons why, but to elaborate a bit: I don't want this first time presenting the panel to also be the last time. If you read my website *points to sig*, in the massive [url=http://emptyeye.com/2010/07/14/connecticon-2010-the-inmates-run-the-asylum/#Sunday]Connecticon 2010 post[/url] (Specifically, in the Sunday section of it), I mentioned that this panel is something I had thought about doing, possibly at Connecticon (Which is much bigger than Gobble-con, and more of a general "Geek Convention", covering anime, video games, tabletop gaming, etc). Well, also on Sunday, I went to a "How to Run a Panel" panel, where, besides what I talked about in the post, I learned another couple things:

1. Large conventions (Connecticon had about 8000 people all told this year) are more likely to give panel space to people with experience running panels. This makes sense. Smaller cons are, in general, more open to first-timers (And it's probably a good idea to try and debut at a smaller con if for no other reason than that way, if you bomb, you're only doing so in front of a fraction of the audience you could have).
2. Conventions generally stay in contact with one another.

So at least for this presentation, the payoff for me is mainly going to be learning about the process of putting the panel together, rehearsing, etc. and then actually getting some experience running the panel, doing the whole public speaking thing, and so on. Then, hopefully, I can approach a bigger convention (Like Connecticon) and go "Hey, I'd like to run this panel, I did it at Gobble-con and got a positive response." and when that convention's administration checks with that of Gobble-con, they hear "Oh yeah, he really knocked that out of the park, you should definitely give him a panel."

In any event, if you're interested in what I've been doing to get this thing together, I've been making daily posts on [url=http://emptyeye.com/]my site[/url] about it, which should continue for the next few days.

tjp7154

2010-08-09 07:28:21 pm

#Casual

Good explanation, Emptyeye. In that case, go to it! It would definitely be a necessary step for exposing speedrunning to a wider audience..

dballin

2010-08-10 09:43:10 pm

Balls jerky

Hey man... don't forget Subway headquarters is in Milford! You're also in my backyard at this con. I mean check out this awesome mapquest I just did to find out how to get there if I left after work on Friday!!

1. Start out going NORTHWEST on WOODMONT RD toward RESEARCH DR. 0.3 mi Map | Avoid
2. Turn LEFT onto OLD GATE LN. 0.4 mi Map | Avoid
3. 291 OLD GATE LN is on the LEFT.

So close I could touch ya

Emptyeye

2010-08-14 07:12:25 am

Talk to the Hand

Hah, that's awesome. I remembered you were somewhere in Connecticut, but didn't remember exactly where. You're, um, pretty close. It'd be cool to meet the guy who had to donate $3XX to the marathon after I beat Teenage Mutant Acid Turtles. Tongue

Emptyeye

2010-11-14 08:05:32 pm

Talk to the Hand

Wow, I posted this 3+ months ago?

Anyway, the panel is this week. I finally got my scheduled time--it's this Saturday at 9AM. Not really a great slot, although at least I'm likely not competing with much of anything big the convention has to offer (Or as big as a tiny convention like this gets, anyway). The tiny viewership is probably good for my nerves anyway, heh.

Pootrain

2010-11-14 08:06:39 pm

train kept rollin

good luck, try and get it filmed!

Emptyeye

2010-11-14 08:08:39 pm

Talk to the Hand

Well thanks. And I'll see what I can do...worse comes to worst, I can film it on my digital camera that also takes videos. Quality wouldn't be great (Probably tiny window, one angle), but it'd be better than nothing anyway. Then people from the convention may be filming excerpts from it as well.

sinister1

2010-11-16 07:57:50 am

sinister1

so pro u don't even know

good luck Emptyeye!

Can't wait to hear/see how it went.

dballin

2010-11-17 01:52:32 am

Balls jerky

yeah 9am on saturday is booze induced sleepy time. im gonna miss this fo sho

Emptyeye

2010-11-21 08:39:52 am

Talk to the Hand

I hope you won't mind if I totally ganked the phrase "Booze-induced sleepytime" to describe my timeslot for this. Cheesy

Anyway, it's done now. And instead of focusing on the stuff that wasn't really in my control (The fact that the air conditioner hadn't been adjusted from the previous night's Totally-Not-a-Rave-Informal-Dance and thus the room was at a frosty 62 degrees for the first part of the panel; the sparse attendance thanks partly to the timeslot and partly due to registration moving slowly [Apparently the con exceeded its attendance projections]; the very in-character Naruto that walked in and out midway through), I'll just say this.

Clearly, whatever feedback Don (The guy running the convention) got was positive, because last night I was talking to him about the convention in general and he basically told me "As far as I'm concerned, if we run a second one of these, you've already got a panel spot if you want it." Cheesy

Pootrain

2010-11-21 10:23:48 am

train kept rollin

Nice one dude. now wheres that video?

dballin

Edit history:

dballin: 2010-11-21 06:31:44 pm

2010-11-21 06:28:45 pm

Balls jerky

Quote from Emptyeye:

I hope you won't mind if I totally ganked the phrase "Booze-induced sleepytime" to describe my timeslot for this. Cheesy

I'm telling you... Saturday doesn't have a 9 am as far as I'm concerned.

Of course sleeping in this saturday had less to do with booze and more to do with a 10:15 showing of The Next 3 Days because Harry Potter was showing on 5 or 6 screens leaving every other movie with only one.

Emptyeye

2011-01-23 07:54:34 pm

Talk to the Hand

Bumping this after two months because, by sheer chance, I ran into the person who taped this panel at MAGFest, and he informed me it was up on Youtube. Sure enough, this will take you to all five parts. Smiley

Now you can all see how UN-natural public speaking/marathon commentating actually is to me.

dballin

2011-01-23 08:17:45 pm

Balls jerky

Is that a cape I see??? and I never thought I'd say this, but I can barely hear you haha

sinister1

2011-01-27 04:36:56 pm

sinister1

so pro u don't even know

Nicely done Emptyeye!! I thoroughly enjoyed your presentation, especially the part about DD II Wink

I think the presentation was very informative and you are a good public speaker despite what you said ^^. Hopefully you can do another presentation at MAGFest next year where you can probably get a much larger audience.

p.s. The Chuck Rock joke made me lol Grin

Eisenefaust

2011-01-27 05:50:25 pm

SS Any% FF2 GBA

Good stuff Emptyeye. I found your presentation very informative and helpful. Specially considering I'm undertaking my first speedrun currently. After watching your presentation and seeing Rygar in your list, you should run Rygar (PS2) haha!

tjp7154

2011-01-27 06:24:50 pm

#Casual

Pretty good presentation, MTI. It seems that your audience really only connected to the entertainment value of watching speedruns of games familiar to them. I think it would be valuable in future presentations to summarize your own personal experiences with speedrunning a game you actually submitted.

I am with sinister1 -- It'd be cool to have a panel at next Magfest.

ZenicReverie

2011-01-27 06:49:48 pm

Waiting hurts my soul...

Sit them down with a game and make them run something, or run something yourself? Maybe you could get them interested in following along with a speedrunning project? For the last 10 - 15 minutes, talk about starting a new project and how they can follow along, or maybe not.

Good job! I look forward to more.

MatrixTN

2011-01-28 09:27:03 am

You got a deletion wish?

Why was the audio ahead in the FZX & DD2 clips? Other than that, loved it.