Speedrunner Roundtable July 10 at 9 PM EDT [locked]

2013-07-05 02:44:43 pm

Moo! Flap! Hug!

Quote from mikwuyma:

I think a better solution for that are marathons like C4L, which have a theme focus that has games that wouldn't be in your typical GDQ. If there's a game that's unexpected success there, maybe it can be in a GDQ.

When you think about it, though, were there any games at C4L 2013 that would have been a poor fit at a GDQ? (Especially SGDQ, which was originally intent on letting people participate with games that might not have made AGDQ -- but, I'm not sure that's the case anymore?)

mikwuyma

2013-07-05 02:48:15 pm

My feelings on The Demon Rush

I don't have the schedule on me right now, but FFXII would be a poor GDQ fit. Quite long, not a lot of donation incentives, and it's not a very well-liked game in the series.

Poxnor

2013-07-05 02:49:31 pm

Moo! Flap! Hug!

Okay, fair enough. FFX might be my next choice (length and lack of incentives). But other than that, I think most could have made perfectly good GDQ games (many of them have, in fact).

gammadragon

2013-07-05 05:36:17 pm

Might be magic...

It's been said before but we should say it again.

There is a very vocal minority of the speedrunning community which may have some quite relevant points of discussion. However, sometimes people can be less than tactful about raising them. I hope that the SDA staff does not get discouraged by this as 99% of people think they are doing a great job (for little or no reimbursement).

Please keep up the good work guys.

Poxnor

2013-07-05 06:02:38 pm

Moo! Flap! Hug!

Definitely keep up the good work Smiley

There is one question that I (personally) feel could use some discussion; and, since we've been invited to do so, I'd like to raise it here. Namely: what, if anything, is the plan for SGDQ going forward? Originally, it was seen as the "little brother" to AGDQ, where "less-popular" games could have a chance (with sometimes surprisingly positive results -- FF8, as a selfish example). Is SGDQ going to become a second AGDQ? Or are there still plans to try to try to give more gamers screen-time? Or will that become the job of community marathons? Basically, to what extent is SGDQ looking to become a second AGDQ?

Thanks Smiley

AlecK47

Edit history:

AlecK47: 2013-07-05 06:38:33 pm

AlecK47: 2013-07-05 06:37:54 pm

2013-07-05 06:23:57 pm

Regarding FF12, yes it is a terrible fit for a GDQ, and I'm quite biased in its favor (as one of the runners at C4L). And X really isn't all that much better for a marathon, hence both games landing on the graveyard shift.

As for AGDQ vs. SGDQ, there of course have to be some popular (if not in the speedrunning community, then at least in the gaming community) games at each marathon. They drive donations and bring in viewers who often end up checking out other runs and donating during them. Quantifying how popular a game is - through sales numbers, stream viewer counts or whatever - could open a real can of worms, so I think being more general in that sense is a good thing. That said, because AGDQ has always been in the DC area, and SGDQ is in the west, I see it being as much a geographical difference as anything else. What I mean by that is it's much easier to attend a marathon closer to home, and going too far in making either marathon focus on more or less "popular" games could be a big problem for runners whose games wouldn't fit into the geographically nearer marathon.

Regarding FF12, yes it is a terrible fit for a GDQ, and I'm quite biased in its favor (as one of the runners at C4L).  And X really isn't all that much better for a marathon, hence both games landing on the graveyard shift.

As for AGDQ vs. SGDQ, there of course have to be some popular (if not in the speedrunning community, then at least in the gaming community) games at each marathon.  They drive donations and bring in viewers who often end up checking out other runs and donating during them.  Quantifying how popular a game is - through sales numbers, stream viewer counts or whatever - could open a real can of worms, so I think being more general in that sense is a good thing.  That said, because AGDQ has always been in the DC area, and SGDQ is in the west, I see it being as much a geographical difference as anything else.  What I mean by that is it's much easier to attend a marathon closer to home, and going too far in making either marathon focus on more or less "popular" games could be a big problem for runners whose games wouldn't fit into the geographically nearer marathon.

Alko

2013-07-05 06:29:45 pm

Caution: This user contains Kana ^_^

If I may expand on Poxnor's question: Assuming that ESA continues to happen anually, what place might it get in the future? Is there a possibility of 'promoting' it from community marathon to SDA marathon? I really like this year's idea of placing it exactly in the week next to SGDQ with a combined charity and stuff …
And as AlecK said, it's really also a geography thing. Most Europeans have a hard time getting to any place in North America hence why we organised ESA12 last year. None of us want to take anything away from SGDQ, we just wanted to add something closer to our home.
Do please note that I'm nowhere near the first line of ESA organisers and only get pinpointed insight into the grand idea behind everything.

Quote from gammadragon:

99% of people think they are doing a great job (for little or no reimbursement).

Please keep up the good work guys.

This cannot be said often enough.

Rakuen

Edit history:

Rakuen: 2013-07-05 08:31:42 pm

2013-07-05 08:30:10 pm

Weegee Time

I think we'd love to allow everyone who can to participate, but there's only a finite amount of time you can have for an event. Is it possible we might see the number of races increasing in the future? I know they can be a pain in the ass to setup, but they do allow more participation without costing much time and can make for some pretty entertaining runs.

Also, a potentially controversial and possibly difficult implementation: betting pools for races. Have a static buy in of x amount of dollars. Whichever runner wins, the people who wagered on him/her get to split up the pot for donation incentives. I imagine there's probably more drawbacks than benefits, but I figured I might as well throw the idea out there. I suppose the thrust of this is to get users more involved in the event and the runs, especially runs they might not normally watch.

ZenicReverie

2013-07-05 08:33:01 pm

Waiting hurts my soul...

Quote from Rakuen:

I think we'd love to allow everyone who can to participate, but there's only a finite amount of time you can have for an event. Is it possible we might see the number of races increasing in the future? I know they can be a pain in the ass to setup, but they do allow more participation without costing much time and can make for some pretty entertaining runs.

Also, a potentially controversial and possibly difficult implementation: betting pools for races. Have a static buy in of x amount of dollars. Whichever runner wins, the people who wagered on him/her get to split up the pot for donation incentives. I imagine there's probably more drawbacks than benefits, but I figured I might as well throw the idea out there.

Best to keep that stuff between friends. Strictly speaking that's obviously gambling and illegal in most cases without certain permits.

Rakuen

2013-07-05 08:35:00 pm

Weegee Time

Fair enough, Zenic. Smiley

Cool Matty

2013-07-05 08:36:46 pm

Crawlathon WR, get down on my level.

Quote from Rakuen:

I think we'd love to allow everyone who can to participate, but there's only a finite amount of time you can have for an event. Is it possible we might see the number of races increasing in the future? I know they can be a pain in the ass to setup, but they do allow more participation without costing much time and can make for some pretty entertaining runs.

IIRC, the number one reason races aren't more common is they have a tendency to be blowouts. It's not entertaining when 1 person is way, way ahead of the others.

Poxnor

2013-07-05 08:38:51 pm

Moo! Flap! Hug!

The logistical nightmare would be coordinating how the winning donors split the pool among incentives. A variant on the idea would be "winning runner's choice" on how to apply the pool. I'm not a lawyer, but I'd suspect that would skirt both the legal and logistical problems.

But yeah, longer games especially are harder to race. I think that amazing KH2 race was the exception, not the rule.

Rakuen

2013-07-05 08:40:25 pm

Weegee Time

Quote from Poxnor:

The logistical nightmare would be coordinating how the winning donors split the pool among incentives. A variant on the idea would be "winning runner's choice" on how to apply the pool. I'm not a lawyer, but I'd suspect that would skirt both the legal and logistical problems.

Actually, that would be pretty cool, especially considering how many donations we seem to get for "runner's choice".

AlecK47

2013-07-05 08:41:14 pm

Then again there are some who would gladly enter a race even though they know they will probably get their butt kicked. I'd at least consider racing Sonic 2, even against a top tier runner who would probably beat me by at least a minute real time, if not more. The viewing experience has to be considered too, and that's where the real rub is, imo.

Also, winning runner's choice is a really good idea.

ZenicReverie

2013-07-05 08:48:29 pm

Waiting hurts my soul...

Not sure if I'll make the live event, but there are a couple of topics I'd like to hear an open discussion about:

Along the same lines as allowing DOS emulation, I'd like to see the the same question answered for MAME (arcade games), Amiga, Apple II, Atari, and other hard to find hardware.

Last, I'm probably in the minority, but I'd like to see SDA open game acceptance to include sh'mups and similar auto scrolling games so long as the entire game isn't on a big timer (such as rhythm matching games). We already have a few games that toe the line, and that line seems arbitrary to me. Ultimately throwing out the entire genre because there's only a perceived minor improvement gap keeps competition on these type of games to a minimum.

presjpolk

2013-07-05 09:03:35 pm

HELLO!

With DOS, there *is* no standard hardware.

Hard to find hardware is an entirely different matter I think. The two should be distinguished.

ShadowWraith

2013-07-05 09:07:12 pm

.

Why draw the line at hard to find consoles? Why not include hard to find games? ;p

ZenicReverie

Edit history:

ZenicReverie: 2013-07-05 11:22:57 pm

2013-07-05 11:16:27 pm

Waiting hurts my soul...

Hard to assemble then. I wasn't suggesting replacing complete consoles.

z1mb0bw4y

2013-07-05 11:47:45 pm

Gets the cake.

As a specific example of PC games being updated, me and the other sourceruns guys have had to pause a portal inbounds run (and almost had to pause a HL2 run) to try to figure a way around those games being updated to Steampipe, Valve's new data storage format. With that update came an engine change that rendered demos unplayable, so we literally HAVE to roll back our game to the older version. However, there's no legitimate way to do so, so what we're basically doing is creating a steamless unpack of portal and distributing the full game via torrent to the other runners.

Understandably, this kind of thing is REALLY sketchy. We're not sure what the ruling there is going to be, but we're going to finish the run on the "cracked" version regardless.

PS Back up all your steam games, or at least the ones you might ever care about speedrunning. You can have steam automatically turn the files into DVD sized chunks, so storage is pretty simple. That said, even if you back them up it can be difficult to get them running again (like it has been with portal)

As a specific example of PC games being updated, me and the other sourceruns guys have had to pause a portal inbounds run (and almost had to pause a HL2 run) to try to figure a way around those games being updated to Steampipe, Valve's new data storage format. With that update came an engine change that rendered demos unplayable, so we literally HAVE to roll back our game to the older version. However, there's no legitimate way to do so, so what we're basically doing is creating a steamless unpack of portal and distributing the full game via torrent to the other runners.

Understandably, this kind of thing is REALLY sketchy. We're not sure what the ruling there is going to be, but we're going to finish the run on the "cracked" version regardless.

PS Back up all your steam games, or at least the ones you might ever care about speedrunning. You can have steam automatically turn the files into DVD sized chunks, so storage is pretty simple. That said, even if you back them up it can be difficult to get them running again (like it has been with portal)

Naegleria

(user is banned)

2013-07-06 04:25:35 am

I'd argue Uyama loves side scrollers way too much, and beat em ups. But honestly, thats probably me hating side scrollers and beat em ups talking there. I see his "favoritism" only in decisions for games I dislike, perhaps if we all removed a few sticks from our rears we could realise the same thing.

Onin

2013-07-06 06:39:34 am

Here's another question:

When I browse for runs to watch on SDA, I only end up watching runs that have a working embedded video. I hardly ever bother downloading anything, it's just much less convenient. This means that I generally just gloss over runs without an embedded video and never end up watching them, which is a bit of a shame.

And really, in general the convenience of just watching a run is a lot lower than it could be. So, are there any plans to improve that convenience, even if it's as "simple" as (eventually) adding that embedded video to every run on the site (preferably on the game page)?

nate

2013-07-06 08:41:07 am

yeah, very good point. i'll go ahead and do that once we have the runs in the database. that will make it easy for me to see which need an mq mp4 encoded from their highest quality avi (the prerequisite for embedded playback) and also to actually deploy the players (since speeddemosarchive.com/*.html is 100% static right now). in the past i've just done mass find/replace with perl one-liners but from my perspective dynamic game pages (at least for new content) are close enough now that i'm not going to spend any more time maintaining the static pages.

tl;dr: every run on the site will get embedded playback.

Kiyura

2013-07-06 09:29:59 am

Wiiaboo

Quote from Naegleria:

I'd argue Uyama loves side scrollers way too much, and beat em ups. But honestly, thats probably me hating side scrollers and beat em ups talking there. I see his "favoritism" only in decisions for games I dislike, perhaps if we all removed a few sticks from our rears we could realise the same thing.

Personally I think the schedules have been pretty well balanced in the past (though slanted a little too much towards older games - maybe that's just indicative of SDA/SRL tastes as a whole), but if people see this as a problem maybe one way to mitigate it would be for Mike to be a little more transparent about exactly how he deems games popular each time around (the metrics, chat response, donation incentives, whatever).

mikwuyma

Edit history:

mikwuyma: 2013-07-06 02:56:24 pm

2013-07-06 02:55:34 pm

My feelings on The Demon Rush

Just an update: Cosmo is on-board and he is going to talk about his speedrunning leaderboards during the roundtable.

SGDQ and AGDQ: I've talked about this a bit with Romscout since he's now the SGDQ organizer. He'll provide a more detailed answer, but I'll answer some of your concerns.

There are a bunch of less popular games being run at this SGDQ. Some examples are Nier, Vice Project Doom, Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath, Super House of Dead Ninjas, and Wario World (it's Nintendo, but not one of their more popular games).

More games screen-time: We have new people running games at every marathon, I don't think this is a concern, unless if I'm misinterpreting your question.

That being said in terms of structure, there's always going to be some similarities because we've moved away from Essentia's house, and keeping the marathons distinct is a question that is going to be hard to answer and will probably require some community input.

GammaDragon: Thanks, I'm glad you appreciate the work we're doing! Sometimes we do need look and see what we can improve though.

Rakuen: To expand a little bit upon what Cool Matty said, it's very hard to find two people who are at a similar skill level for a race. When you have a close race, it's very hype like NG2, if you have a blowout race, like MZM, it's not much fun to watch. Like Aleck47 said, the viewer's experience in this case is very important.

Zenic: I think I'd rather keep the OS/consoles to DOS since that has one of the biggest libraries of games to be potentially run right now.

Shmups and mostly fixed auto-scrollers is a more niche topic that should be discussed on the forums rather than a big roundtable that is going to be streamed among probably thousands of people. We want to discuss topics that are not only relevant to us, but also relevant to speedrunners and our audience as a whole.

RE: Betting Pool: I like Poxnor's idea of letting the race winner choose.

Game balance and selection: This is one of the reasons why I want to start blogging about the marathon, because I'm sure people are curious about decisions like how and why I select the games I do. I will say that it's not really 100% scientific (except how games have performed in the past, I would say), I would say there's more of an art to it.

Kiyura: The older game bias is really a reflection of the speedrunning community as a whole, IMO. Those are the games that are most commonly offered. Another problem is that newer games are longer, so even if the length of the new games are are similar to the old games on the schedule, the number of new games would still be smaller.

Just an update: Cosmo is on-board and he is going to talk about his speedrunning leaderboards during the roundtable.

SGDQ and AGDQ: I've talked about this a bit with Romscout since he's now the SGDQ organizer. He'll provide a more detailed answer, but I'll answer some of your concerns.

There are a bunch of less popular games being run at this SGDQ. Some examples are Nier, Vice Project Doom, Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath, Super House of Dead Ninjas, and Wario World (it's Nintendo, but not one of their more popular games).

More games screen-time: We have new people running games at every marathon, I don't think this is a concern, unless if I'm misinterpreting your question.

That being said in terms of structure, there's always going to be some similarities because we've moved away from Essentia's house, and keeping the marathons distinct is a question that is going to be hard to answer and will probably require some community input.

GammaDragon: Thanks, I'm glad you appreciate the work we're doing! Sometimes we do need look and see what we can improve though.

Rakuen: To expand a little bit upon what Cool Matty said, it's very hard to find two people who are at a similar skill level for a race. When you have a close race, it's very hype like NG2, if you have a blowout race, like MZM, it's not much fun to watch. Like Aleck47 said, the viewer's experience in this case is very important.

Zenic: I think I'd rather keep the OS/consoles to DOS since that has one of the biggest libraries of games to be potentially run right now.

Shmups and mostly fixed auto-scrollers is a more niche topic that should be discussed on the forums rather than a big roundtable that is going to be streamed among probably thousands of people. We want to discuss topics that are not only relevant to us, but also relevant to speedrunners and our audience as a whole.

RE: Betting Pool: I like Poxnor's idea of letting the race winner choose.

Game balance and selection: This is one of the reasons why I want to start blogging about the marathon, because I'm sure people are curious about decisions like how and why I select the games I do. I will say that it's not really 100% scientific (except how games have performed in the past, I would say), I would say there's more of an art to it.

Kiyura: The older game bias is really a reflection of the speedrunning community as a whole, IMO. Those are the games that are most commonly offered. Another problem is that newer games are longer, so even if the length of the new games are are similar to the old games on the schedule, the number of new games would still be smaller.

romscout

Edit history:

romscout: 2013-07-06 03:10:21 pm

2013-07-06 03:09:48 pm

that Metroidvania guy

Something you should keep in mind is that while the final decision for game cuts/schedule is Uyama's, he never does this with zero input. This is something that has been briefly mentioned before but not elaborated on much. The system is more or less a much more informal version of Poxnor's method; in most cases, he consults with a group of no less than 3 other people and the game choices are openly discussed. I can assure you as one of those people that even when he's been dead set on a decision for something, it's been changed plenty of times because of this.

Poxnor's question could very well be one of the main talking points about marathon changes, but I'll give a (somewhat) brief response for now.

Quote from Poxnor:

Basically, to what extent is SGDQ looking to become a second AGDQ?

This is definitely something that will need consideration, and I'd say even needs community input. Some people would say that it has already become mini-AGDQ, simply by being accessible to way more people. I think the people attending and making a presence on the stream define a marathon's "personality" a lot more than the game schedule, though I realize it kinda goes hand in hand since the schedule will affect who attends in some cases. This year, it was coincidentally pretty easy to make the SGDQ schedule distinct from the previous AGDQ because a lot of the people who attended AGDQ offered different/new games that they had not previously run in a marathon. People also withheld games that they knew they wanted to offer for the next AGDQ, so it worked out pretty well. I'm not sure it will always work out that smoothly, but I think a lot of people who attend both marathons don't want to just have "two AGDQs", so there may always be a factor like this combined with scheduling the people who can only attend one or the other.

The main focuses for SGDQ organizing will be dealing with the fact that it is growing every year (the workload for organizing it has consistently been about the same as AGDQ from a full year prior) and continuing to raise funds for a charity of the community's choice. I felt that with the SDA community's ability to make so much money at these events, it was better if we had more causes besides autism and cancer prevention to help out. I intend to keep a similar setup in the coming years for choice of charity unless everyone becomes so attached to one cause that we end up going with the same one multiple times. I realize this is entirely possible, too.

The game schedule is secondary to this stuff, but just keep in mind that we will always be trying to benefit charity, and if 100+ people attend the event, there's no way that everyone could be guaranteed a game. I think expanding the schedule to 120 hours is ok and might lead to a few more people being included, but currently I can't see it becoming a 150 hour event like AGDQ. People shouldn't approach SGDQ game signups along the lines of "I had my game rejected from AGDQ, but I bet it'd make it into SGDQ easily!", but more like "I want to run this game and help raise money for charity, so I will do my best to pitch how it can help the event". I (and many other people) want the SGDQ schedule to remain distinct from the AGDQ schedule, but that's not to say we'll be deliberately avoiding popular games to do so.

Something you should keep in mind is that while the final decision for game cuts/schedule is Uyama's, he never does this with zero input. This is something that has been briefly mentioned before but not elaborated on much. The system is more or less a much more informal version of Poxnor's method; in most cases, he consults with a group of no less than 3 other people and the game choices are openly discussed. I can assure you as one of those people that even when he's been dead set on a decision for something, it's been changed plenty of times because of this.

Poxnor's question could very well be one of the main talking points about marathon changes, but I'll give a (somewhat) brief response for now.

[quote="Poxnor"]Basically, to what extent is SGDQ looking to become a second AGDQ?[/quote]

This is definitely something that will need consideration, and I'd say even needs community input. Some people would say that it has already become mini-AGDQ, simply by being accessible to way more people. I think the people attending and making a presence on the stream define a marathon's "personality" a lot more than the game schedule, though I realize it kinda goes hand in hand since the schedule will affect who attends in some cases. This year, it was coincidentally pretty easy to make the SGDQ schedule distinct from the previous AGDQ because a lot of the people who attended AGDQ offered different/new games that they had not previously run in a marathon. People also withheld games that they knew they wanted to offer for the next AGDQ, so it worked out pretty well. I'm not sure it will always work out that smoothly, but I think a lot of people who attend both marathons don't want to just have "two AGDQs", so there may always be a factor like this combined with scheduling the people who can only attend one or the other.

The main focuses for SGDQ organizing will be dealing with the fact that it is growing every year (the workload for organizing it has consistently been about the same as AGDQ from a full year prior) and continuing to raise funds for a charity of the community's choice. I felt that with the SDA community's ability to make so much money at these events, it was better if we had more causes besides autism and cancer prevention to help out. I intend to keep a similar setup in the coming years for choice of charity unless everyone becomes so attached to one cause that we end up going with the same one multiple times. I realize this is entirely possible, too.

The game schedule is secondary to this stuff, but just keep in mind that we will always be trying to benefit charity, and if 100+ people attend the event, there's no way that everyone could be guaranteed a game. I think expanding the schedule to 120 hours is ok and might lead to a few more people being included, but currently I can't see it becoming a 150 hour event like AGDQ. People shouldn't approach SGDQ game signups along the lines of "I had my game rejected from AGDQ, but I bet it'd make it into SGDQ easily!", but more like "I want to run this game and help raise money for charity, so I will do my best to pitch how it can help the event". I (and many other people) want the SGDQ schedule to remain distinct from the AGDQ schedule, but that's not to say we'll be deliberately avoiding popular games to do so.