I take it you're laying the foundations for an eventual plea of insantiy for something you did on that day? Is it, in fact, for the very front page update in question?
Please if you're going to write these long updates, put a list of the games and times at the end or something.
I agree, some people may enjoy these posts and that's fine, but not everyone enjoys sifting through the long posts for the basic information they want.
I don't know, I actually skipped through the update because none of the games sounded even remotely familiar. Only by accident I discovered the real names. I'm really not one to dismiss the chance for a good laugh or creativity, but it still seemed misleading to me
I propose renaming the ants 'Iffy Nasal Ant' because it sounds less misunderstandable than what was written. I can totally understand Edenal with that one. Other than that, the update's great.
Not that I have any problem with having a sense of humor or fun, but can't the updates have better taglines with some input from the runners? I mean, as opposed to the updaters bullshitting random stuff about a game they've probably never played or don't even really like? I recognize that you guys put a lot of time into this, and I'm grateful and all that SDA still gets updates, but it's quite frankly kind-of annoying and it REALLY hurts the presentation of the site updates... Especially for the people who are trying to make game-related content professionally.
When I look at every Resident Evil run that got posted on SDA in the last year, I've seen it's always been by an updater who doesn't appreciate the games or the runs. ShadowWraith cares more about PC speedruns (afaik) and LLCoolDave even told me in person during an AGDQ that it looks like "just running through hallways" to him. Now that I realize how apathetic it is, it actually kinda makes me mad. There is actually a lot of thought, routing, enemy mechanic knowledge, and subtle movement tricks that you wouldn't understand without some kind of commentary, and him not understanding this is very obvious and leaks into his RE posts on the SDA frontpage.
When he posted about Final Fantasy VI and X-2 this last post, LLCoolDave blatantly gives his opinion saying "the series took a downhill turn after IV" and criticizes the game that he is posting, (which is something you don't do) and immediately deprecates the run that he is posting when he's supposed to be generating hype for it. There is complete disregard for the amount of time and effort that LCC put into that run, and honestly feels like a gigantic apathetic "fuck you" to not only LCC but to the people who like that game too.
When I read half of these updates, it makes me want to watch videos even less. The reason people want to send in videos to SDA in the first place is because they want to make a high-quality product. If they didn't and just cared about the baseline competition instead of making videos that entertain and inform the audience, then they could just stream, make Twitch VODs, or just upload it to youtube and call it a day.
Outside of the fact that the site is so slow, the attitude that some of these updaters have toward the games/runs is terrible, and I can see why none of the runners who speedrun professionally want to submit runs to SDA anymore.
Could always ask the updaters to let thematic updates take a break.
I doubt we could find an updater that cares passionately for every game or have even played most games out there though. In fact, with the only two recently active updaters that we have, chances that they haven't played a game they need to write an update for is probably over 80%. The same goes for writing game page intros. Only about 1% of the people who submit a run for a new game make use of the privilege to provide a game page intro as well. And these are the people who by now surely would know the game really well. Instead, updaters will oftentimes have to write intros for games they haven't played and have to resort to either a wikipedia blurb copy, or something funny.
Updaters are given a creative freedom when it comes to the posting of the runs. If they want to express their feelings regarding a certain game while writing an update, then that's within their creative sphere. However, updaters never criticize a run nor a runner. Even if an updater doesn't happen to have very passionate feelings towards a game he or she are updating with, it doesn't mean that they disrespect the speed run itself. I don't know what else to say, I mean we can't force them to be passionate about Resident Evil games if they are not. And even if we could make them write a certain way, I'm sure people would just start taking it sarcastically instead and nothing would have been gained anyways.
Maybe we just need to enlist a regular updater who happens to enjoy games from spheres not in common with the current ones as well. Widen the generation spread.