The kind optimism of Games Done Quick
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2020-01-16
Last Sunday marked the end of another Awesome Games Done
Quick [1]: a weeklong speedrunning fundraising extravaganza
benefiting charity. I absolutely loved it! If you don't know
GDQ I'll summarize it for you: GDQ is a round the clock 7
day long event streamed on Twitch featuring a cast of great,
funny gamers and commentators celebrating both old and new
games while trying to finish them as quickly as possible. In
the meantime people can donate and there's a number of
sweepstakes and incentives to try to generate as much money
as possible for charity. There's two main versions of GDQ,
with AGDQ in the winter supporting the Prevent Cancer
Foundation and a summer version aptly named Summer Games
Done Quick that helps Médecins Sans Frontières. I have been
watching both AGDQ and SGDQ for years and donate each time.
All nice and great of course, who doesn't love a nice
fundraising event? The thing that strikes me most however is
the unique ambiance of GDQ. Online events can quickly turn
sour and a bit nasty. They are incredibly hard to make nice
and warm, but the speedrunning community is really something
special and paired with the great folks behind GDQ they have
made something truly remarkable. Both the runners, the
commentators on the couch behind them and the announcers on
the mic are very sweet, kind and polite and you can see that
GDQ goes at lengths to try to be as inclusive as possible.
The crowd you see in the back resembles that and so do the
speedrunners. You see a broad slice of geek culture in the
crowd and I adore it.
This year I especially enjoyed Lizstar's run of the horrible
DOS game Mega Man 3: The Robots are Revolting in appalling
but nostalgic CGA colors :-). This was part of the Awful
Games Done Quick block, which is my favorite. This is often
the most hilarious part of the whole marathon, however you
can't help but notice the sincere love many of the
speedrunners in this block feel for these games, how
horrible they may be. I guess playing a game for so many
hours makes you grow fond of it however bad it may be.
Another great run in the awful block was the 3DO survival
horror game Doctor Hauzer. If you're into making games like
me and worry about frame drops, this slideshow of a game
will definitely put things into perspective :-).
I also really enjoyed the Final Fantasy VIII run. I liked it
so much that I bought the game immediately afterwards. The
run was also timed perfectly for my work day. I had a
relatively light day planned with a lot of server
maintenance and small feature requests and the run fit
perfectly in this schedule. So while doing updates to my
servers I could watch this 8+ hours co-op relay run in the
background. The immense expertise of the runners and their
in-depth knowledge of all nooks and crannies of the game and
its lore was wonderful.
The closing game was Super Metroid, which is pretty common
for an AGDQ, however this time it featured a gruesome ROM
hack called Super Metroid Impossible and I can tell you that
it really deserves its name. It was pretty amazing to see
the runner Oatsngoats actually finish it and with that also
concluding AGDQ 2020, having collected more than 3 million
dollars for the PCF. Yay!
Hyperlinks:
[1]:
https://gamesdonequick.com/
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Tags: english
