Games Done Quick (aka "Speedrunning for Charity")

Speedrunning (the art of beating videogames really really fast) can be enjoyed in a variety of ways. Most of the time I watch speedruns, it will be via videos uploaded to Youtube or speeddemosarchive, but there’s also an insane amount of people streaming their speedrun efforts daily on Twitch/Mixer/etc as well, for hundred to thousands of live viewers. And of course you can just do the speedruns yourself, but are you really that good at video games? I’m not, so I’ll live out my secret fantasy of being the world record holder in “Ninja Baseball Bat Man” vicariously through others.

I’ve spent the last few days talking about the various aspects of speedrunning, and I would be remiss if I didn’t take a post and write about one of, if not the biggest speedrunning events online: Games Done Quick.

Interested? I know you are! Read on to learn more about the biggest speedrunning charity events in the world!

Games Done Quick, held twice a year, is a week long speedrunning marathon for charity event. Founded by Mike Uyama in 2010, it has grown exponentially to the current day. Regularly bringing in close to or over $2,000,000 for various charities, GDQs are attended in person by hundreds of people, and watched on Twitch by hundred of thousands. Like I said, the events are a week long, and the stream stays on for 24 hours a day. Speedruns are performed back to back (with a few minutes in between for tech crews to get things set up) by some of the best speedrunners in the whole world, both doing the runs and providing commentary and bad jokes from the “runners’ couch”.

I’m clearly a fan of Games Done Quick, and have, in the past, taken week long vacations from work to enjoy the entire marathon. Unfortunately, there was only so many 8 hour RPG speedruns I could watch before I realized there’s better ways to spend my time (like writing about GDQ...).
GDQ has various “blocks” of programming, like the “Awful Games block”, which showcases very poorly designed, buggy, glitchy games, and the “TAS block” for Tool Assisted Speedruns [see my last article about TASses: https://steemit.com/steemace/@reverendrum/tool-assisted-speedruns-aka-we-can-go-faster].

There’s also some head-to-head races where multiple people start the game simultaneously and each player’s video feed is shown side by side for comparison as they race to be the first player to finish. I love the Super Metroid races where 4 players manage to beat the game within seconds of each other, proof of just how optimized the runs have become and the skill of the players involved.

I personally really enjoy the Games Done Quick events, and although I tend to not dedicate as much time to them as I’d done in the past, I love to check them out for a few hours regardless when they’re live. They put their schedule online so I can plan my time around watching the runs I’d enjoy, like the Legend of Zelda Link to the Past randomizer runs that somehow also are mixed with Super Metroid. Not sure how that works but I’ll enjoy it nonetheless.

So are you looking forward to ADGQ 2020? I sure am! Keep up with when the next event is happening at www.gamesdonequick.com and stay hyped.
And as always, if you’re a speedrunner or a streamer, feel free to promote your stuff in the comments!