Script for my next big video

These Streamers Are Saving Speedrunning (The Future of speedrunning is not what you think)

Intro + the decline of GDQ/ charity marathons/ the fracturing of speedrunning (culture) GDQs are repetitive (watching someone break open a childhood classic is really cool the first time but the alure wears off. Highly repetitive. Online GDQs seem to garner less hype overall that or interest is just declining.

GDQ is the reason I can say the phrase "I just got a gold split using safety strats on my no-reset run" and most of you out there knows what that means.

Introduce myself after gdq section

example 1 charlie (moist critical) Mr krabs + granny + outlast and many others - builds up a community just by learning a speedrun route + demonstrates the skill and legitamacy of glitches in speedruns + shows that anyone can learn to speedrun just by messing around with it for a little while (Moist Esports only a matter of time before he signs a speedrunner to his roster and have the MOIST flag flown in front of 100 thousand people LIVE at gdq

example 2 Ludwig - god gamer gauntlet + bros vs pros (simply) CONTENT IS KING - Speedruns with Stakes / bets with friends The content era of speedrunning has been ushered in by ludwig.

example 3 Atrioc Brandon G.H. Ewing(hitman WR grind + teaching linkus and starting a friendly rivalry) This is super Genius

Footnote: yeah I think pointcrow and smallant are doing cool stuff too.

Intro: 

-Speedrunning... This once niche hobby has surged in popularity in recent years. Thanks in part to the community of dedicated gamers that love to compete for the best times and share their passion for speedrunning with others. One of the first communities to gain public attention for speedrunning would be Games Done Quick with their 10s of Millions of dollars raised for charity over the past decade.

-The Speedrunning community at large has long since been shaped and molded by the influence of Games Done Quick. The Charity Speedrunnig Marathon format has defined the culture of speedrunning since GDQ's inception and most communities have been following in their footsteps setting up their own marathons. 

-GDQ is the reason I can say the phrase "I just got a gold split using safety strats on my no-reset run" and most of you out there knows what that means.

-However Looking at the data for these charity marathon streams over-all viewership and general interest has been declining since around 2018.

-I think the format of charity marathons (while amazing in their ability to gather large groups together for a good cause) are unfortunately losing their novelty. Normy Audiences have grown tired of the format and can you blame them. the novelty of watching a childhood classic get beaten in mere minutes when you have memories of playing the game for hours to completion begins to wear off after a while. And these marathons have been going for almost a decade now following the same basic format. 

-So does this mean the end of the speedrunning community at large? well no. Because we have brave souls leading the charge in what I believe is the future of speedrunning in the main stream.

-The future of the speedrunning community doesn't lie with large community organizations, but in the hands of these streamers as they shape the NEW Speedrunning Community.

*SCENE CHANGE*

ok in all seriousness I maybe it isn’t just these three streamers, but in general influencers and individual streamers will take over as the main-stream face of speedrunning. I just chose these three because I like them and I think the content they have done around speedrunning is great for getting people interested in speedrunning as a whole. I could have put other streamers like point crow or small ant in here as well and they would have easily fit in as well but I had to cut this off somewhere.

also real quick just so you guys are aware of who I am and my experience in the speedrunning community. I've been speedrunning on twitch for over 8 years now and have been invited to many GDQ events as a runner for their marathons. I hold many world record in one of the most legendary speedrun games of all time "castlevania symphony of the night" just so you known I’m not just some nobody with zero knowledge of the speedrunning community and how its been changing over the years. oh and if castlevania speedruns interest you at all consider subscribing to the youtube channel and following my twitch and maybe even supporting me on patreon. but yeah all that out of the way back to the video.

Charlie segment:

Charlie... aka Moist Critical. A gamer's gamer if you will. An absolute legend in the speedrunning scene. He simultaneously looks like Jesus and might also be the Messiah of speedrunning. Known for his legendary speedruns of classic titles like granny, or Skyrim's Marriage%, and of course his iconic world record run of Mr. Krabs overdoses on Ketamine. Charlie has the uncanny ability to pick up any game and speedrun it at a mastery level near instantaneously. But seriously, he shows the process of learning a new speedrun live on his twitch and youtube and how easy it can be to just jump into learning a run and having fun with it. This leads to an explosion of interest in whichever speedrun he's set his sights on learning. The speedrunning communities for games like Granny, or Mr. Krabs overdoses on ketamine saw major bumps in the number of runners submitting times to the official leaderboards after Charlie started streaming those games. This is amazing for the speedrunning community at large because people doing runs and submitting them is the life-blood of the scene. Without new runners getting involved in speedrunning, the scene will eventually die out as older runners retire. So having a force like Charlie to influence new people to try speedrunnning new games for the first time is over-all an amazing asset for the speedrunnning community's growth. 

Also, Charlie's choice of speedruns to learn is important as well. He his track record shows him learning short, whacky and glitchy runs. Runs that utilize major glitches, out-of-bounds strats, and skips to reach the end as fast as possible. Outlast, for example, is a game charlie ran recently that see's the player doing a precise jump to leap out-of-bounds right onto a load-zone that leads to the very end of the game. Allowing the player to beat the game in mere minutes. Showing off the skill and precision required to finish glitchy runs like this, helps legitimizes these speedruns to a large audience. This is important for the speedrunning scene, as its long been a battle for speedrunners to be taken seriously in the eyes of "normys". Its not difficult to go to any speedrun world record video and find someone in the youtube comments complaining about "cheating by doing glitches or writing a twitter manifesto about the illegitimacy of speedrunning. So huge props to chalie for helping legitimize using glitches in speedrunning. 

Lastly, I want to touch on the work He has been doing with his ESPORTS Org: Moist ESPORTS. In my eyes its only a matter of time before he signs a speedrunner to join the illustrious roster of moist esports. And if you happen to be watching this charlie, and are looking for a world record speedrunner to join, my DMs are open. Just imagine seeing the moist esports jersey being worn on the big stage at the next in-person gdq.

Ludwig:

Next up, We have the king of content, mr Sub-a-thon himself, 6th biggest streamer in the world Ludwig Augren. this 5 foot 2 King has had his hands in speedrun scene for many years now. Whether its his very legitimate mario party 2 world record speedrun, or his more recent records for his button mashing skills, Ludwig has long had speedrun content be a part of his brand. And this is huge. Ludwig's meteoric rise as a content creator has inspired many others around him to adopt similar styles of content in order to grow their social media presence. If you look at what most speedrunner's youtube channels looked like before ludwig became big, you would have found mostly a string of personal best speedruns, alongside maybe a few tutorials and glitch videos. If you look at most speedrunner's youtube channel's now, you can see a clear difference. many of them have adopted the Ludwig style of uploading specific speedrunning related challenges (like his legendary god-gamer-gauntlet), and have them edited down for a better viewing experience. and this format has paved the way for many others to follow in his footsteps to wider levels of success (linkus/simply). Although doubters will claim that ludwig actually stole this style of video from small ant, real ones know its more of a "yoink and twitst" than straight up theft.

Also, Ludwig has a youtube series called "bros vs pros" where him and his friends compete against professionals in a particular game. One of the most recent ones had him and his team facing up against the Mario speedrunning legend simply in a unique crew-battle-esque race vs him. Ludwig and his team would all have to finish the faster 16 star speedrun back-to-back in a relay race, while simply the former world record holder for the 120 star category would have to finish a single run of collecting all 120 stars in the game. These unique content ideas are the exact type of thing that helps innovate speedrunning content as a whole and helps bring greater awareness and appreciation for speedrunning as a hobby. as well giving these "pros" like simply a chance to show their skills to a wider audience in a fun and interesting way.

Atrioc:

last but not least we have the Glocal Consumer Marketing Manager at NVIDIA, Brandon G.H. Ewing. While many have doubted Atrioc's gaming abilities do to his old age, he has shown not only competency, but mastery over his speedrunning game of choice, the hitman trilogy. (in a niche category that he made up and pressured the mods on speedrun.com to add to the main leaderboard so he can have a record). But that doesn’t matter, because what we as an audience see in these runs, we see the full spectrum of emotions when competing for a speedrun world record. the constant pain of early resets, (as your chat spams back-to-Paris), to the innovations and strat finding in order to shave off seconds of your personal best, to the epic pop-offs knowing that the run is over and you just got the new world record. We see this and know that these runs are truly skillful and worthy of celebration. The mind-set, no the grind-set required to handle the pressure of performing the perfect run is easily Atrioc's greatest asset as a speedrunner, followed closely behind by the company he keeps. That's right, this 5Headed genius wanted a reason to continue to grind his favorite speedgame, but with no competition, its hard to get viewers invested in the journey of mastering a speedrun and this mad-lad recruited the zelda speedrunning legend Linkus, took him under his wing and taught him the speedrun. Creating a rival to help push the record lower and give stakes to not just lower the record, but often times, take the record back from linkus as he did runs of his own. And Linus is no slouch when it comes to speedrunning, acquiring many world records in very popular and competitive games, while achieving super-human feats within those runs (like manual super swimming). This collab is genius for the fact that it game both runners’ content being able to collab for special events in game, or just take the record back from each other over and over again. These are the kinds of story lines that help break speedrunning out of a niche audience and gets more people to care about it. I guarantee most people before atrioc started grinding to take the record back from linkus, couldn't have cared less about hitman or hitman speedrunning. but by giving it an easy to follow story line of two rivals pushing each other to their limits, it created a compelling narrative that kept people coming back to see how the rivalry would progress. Will linkus snipe the record again. will atrioc invent new strats to help him take the run even lower. it was a trilling era to watch for both of them, concluding in a very satisfying ending as atrioc retired from his hitman speedrunning career on top with a massive world record reveal. 

Story lines make people care. and whether Atrioc realized it or not, by showing his friend linkus how to run the game, he created a way for speedrunnners to gain interest in runs people maybe not have considered caring about before. By creating the story line of him vs his powerful rival, they both always had a reason to be grinding and making content around the game. always looking to one-up each other. I wouldn't be surprised if more runners don't start looking at this as the go-to model for speedrunnig collaboration in the future. 

Outro: