I thought I made a hard game and then speedrunners destroyed it

The terms "tear it to pieces", "ripped it to shreds", "destroyed" seem so emotive. It seems like these people loved the game enough to try and beat it in creative new ways and that seems really awesome. Minecraft thrived on similar hackery in the early days too.

People will speed run anything! I run a little solitaire site that has leaderboards and the Frecell games are dominated by faster than 10 second completion times. People complained in the forums about the times and how they must be by cheaters, and then the fast people started posting videos of themselves beating the games in seconds. They&#x27;re truly impressive:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=cRX-kxiNfes" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=cRX-kxiNfes</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=tSgdcH8JJI4" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=tSgdcH8JJI4</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=Qgm3BoVxrMI" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=Qgm3BoVxrMI</a>

One of the things I bemoan is that game developers have embraced speedrun-type players in that it has influenced their game design which is evident in the most recent games: almost every game that is sold as a &quot;hardcore&quot; game involves essentially the ability to memorize and perform, skills which are okay but I don&#x27;t particularly really enjoy. I painfully miss twitch games like quake that instead of pushing you to memorize and perform accurately, you instead had to react and improvise quickly and think on your feet.[0] It&#x27;s a different set of skills that seems to have fallen out of favor as of late.<p>[0] To be clear, I&#x27;m talking about multiplayer as it&#x27;s unpredictable.

My favorite game to watch speed runs of is still Getting Over It. The game is notoriously frustrating, with many players spending multiple painstaking hours climbing up small sections of the level, only to make a critical mistake, fall back down, and have to start all over again.<p>Then you have people like this, who&#x27;ve gotten so good at the game that they&#x27;re able to beat the entire thing in 1 minute 17 seconds: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=wnzTObVRwF0" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=wnzTObVRwF0</a>

This is reminiscent of N, Way of the Ninja [0]<p>I used to work nights doing production support (lots of downtime). To beat 88-4 [1], I exported the level, re-edited it to have 4 starting points (each a quarter of the way through [0&#x2F;4, 1&#x2F;4, 2&#x2F;4, 3&#x2F;4]). Then I practiced each of those in turn until I could beat them. After I could be each with about an 80% success rate, I tried the whole level again.<p>There are probably only 5 hard &quot;gates&quot; in 88-4. That is, 5 places where you are likely to fail (say a 15% success rate before extensive practice). The success rate after 5 gates is unexpectedly, phenomenally low: 0.008% (0.15^5). If you practice and get your individual success rate up to 80%, then the overall challenge is a doable 32.7% overall. I think my success rate was more like 40% on three gates, though, because even after practicing I think I tried about 30 times.<p>I still think about gates like this. I think Yatzee explained this in a Zero Punctuation episode, but I don&#x27;t remember which one.<p>0. <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thewayoftheninja.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thewayoftheninja.org&#x2F;</a> 1. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=t6hxHi234AM" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=t6hxHi234AM</a>

Now think of any critical software as the game, with security hackers as the speedrunners.

Great ad - engaging, entertaining content that doubles up as exposure for the product. The best kind of ad that is actually useful. (This post is appreciating it, not knocking it for that.)

&gt; This is a funny little story about what happens when your game gets discovered by speedrunners.<p>The game was built with a timer which counts up. It&#x27;s intended to be speedrun...

I&#x27;m not familiar with the scene. Are the speedrunners mostly kids with lots of free time? This hobby must be time consuming.<p>Or are there also hardcore older gamers among them, who started playing in the 80s, 90s and they have jobs, families and still spend their free time spedrunning games?

Even if some people can beat it in 1 minute, it is still extremely hard for a lot of people, and provides a lot of enjoyment. And those speedrunners who beat it in a minute probably spent dozens of hours finding those exploits.<p>A couple of years ago, I played Hollow Knight on PC. I probably spent 60 hours getting to the final ending and finding the majority of the secrets. I enjoyed it immensely for a month or two. Sure there are speed runners who can beat it in under an hour, but that doesn&#x27;t diminish the many hours of enjoyment I got from it.<p>If you haven&#x27;t, I would recommend watching Summoning Salt&#x27;s World Record Progression videos, each of which takes a game and talks about the series of exploits that allowed the world record speedruns to exist.

I&#x27;m guessing based on the overlay that this was a tool assisted speedrun (TAS)? If so, I wouldn&#x27;t fret if I were the author. These players are able to exploit collision glitches and timings that are almost impossible for a human player!<p>And if not, all the more impressive.

For people who like this post, I highly recommend &quot;Devs Play&quot; S1E06 - Psychonauts &quot;The SMK Speedrun&quot; by Double Fine Production: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=lsDc1YVxHA0" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=lsDc1YVxHA0</a><p>They had a speedrunner running their game in front of the development team which is hilarious.

Based on some speed runners videos I saw they have way more patience and ability in Super Mario than me<p>But remember it doesn&#x27;t matter if they finish it quickly if your audience is the average player<p>A game that&#x27;s too difficult is not fun for a lot of people. So unless your target audience is specialized in that, I wouldn&#x27;t worry too much

When I was young I played video games like they were an open world full of mysteries I was uncovering by myself, as the first and only explorer.<p>Then I realized all the little things I was discovering were actually known by everybody else. Specially, they were made by someone else.<p>As I grew old I kept thinking about how to make a game that would have secrets no one knew, not even the game maker. But that&#x27;s impossible, not even Dwarf Fortress or similar very complex games where you can do basically almost anything are like that.<p>Every game is just a treasure hunt made by some adult for kids to play -- and that is very depressing.

I had to buy it to try it myself. Awesome work I have to say.

Haha, this is amazing! It must have been so much fun to have people enjoy it like that.

The fact that speed runners even bothered is a huge vote of confidence

I thought I made a safe, correct, program; then QA destroyed it! Waaah!

Looks like someone should have budgeted for &quot;Speedrunning as a Service&quot; before launching ...

I&#x27;m pleased you&#x27;re reacting to this with curiosity instead of rage.

This post seems like a humble brag tbh