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Years ago, I remember seeing comments on articles about speedrunning like "I don't get the appeal of this" and I would try to think how to explain it.
For me it was the realization that every single video game has an entire second, *unintended* game hidden inside it.
For me it was the realization that every single video game has an entire second, *unintended* game hidden inside it.
This second game has its own rules and strategies, its own interplay of mechanics. Its own obstacles and pitfalls. And no one consciously designed this game. It emerged out of the contours of the one that was designed with an entirely different objective.
Mechanics that are desirable in the first game are obstacles in the second and vice-versa. Health drops are a nuisance. Dialogue triggers need to be avoided. Deaths that send you back a checkpoint are fast-travel vehicles. The rules are all different and nobody designed them!
I tried to think of an analogy for this and I don't know if there is one. Changing the goal produces an entirely new experience with its own pacing and internal logic. The struggle that goes into developing a video game develops a second game *by accident*. Often more than one!
There's been countless articles and discussions about emergent gameplay, particularly in sandbox games. But there's something elemental about speedrunning in particular. It's a simple, specific goal that has dramatic ramifications on the game's entire value system.
And because speedrunning is subtractive -- the aim is to eliminate as much of the runtime as possible -- there is a platonic ideal that already exists. The strategies to achieve it are dictated by the contours of the "intended" game, but only incidentally.
It's a mathematical puzzle, not consciously created by anyone, with variance allowing for human skill, consistency, and aesthetic choice. It's another game you get to play, and it wasn't made by anyone. It just emerged out of the negative space of the first one.
I stumbled across this quote at some point and that's when it clicked what interested me about it. I don't know if that answers the original question, but it's the idea there's something there, nobody made it on purpose, and we get to chisel it out and see what it looks like.
