Why Tool-Assisted Speedruns Have A Right To Exist - Unreality Mag

3 Comments

1. I think viewing this debate in terms of art is a “backwards logic” sort of mistake. ANYTHING can be viewed firstly as art and then be conveniently boxed up to fit that label.

   I believe the real issue here is perception of “human achievement vs machine achievement”… and has nothing at all to do with art. That’s not to say that in the end, their respective achievements can’t still be “recognized” as art though, thus validating “tool-assisted speed runs”, at least minimally, as art.

   To help demonstrate, I’ll borrow from the popular quote… “guns don’t kill people… people kill people”, and re-purpose it…

   …”Games don’t play games… people play games.” (again… not about art… but rather inherent capability)

   What a game is “mechanically capable of” (being finished in time x for example), is quite a different thing than a living/intelligent creature then demonstrating what ‘they’ can do.

   Ultimately, I think the dissatisfaction simply stems from this particular expectation of capability. So it comes down to mislabeling I would say… specifically, the “purpose” of the video… to see what the game is mechanically capable of… or to see what a human can do with that capability?

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2. This sounds like watching a video and expecting to see a man tight rope walk across the grand canyon. Only to learn that he tight rope walked across his back yard a bunch of times and edited in the footage of the grand canyon and cut out all of the times he fell.

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3. TAS runs aren’t contentious within the speedrunning community, and that’s all that really matters in this discussion. Speedrunners have many different categories for records, like any% and 100% runs, and TAS runs are just another category in the list. The simple solution for someone who doesn’t like TAS runs would be to watch a different category.

   Random people complaining about YouTube speedruns would be like someone who doesn’t watch football saying that the defense shouldn’t be allowed to blitz because it’s not fair to the QB.

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