"Speedrunning" culture

One of my favourite things to have on in the background (or 'second monitor content', my kids tell me) is various Games Done Quick runs. GDQ has multiple guises, but essentially a few times a year it's a celebration of speedrunning and glitch showcases, combined with a massive fundraising endeavour.

Summer GDQ 2026 just happened, and it raised like $2m for Doctors Without Borders, and had some absolutely top-tier runs. Personal faves that I've caught so far are adef's Balatro run (maybe the best run I've ever seen in realtime), player5's Tears of the Kingdom any% and a 4 way Elden Ring boss run.

I am the complete opposite of a speedrunner. I have a binocular vision disorder so I have terrible depth perception (especially fake 3d depth), get seasick with animated motion, and these days I just plain suck at platforming or parkour from lack of practise. I love turn-based combat because I can go through every inventory or menu and pick the optimal(?) play. I also love games with deep stories, so a lot of dialogue and usually a shit ton of cutscenes. I may, in fact, be the antithesis of a speedrunner.

But I am such a sucker for competency porn, and speedrunning is nothing if not glitzy competency porn. Someone who has spent a bunch of time getting really good at something? Delicious. Even better, speedrunning is really bunches of micro-communities who spend time looking for glitches, exploits, skips and optimal routes, and watching speedrunners stream their practises and runs.

I am allergic to engaging in the average stream chat so a lot of streams sounds like a one-sided conversation to me (same with most VODs for obvious reasons). I like GDQ because they make a point of explaining what's going on and shouting out members of the community who found particular big skips or are world record holders in the different categories a game might have. A quick search through the GDQ archive on YouTube for a childhood fave or a game you barely beat will open a whole new vista for you. If you're really stuck for an in, try Linkus7's Zelda:Wind Waker speedrun.

Speedrunning isn't a toxicity free community (what is?) and representation of 'known runners' seems to skew white, straight and male, but I like that a lot of the work is done between groups for the purpose of getting better, purely for the sake of getting better. Taking part in something like GDQ (or the other speedrunning showcases like European Speedrunner Assembly) is the shiny bauble on top, but in most cases, the goal is just to be the top of an online leaderboard. That's it. That's the goal. That's the culture.

It doesn't pretend to represent any moral improvement or value beyond competitive entertainment - and yet, it does much good. The raising money for charity through showcase events for one, but I'd also wager plenty of people have learned new skills, or felt part of something good in one of these micro-communities.

Speedrunning "culture"

I've been musing on the contrast with "culture" scenes like booktok, bookstagram, critical thinking and journalling micro-communities, and the current handwringing around a shared literacy crisis. I never know how much credence to give to third hand accounts of comments demanding authors don't use complex words, like - well - 'credence', or indeed 'complex' but they seem to be common enough to be a common thread. According to online outrage, a commentator somewhere even said this is "ableist" because it makes a book inaccessible. Or another chatter, which I sadly find more plausible, said they only read the dialogue as everything else is secondary to things characters say out loud to each other.

I have a few overlapping thoughts on this. My line of work is in UX (user experience) content strategy, of which a core component is UX writing. That is, the applied art and science of creating interfaces, instructions, and content that simplifies complex concepts and centres a user's needs to support task completion.

UX writing is a funny kind of English (or whatever language the interface is in) because we break a lot of rules to make it easier to grasp as you go. For instance, generally we don't use please and thank you. Those are filler words in an interface, especially an error message, that get in the way of communicating what's going on in that moment. If a customer service person spoke the way we write they'd be lambasted for their lack of care, but for us it works.

So, one, I absolutely understand the need to use simple words for user understanding.

I've also read books with purple prose and reams of unnecessary description - pretty sure every fantasy straight-to-paperback editor from 1983 - 1999 was paid by volume of words they kept in. And I've books that are overwritten and overwrought for the sole purpose of being so, or because the author has got too big to really be edited and thinks that their artistic vision outstrips any need for something as basic as a comprehendible reading experience (cough Anne Rice cough.)I choose not to read those books. Well, James Joyce aside, who continues to haunt all my reading experiences.

But that really isn't that many books. The average mid-list book by modern romance authors or fantasy authors aren't using Such Big Words So Often that all meaning is lost. And while some fantasy can occasionally get lost in its own world building, I'd argue that's part of the charm of the genre, and if you only want to understand that world by what is said out loud I'd like to introduce you to shock jock talk radio.

But I fear what powers these kind of comments, as much of the sharp end of a stupid wedge as I think they are, is an online billboard goal mentality. The need for recognition as a niche-celebrity of a micro-community of 'people who like the kind of books I do'. An influencer, not for literacy, but for word consumption.
Therefore, if my goal is to read 150, 200, 300 books a year, I need them gobbleable. I'm not savouring, I'm not sampling. I'm fucking housing these books.

Because we all know reading as many books as possible, unlike playing video games as fast as possible, is honourable, right? A well-thumbed and well-curated bookshelf in the background is the ultimate in competency porn. Or, at the very least, 'reading books' sounds like you should get more general clout. People who have read a lot of books are automatically smart. So, let's not think too hard about how this shifts books to being about the (alleged) comprehension level of the average Netflix series, and think about how we can solve this problem.

If I'm consuming books like the Mariana Trench at a hotdog eating contest, I need them served up in the most palatable style. Skip the big words, no pausing for context clues or dictionary use here. Have the characters tell each other about the world, and the plot, and the consequences. As a bonus, that naturally simplifies things because characters don't say half of what's in their heads. Subtext is for cowards!

What do you mean books already self-filter for their audience, and the goal of improving reading comprehension is a good one? That's nonsense talk.

Second-monitor literature

To cater to this need to bulk consume literature, I propose authors should write like UX writers. Front load information, simplest words possible, bullet points and subheadings, and make sure your character's calls-to-action are very clear and obvious. Here's the opening of Pride and Prejudice in this very approachable style.

First, Mrs Bingley said to Mr Bingley
"Alert: new neighbour 

Rich single man moved near to you
Everyone knows rich single men are looking for a wife. A new neighbour like this just rented Netherfield Park.

Profile overview

• Name: Mr. Bingley
• Status: Single
• Income: 5,000 / year (Very rich)
• Moving date: Next week

Why this matters to you: You have unmarried daughters. This is a chance to find a match for one of them."

Next, she read out her current to-do list.

"Suggested Actions

"
Can't believe Austen has won multiple best-novel-ever awards without using this literary technique. Perhaps this will be my own speedrunning niche? Rewriting classic literature using UX writing techniques, so people can truly speedrun culture?

Or perhaps I'll just watch another GDQ speedrun and appreciate people taking the hardest path to mastery for the sake of just getting good.