The Psychology of Speedrunning
There are groups of people that dedicate hundreds, if not thousands, of hours to achieve the fastest completion times in video games. Playing the same video game over and over and over again may sound like a lonely Sisyphean task to some observers. But the truth is that there are many positives to be found in the world of speedrunning.
Speedrunning has a simple definition: complete a chosen task in a video game as fast as possible. Making an attempt to do this is called a “speedrun” or, more simply, a “run.” Most commonly, this takes the form of beating the game start to finish, but each speedrunning community creates its own set of rules to govern their respective games. They also create different categories of runs for competition, much like Olympic running events with different running distances.
Speedrunners have found ways to transform single-player games into vibrant communities. This includes even games from decades ago that may otherwise be at risk for being forgotten. Chances are, someone out there has attempted to speedrun almost any game you can think of.
But beyond navigating the rules of the run and the limits of the game’s technology, the people who do this must also navigate the complexities of human psychology.
Negative Headspace
Much research has been dedicated to the psychological impacts of video games and other technology-heavy media such as internet usage. Research linking video games and the brain has investigated the impact of video games on cognitive abilities, such as task-switching and multitasking (Green & Seitz, 2015). Excessive video game use has also been linked to poorer school performance (Kantomaa et al., 2015).
But when it comes to negative impacts, perhaps the three biggest concerns are depression, anxiety, and social phobia.
Two speedrunners, interviewed for this piece, agreed that they have seen these mental health concerns among speedrunners in their communities.
Jcool114, a speedrunner known for his Super Mario Sunshine runs (among several other games), indicated that he knows “a good number of speedrunners who have struggled with depression and/or anxiety to a larger degree, and [does] not doubt that their gaming habits could have some level of correlation.”
Kap, a speedrunner who has previously held (and currently holds) world records in multiple games including Pikmin 2 and Astral Chain, expressed that he knows people that “do suffer from depression and speedrun” and indicated that they may be correlated. About social phobia, he added that “[if] someone is already averse to social interaction and suddenly they find out that they can compete without social interaction — I could see how that could potentially fuel a loop.”
How do you make an old video game new? Compete with others to play it as fast as possible. Shown are parts of the title screen animations for Pikmin 2 (2004) and Super Mario Sunshine (2002), both by Nintendo. Screen recording and illustration by Alexander R. Toftness.
Both speedrunners used the word correlation, and studies agree with them. Research often shows a correlation between large amounts of video game use and depression, anxiety, and social phobia. Importantly, however, experiencing these mental anguishes may also lead to video game use.
Longitudinal research, which followed groups of people over periods of time, has suggested that people who are already prone to these three types of mental disorder are drawn to video games — and that video games can create additional opportunities to experience depression, anxiety, and social phobia (Anderson et al., 2017; Gentile et al., 2011). This is the vicious cycle that you might expect to prey upon a person who spends large amounts of time engaged with the virtual world instead of the “real world”.
But what is often not taken into account are the complex ways that people who play video games are interacting with one another. Speedrunners experience the positive domains of community and competition, which certainly count as participation in the “real world”.
Community
The idea of a person who plays video games may bring to mind someone who is alone in their basement or bedroom, isolated from others. But this image is usually an inaccurate representation.
Most video game players report playing video games in social settings (Lenhart et al., 2008). Modern speedrunners often play in front of an audience. When attempting a speedrun, it is common for the attempt to be broadcast as live-streaming video on the internet, where interested people can watch the run progress in real time. Much as sporting events display high-intensity live action, powerful moments in speedrunning are built when speedrunning communities watch their favorite streamers get a run that is “on pace” for the world record, and try to maintain it through to the very end of the run without “choking.”
Speedrunning communities are essentially niche hobby clubs that meet almost entirely via the Internet. But despite the physical distance, the camaraderie that is built from struggling through a common challenge of pushing a video game to its limits strongly unites people.
“The group I’m in especially is very fun because we’re all trying to help each other. It could be a solo act, and everyone could just speedrun isolated in a cold basement — I think it’s nice to be able to talk to people,” said Kap, “Finding that camaraderie and finding that mutual understanding of other people is a very positive thing. Having a really good connection to a speedrunning community can make the experience more positive.”
The research agrees with Kap. The negative psychological aspects of video game usage such as social anxiety are less likely when levels of simultaneous online communication are high (Colder Carras et al., 2017), such as communication within speedrunning communities. The lesson seems to be that if you intend to play video games for long periods, you should find ways to connect with others.
And if you want concrete evidence that this sense of speedrunning community is a net positive for the world, look no further than an event called Games Done Quick. This event has been raising money for charity since 2010, and features speedrunners completing runs, races, and exhibition events in 24/7 livestreams in front of a global audience. The total amount of money that has been raised by Games Done Quick events as of May 2021 is around 31 million dollars, much of which has gone to cancer research.
Psychological research supports the idea that playing games can be affiliated with prosocial behavior, such as donating to charity. In studies where people were randomly assigned to play prosocial video games, in which helping behaviors are featured, participants that played such games were more likely to show prosocial behaviors in their own lives (Gentile et al., 2009). A large meta-analysis also showed this prosocial pattern after looking at the outcomes of nearly 100 studies (Greitemeyer & Mügge, 2014).
In sum, speedrunning can lead to both community and charity where like-minded people band together to overcome whatever obstacles are in front of them.
Competition and Cooperation
Another enormous psychological factor in speedrunning is the competition.
“I really enjoy being able to constantly push myself into getting better and mastering the games I play and love. I feel that I view the activity similarly to how many would view their participation in traditional sports,” said Jcool.
“I always think about it like track and field,” said Kap, “Even if you’re in a room [by yourself], you’re still putting your times on a leaderboard, you’re comparing yourself to others. Like running and other sports it’s also focused on self-improvement. What do I need to do to do this same thing better?”
Existing in loosely connected communities that each focus on their own specific video game, speedrunners compete in three distinct ways. They compete with others, submitting their achieved times with video proof to online leaderboards displaying the champions of each distinct category. They compete with themselves, always working towards a faster completion time. They also compete with the game itself, mastering its idiosyncrasies and glitches and button inputs with such precision as to allow squeezing precious seconds out of the ever-improving world records.
As in track and field events like long-jumping, these three different levels of competition can be thought of in terms of ego goals and task goals (e.g., Chin et al., 2012). Ego goals are about comparing yourself to others. In contrast, task goals are about improving your own skills, competence, and mastery, such as playing as fast as you can, regardless of your position on the leaderboard. Importantly, ego and task goals are correlated (Lochbaum et al., 2016). This means that someone who wants to be the best at the game likely also wants to see the game beaten as fast as possible even if they aren’t in first place on the leaderboard. Also interestingly, even if someone already has the fastest time, the existence of those task goals such as seeing how fast the community can beat the game as a team may drive them to continue to improve.
Intense high-skill competition brings with it the psychological phenomenon of flow. Flow is the psychological feeling of optimal experience that comes from being completely engaged in a difficult activity for which your skill level is also high, and is typically related to sports or creative arts (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990).
Jcool explained that “I have definitely had a number of experiences where I found myself deeply engaged and focused with high skill in speedruns, and would say that some of my personal bests I’ve achieved have had this experience involved to some extent.”
Kap said that “for me it’s like I just sort of let my brain do the work and I’m not overthinking what I’m doing. I think that’s what I’d consider a flow. I’m not thinking too much about the decisions I’m making, I’m just: ‘I’m going to do this, and this, and this.’ And it’s fast! And it works. But letting your muscle memory and letting your natural instinct go, I would consider that a flow. And I think I definitely feel that a lot.”
And this focused competition brings with it a surprising amount of cooperation.
The fact that this is partially a team sport allows for the participation of many people behind the scenes who do important work in glitch-hunting, theory testing, and moderation tasks. Even if they aren’t the ones with their names at the top of the leaderboard, they are still winning every time the community breaks a “barrier” such as when Super Mario Odyssey was beaten in less than an hour for the first time in March of 2019.
Because speedrunners focus on beating the same game, knowledge from other speedrunners is indispensable when it comes to discovering tricks to make the runs faster. The fastest run that a speedrunner has is made up of many small pieces that were discovered, tested, and shared by others in the community, sometimes earning the tricks nicknames after the person who discovered them.
One example of this is a difficult trick called “Honey Skip” in Super Mario Sunshine, named after a player that goes by Honey. In contrast, people who discover new speedrunning techniques and then hide them are vilified by the community.
While there isn’t any specific research yet on the competitive elements of speedrunning communities, there is general research that has examined the differences between cooperative and competitive video gaming. Psychological research seems to agree that cooperative gameplay has some positive outcomes, including building friendships (Waddell & Peng, 2014) and the promotion of overall enjoyment (McGloin et al., 2016).
Your Brain on Speedruns
Additional research has suggested that video games can be beneficial to a person’s resilience to failure, problem-solving, and creativity (Granic, Lobel, & Engels, 2014). I asked for the speedrunners thoughts on this.
Jcool felt that his resilience to failure has benefitted from speedrunning. “I find myself able to bounce back in difficult situations better than many as well as push onward when things are tough, especially in situations dealing with things I am passionate about,” said Jcool.
Kap agreed that resiliency comes with the territory. “If there isn’t failure, there won’t be success. To be good at any competition you need to be resilient. And thus, to be good at speedrunning, you need to be resilient,” said Kap.
Kap emphasized that problem-solving and creativity were major components of speedrunning. “There’s many different ways of solving a problem, but what’s the fastest way of solving the problem? And once you’ve done the fastest way, how do you know it’s the fastest way?”
So, while speedrunning may seem like a strange activity from the outside, it has a lot to give its participants. But what about the research into the negative impacts of excessive video gaming?
Kap explains that there are ways of going about speedrunning the wrong way. “Some people who are very results-oriented put in lots of time and effort and aren’t happy with what they see. And that can lead to sadness and ennui. If they have depressive tendencies, that sadness can turn into something more. Speedrunning doesn’t cause depression because it’s a video game, but because speedrunning is a pursuit to be skilled — albeit at a video game,” Kap said.
He continued, giving a specific example about a bad way to approach speedrunning: “If a thirteen-year-old was like: ‘I’m going to speedrun and I’m going to get world record and I’m going to spend 40 hours a week until I get world record,’ I would say that that’s very bad. But I think it’d be the same way if a young kid in high school was like: ‘I’m going to go pro in basketball and I’m not going to worry about my studies.’ I think we’re very good at chastising children who are like that who don’t care about school and just want to play sports for a living. Unless of course, they’re that good. And it’s the same way in video games. Unless you’re Ninja who’s making six figures playing video games, you can’t not be in school or have a job. I think that just like how you should chastise people who want to not do school and do get rich stuff or sports, just like we dissuade them, I think we should actively dissuade people from doing that with video games,” said Kap, “I think people go too far maybe, in their studies: ‘Kids shouldn’t play video games because it negatively affects their grades’ but I would say ‘Everything in moderation’. A nuanced look at all of this is really important.”
And after a nuanced look into the world of speedrunning, there is a lot more to it than playing the same game over and over and over.
Special thanks to the speedrunners from Twitch streams Jcool114 and KapKapRevenge for agreeing to be interviewed for this piece.
Article updated on May 2nd, 2021
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