What Is Speedrunning?

At its core, speedrunning is simple: complete a video game as fast as possible. But beneath that simple premise lies a rich, technical, and deeply communal culture that has grown from obscure internet forums into live events watched by hundreds of thousands of people worldwide. Speedrunning is one of gaming's most fascinating subcultures — a place where players don't just play games, they dissect them.

Where Did It Begin?

The roots of speedrunning stretch back to the early days of home gaming. Players were timing themselves through games long before the internet existed to share those times. But the modern speedrunning community truly began to crystallize in the early 2000s with the rise of the website Speed Demos Archive (SDA), founded in 2003. SDA gave runners a place to submit verified video recordings of their runs, creating an official record-keeping infrastructure for the first time.

Games like Quake, Metroid, and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time were early community favorites, each offering complex maps and routing possibilities that rewarded deep technical knowledge of the game's systems — and its bugs.

The Role of Glitches and Exploits

One of the most misunderstood aspects of speedrunning is its relationship with glitches. To outsiders, exploiting bugs seems like "cheating." To the speedrunning community, discovering and executing a game-breaking glitch is a skill — often a profound technical achievement that requires understanding the underlying code at a near-developer level.

Categories like Any% (reach the credits by any means) embrace glitches fully, leading to mind-bending runs that can complete a 40-hour RPG in under an hour. Glitchless categories forbid them entirely, focusing on pure optimization. Both are equally valid in the community.

Games Done Quick: Speedrunning Goes Mainstream

The event that brought speedrunning to a mass audience was undoubtedly Games Done Quick (GDQ). Launched as a small charity event in 2010, GDQ has grown into a biannual marathon — Awesome Games Done Quick (AGDQ) in January and Summer Games Done Quick (SGDQ) in summer — that raises millions of dollars for charity while streaming runners live on Twitch.

GDQ events typically feature:

  • Dozens of runners across hundreds of games over a week-long stream
  • Live commentary explaining techniques and glitches to newcomers
  • Donation incentives and race formats to engage the audience
  • A celebratory, inclusive community atmosphere

Speedrunning.com and the Modern Era

Today, Speedrun.com serves as the central hub for the global speedrunning community, hosting leaderboards for tens of thousands of games across every category imaginable. Runners use tools like LiveSplit (a timer with split tracking) and Discord servers for community coordination, route sharing, and mentorship of new runners.

Why Do People Speedrun?

The motivations are varied and deeply personal:

  • Mastery: Pushing a game to its absolute limit is its own reward.
  • Community: Speedrunning communities are tight-knit, collaborative, and often surprisingly welcoming to beginners.
  • Discovery: Finding a new glitch or route that shaves seconds off a world record is a legitimate intellectual thrill.
  • Creativity: Speedrunning reframes games as puzzles to be solved, not just stories to be experienced.

Getting Started

Interested in trying speedrunning yourself? Pick a game you love and know well, find its Speedrun.com page, read the guides in the Resources section, and join the Discord. The community is more welcoming than you'd expect. World records belong to dedicated veterans — but personal bests belong to everyone.