Awesome Games Done Quick, the speedrunning-for-charity event, starts Sunday

[Shawn Knight]

Awesome Games Done Quick, the gaming event in which some of the world’s most elite speedrunners display their talents in hopes of generating donations for charity, is right around the corner.

The bi-annual event kicks off this weekend (on Sunday, January 8, to be exact) and runs for a full week (through January 15). The summer version, aptly named Summer Games Done Quick, typically takes place in early July.

The action will take place in Herndon, Virginia, at the Hilton Washington Dulles Airport Hotel. I’m not personally familiar with the venue although I suspect it was chosen due to its seemingly close proximity to the airport, making it easy for guest speedrunners to pop in and out without much fuss.

This year’s winter event is raising money for the Prevent Cancer Foundation, no doubt a worthy cause when you consider how prevalent cancer is in our current culture.

The event schedule has been posted and as is typically the case, there are plenty of noteworthy games that’ll be tackled this year. Some that I’m most looking forward to include The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D, Super Mario Kart, Mega Man, Super Bomberman and Mario Paint (who knew this could be a speedrunning game)… and that’s just in the first two days.

What’s great about these events is the fact that they’re livestreamed over the Internet. I’ve never been big on watching other people play video games but for speedrunning charity events like this, I make an exception.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/67687-awesome-games-done-quick-speedrunning-charity-event-starts.html

 

[JudasSheep]

Unfortunately from what I have seen in videos of the speed runs of games I enjoy; the players mostly use exploits or bugs rather than play the game how it was intended. If there was a way built into the game, for example, the old Super Mario Brothers warp portals in level 1-2, that is fine; it is a secret that was built into the game. However, to figure out that if you jump against a certain wall enough at a certain spot, you bypass 1/2 the game, that in my opinion is cheating. Good on the player for finding the bug, but to promote its use for the sake of a good score or time is BS and tries to make cheating acceptable if for the right reasons even if for charity. May as well enable god mode and run through the game as fast as you can. A speed run to me is playing the game as intended perfectly as to complete it in the fastest time possible. You may figure out routes and optimal patterns to do to make such a feat possible, but don't glitch the game and call it a speed run. I can take apart a Rubix cube and assemble it again quickly but I wouldn't say I solved it and ask for money.

 

[jarvis54]

One of the best weeks of the year. I always look forward to AGDQ, and it's always neat to see people I know and follow speedrun games.

 

[Puiu]

Unfortunately from what I have seen in videos of the speed runs of games I enjoy; the players mostly use exploits or bugs rather than play the game how it was intended. If there was a way built into the game, for example, the old Super Mario Brothers warp portals in level 1-2, that is fine; it is a secret that was built into the game. However, to figure out that if you jump against a certain wall enough at a certain spot, you bypass 1/2 the game, that in my opinion is cheating. Good on the player for finding the bug, but to promote its use for the sake of a good score or time is BS and tries to make cheating acceptable if for the right reasons even if for charity. May as well enable god mode and run through the game as fast as you can. A speed run to me is playing the game as intended perfectly as to complete it in the fastest time possible. You may figure out routes and optimal patterns to do to make such a feat possible, but don't glitch the game and call it a speed run. I can take apart a Rubix cube and assemble it again quickly but I wouldn't say I solved it and ask for money.

you don't know anything about speedrunning, do you? ^_^
have you ever heard of categories like: any% glitchless, 100% glitchless, any%, any% reverse-boss order, etc...
in short each game has multiple categories for speedruns and at AGDQ/SGDQ they just pick one and run it for the public (usually done by someone who is in top 10 or has the world record for that category). if you don't want to watch bug exploits then just look at what games will be played glitchless and you'll see them played "how they were meant to" (or something close to that)

"play the game how it was intended" - it's the most boring category since some games can last 4-5 hours on stream.
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Putting that little rant aside, I'm sure that AGDQ this year will once again go past the 1 million mark in donations. This is one of the most amazing events you'll see on twitch in 2017. It's a must watch for game enthusiasts.

 

[JudasSheep]

Yeah I don't know much about it, but like I said in my post.... From what I have seen. That means I haven't seen everything. Thank you for telling me about the other categories and I will look into it now that I know.

 

[cliffordcooley]

Yeah I don't know much about it, but like I said in my post.... From what I have seen. That means I haven't seen everything. Thank you for telling me about the other categories and I will look into it now that I know.

You were still right to call them BS, even if there are categories for them. E-Sports or Charity Events should have a no-tolerance policy, much like drugs in athletics.

 

[Puiu]

You were still right to call them BS, even if there are categories for them. E-Sports or Charity Events should have a no-tolerance policy, much like drugs in athletics.

This has nothing to do with esports and it's an event where it's actually advertised that they will break the games in very fun and incredible ways. It's one of the biggest reasons why it's so popular.
For example games like the early pokemon and zelda titles have some bugs where depending on how you name the character, how you arrange the items in the inventory and how you use them you can rewrite the memory and create some really cool skips. It's very similar to writing assembly code.

You should watch the TASBot block where they hook the controllers to a PC and run a script which presses the buttons at the perfect times (and a lot of times -- impossible to do as a human) and you'll see some games be broken in some incredible ways. They actually put twitch chat inside games without modifying any of the console hardware and game code. They even created something similar to Mario Maker inside Super Mario World by corrupting the memory