GWJ Conference Call Episode 1016

0:00This is the Gamers with Jobs conference call Episode 1,016 for Wednesday, April 1st. Rest assured this is a real episode and not an April Fool's prank. I am your host, Richard Lovejoy. With me today is my co-host, Amanda Nolton. Amanda is here. Hello, Amanda. I appreciate the delay there. Thank you so much. I had to go get my Magic the Gathering mousepad so that I can be officially like a game on. For this morning, hello, everybody. Hi. And we also have a returning special guest who is going to talk to us about speed running today for the topic.

1:00I'm so excited to have Gabby Blackheart Wings back on the show Gabby. Hello. Hello. I'm great. Thank you so much for having me back on. I'm super excited to be here. Yeah. I'm very excited for this discussion. I'd love to. Like this? Yeah. It's a world that I don't know a lot about, but like I'm kind of like a Jason League like you pick up stuff in the osmosis of being in the gaming space and you are the ideal guest to talk about speed running with. So yeah, excited for that. But before we get there, we've all been playing some video games. We have a pretty healthy list and I'd like to get through some of it. So Gabby, why don't you kick us off with probably, I'm just going to go out and award this the best titled game of the show of episode 2016, which is Space Warlord Baby Trading Simulator. So tell us a little bit about that. I'm so obsessed with this game. I picked it up a little bit ago and I've really been playing it recently because I've been

2:02at PAX East. So Space Warlord Baby Trading Simulator is the spiritual successor to Space Warlord Oregon Trading Simulator. And this was created by Indie Studios Strange Scaffolding, which is very well known in the Indie space. They have several darling hits such as an airport for aliens currently run by dogs and I'm so cold. Wow. Oh, he's so clever. He's so like the guy that it's like a one-man show, right? Like he's got a really good. It's a small studio. It's run mainly by the keynote speaker of PAX East, which is why I was playing it a lot lately. So, Zalavir Nelson Jr., fantastic guy, great speaker, and I've been playing the heck out of this game. It is a stock market sim where you don't bet on the only thing you bet on rather are the

3:06speculated lives of babies. So you pick a child out of a line up before and you can like predict certain events that go on within their lifetimes. And so you want to, it's a stock market sim. So you want to buy low and you want to sell high. So depending on their life events, their projected market value goes up or down. So you sell stocks and then you buy stocks and the tagline, the unofficial tagline is short that baby. Okay. I want to be so clear how unserious and goofy and silly this is like it's space themed. So they're like alien babies, like it's, you know, like they've got like one eyes and antenna and like all kinds of stuff. And so there's a very, very cheeky, obvious commentary going on here. And I love the parallel that they're presenting here in such an absurd way.

4:11Like this is absurdist to the core, which is very true to the game library that they've put out so far. It's fantastic. Oh my gosh. I was, I was made aware of strange scaffolding by my girlfriend who I absolutely adore. They've been a big fan and also I knew about strange scaffolding, the a markiplier playing click holding, but it really is just like, I love this game because it's a really fun way to like kill time. The number of times that I have yelled, oh god, no, my short at my computer. And I need something terrible to happen to this baby is embarrassing, but it's a lot of fun. I deeply enjoy it. It's very, if you like games where like number go up is the primary point of engagement. This is the game for you. It's really great. It's really funny.

5:12There are lots of scenarios and lots of stories. I'm terrible at this game, but I'd love it so much. I love that we have baby derivatives and that the game on our list that is probably the most resonant with what's going on in the world right now is space warlord baby trading simulator. Just like that is that just speaks to the time that we live in for sure. It really does cover it's it's very emblematic of the times, I think. So you're just you're basically just like what is like an average session look like just just like a real quick like overview of like what is it what is the actual experience of playing this because I have the concept of like I'm buying a bait. I'm like doing some speculative speculative derivative trading on a baby's life, but like what is it? What does it mean mechanically? So so you you sit down you open up this game and it opens up a menu and you can choose

6:13from four babies. At first you don't really have a whole lot of information about these babies, but you can hire consultants that will give you certain insights. For example, it will tell you what the floor price of a baby will be with a certain amount of accuracy or it will tell you a guaranteed event within a baby's life and like the more that you play this game, the more you get a feel for like the different events that come up. But like for example, if a baby protests a pipeline later on in their life, that will either raise or lower their projected value. So you can also make side bets on babies depending on the scenario that you're playing. So it's like, oh, the likelihood that this one specific event will happen. You can place a bet on that on that event and it gives you a percentage. And so this is like your loading screen. You choose a baby that you decide to bet on essentially. And it brings you to a stock trading scene. So it's basically like a number line.

7:17You've got the projected value of your baby and you've got a line and a dot and it starts tracking the baby's life. And on the bottom there are buttons sell, buy or short. And so yeah, basically like you watch this number go, you decide when you want to buy when you want to sell, you hit your buttons accordingly. If things look really, really good and you feel like things are about to go catastrophically bad for this baby, you short that baby. And you basically watch the life of this tiny, this speculative baby unfold before you and you choose to buy yourself depending on the projected value of the baby until eventually they die. And you figure out how much money you have made or lost. And there are story modes. So there is like for the first story mode, for example, is you need to raise a minimum of $4,000 by the end of a four day period.

8:18And so at the end of your day, you get your total whether you made a profit or whether you were like speculating on a loss. And then you go, you go on to the next day, you get a summary and then you go to the next day and you bet on a different baby. That's incredible. Yeah. So that's a space warlord baby trading simulator. I want to pivot over to me because you've been playing Timberborn, which we covered in early access. But now apparently Timberborn 1.0 is upon us. For those who maybe don't want to speculate on space warlord babies, now we can speculate on beavers. I beaves. So yes, Timberborn, I've talked about this game a couple of times and it was at first early access and then like late early access and finally release. And what's interesting about how steam is organizing now is it gives you those little tiles

9:21kind of like the epic stories, I don't know why they started doing it, but they started putting the game tiles in your library. And one of the options is to rank by release, which is what I do because it helps me keep organized, which games I've played because I usually, you know, like it's chronological that way. So I noticed that Timberborn had moved to the front, which I thought was kind of odd. So I went and checked it out, sure enough, they finally released 1.0. This game has been in early access for a couple of years now and it's interesting to watch a game develop from that long of a launch because the game that it was at the beginning of early access is still technically the same game, but I would say the trajectory is changed quite a bit. So it's still a resource management, Tim, it's still a city builder. It's still cute and beaver focused. So there's just a strong emphasis on like water management, resource management in like

10:25woods and metals, but the, I'd say the tutorials are much quicker. If you know what to do, I'm saying that with code marks, you can kind of just skip ahead of the tutorials and the tutorials will just catch up with you. You just click through it and progress as you need to. So for folks just jumping in, I feel like it's thorough enough that you get an idea of what you need to do and they ramp up the catastrophes quite gradually so that you get a chance to like learn how to manage, but overall it is still a time management, Tim. It's one of those games that I think, and I do this with resource management games a lot, where I'll start and then I'll be like, it's a little rough around the edges. I didn't plan the super well and I'll restart from scratch with my new knowledge. And so what I'm finding I'm having to do with the 1.0 release is I've got these preconceived notions about how the game should go because of how it played in early access.

11:29It's not quite the same. It's a little bit different. So I do appreciate that they tightened that up a bit. They made that ramp up a little bit faster and they started introducing other challenges. So it's not just, do you have enough food? Do you have enough water? Are you, do you have enough storage? Are you planning for drought cycles like how, there's a lot of farming involved. And so I think it's got a really great balance between the strategy of planning a city and the just sort of organic nature of pathing of just sort of creating routes in your streets. So that your units can move around efficiently. Because it's beavers, everything the technology is very, I'd say rudimentary, but you still do get into some of the more technical and mechanical skill sets later, like later stage in the game and I'm not there yet.

12:30I'd have to say I've put about 100 hours in before in early access. So I'd be interested, yeah, I spend way too much time in this game. I think it was on my game of the year, like the year before, like one of my games here, the year before it last, so it, there's a lot of meat on the bone. It's extremely cute. It is family friendly. Like I feel like the difficulty levels, especially if you ramp them down, would be a great sort of baby's first resource management sim. I just think the humor is cute, the aesthetic is cute. So I do appreciate how zoomed in and zoomed out, you can get in a game like this. Like I was finding like camera angles and trying to see everything that you built has always been a challenge. So they have introduced a sort of grade grade or like level slicer. So I think there's like, it's by cubes kind of like Minecraft. So it's like if you can change the level, like the view level, you can sort of bisect

13:34what you've already created and see what's in there. So let's say you built a, you know, four story high storage unit and the paths are narrow and you can't quite see how to get into the building. You can just like cut your elevation and then just sort of see a bisected version of your build, which I think is pretty cool. Like a Dyson Sphere program and a few other games have something similar, but I find that especially with the complexity and the the noodly spaghetti pathways that you start to create with a lot of your, just like how to get around in your padding systems, I think is really interesting. So it's a little bit slower pace in that respect that quote, quote, automation is beavers that are just running around and they've got work hours. They've got, you can set it to like 16 hour work days or whatever and then they've got their off time. You have to plan, yeah, well, they, they, they seem to be pretty, pretty well unionized.

14:37Like they, they, there's a communal understanding of, of community and respect that I think how we could learn from. But, um, but yeah, so you still have to manage their like off time, they're dated, like you're not managing it, but you, you have to account for their off time. They log out, they go have dinner, they go have parties, you just kind of have to plan around the fact and remember that like your pathway into resource management is done by creatures that have lives. And so I just think that's a nice, um, it's a nice balance, it's, it's a nice example of time and resource management, you know, I think a very bite-sized and approachable platform. So I love Timberborne. I think it's such a great game. I'm so biased, but I love my little beavers. I think they're great. And, um, yeah, I just think it's an adorable game and folks should check it out just to see if, you know, if you've, if you've played, um, you know, resource management games in the past and bounced off, I, I don't know how this is going to be too different, but

15:40maybe this will change your mind, like maybe Timberborne will be the one that does it for you. So, yeah, that's, that's been sort of the new thing on my radar. I'm still playing Pokemon Pokepia and slay this fire too. Those are still in heavy rotation, um, but I think that for the most part, I've been focusing on Timberborne. I, I picked all really time intensive games this week. So, um, but yeah, I've mostly just been rotating between the three. I've kept the switch in the bedroom just so I have some variation because right now I'm just bouncing back and forth between slay this fire too and Timberborne, which both are huge time sinks for me. So I, the new game front isn't super hot right now because I've just been diving back into my 1.0s and my, um, yeah, my games of the year, like these all three of these games will be on my game of the year list for sure, so I'm just marinating and in the joy of playing all of these games together right now.

16:42That's me. It's just my game play, yeah. I love to hear it. Um, yeah, I've been in a similar sort of, uh, spiral with the, the particular games that are taking my time. And when I'm not, um, pissing off Mollisks in Caves of Cud, uh, what I am, what I am doing is, uh, I did get a chance to check out something relatively new. And that is a game called Pale Coins, um, just kind of a pixel art, um, action RPG. If, if you've played the game Drowba for Saken, uh, Kin, it has like a very similar play style. It's a very similar like point of view. It's a, it's a different kind of pixel art style, I would say. Um, this is, this came out end of last year, had a big update in January. Um, it is a lot chiller than these games tend to be in terms of, uh, difficulty level is

17:44what I will say about Pale Coins. I think a lot of these games want to have sort of that, uh, from software, one foot in, like wanting to be a little bit of a soul is like, typically this one, you save the game whenever you want. There's really no penalty to dying. You don't have to do a corpse run to go back to where you died to pick up your stuff. You're just kind of fine. Like you just restore your game, like a normal game, um, you're picking up different equipment and, and it's like, you know, the graphics are relatively like simple and representative, but it's always fun to like get the chain mail armor and then see your little, your little figure has chain mail on all of a sudden, right, or you switch over to the sword and then you've got the sword there instead of the club that you started with or, or whatever. Um, has some light, uh, classes that you choose at the beginning, like you can play it as a major, uh, a hunter or you can do something more melee focused. So there's a lot with pale coins that's going to be familiar. And it's definitely like small team in devive energy.

18:45It has about 250 reviews on steam right now, which is a, which is a pretty good place for a game of size to be always worth checking these out, I think and seeing if you can help push them to 500 because that's when they start to get like some serious traction on things. I wanted to point out pale coins because I do think it's a, it's a fun one of these. If you're into these kinds of action games, if you like this aesthetic, um, it has some roughness around the edges, like there's like an early quest to go find a mage for this camp and when you do, if you go back to the original quest giver, like he's inconsistent about whether or not you found this mage has like that type of like little, little quirk. It is totally fine, like not a big deal, like that, not a, not a big immersion killer, but he's like, well, if you found this mage, it's like, yeah, he's like literally standing right in front of you, but he's right there, um, but, uh, yeah, uh, pale coins

19:47really enjoying it, um, worth checking out if you're into these things. And let me pivot back over to Gabby because you've got two other games that I want to talk about. Um, the first one you have here is the crush house. I've been on a bit of a silly, silly game cake lately, I think, because it's very relevant. Like, it's very, these two games that I have are extremely silly, um, the crush house you play as a, uh, like a camera person, uh, in a reality TV show in 1999, um, so you, you stick four people in a house and you watch them do their thing and they fight and they kiss and they, it's the whole thing. So the main mechanic of the game is you have to, like, appease the audiences who are showing up for the day, um, which means that you have to film different things. You want to film different interactions, um, you want to make sure that, uh, you're appeasing everybody, otherwise your show gets canceled and you don't want that.

20:52If you don't, if you don't appease all of the audiences or like a minimum number of audiences, um, your show gets canceled and the audiences are all very silly. So you've got things like, oh, you've got like your drama queens who love watching dramatic, like falling out, happen between the characters, um, you also have like butt guys, so you have to focus on like, on the butts of the characters for a certain amount of time to appease these guys, but there's also, like, silly funny things like conspiracy theorists, um, and I won't spoil too much about that one. Um, there is a lot of like weird speculation and then around the game. Um, there are, there are, like, there are also line moms who like really love specific characters and, um, there's one of the most recent audiences that I unlocked were like people who are into feet. So if you're in Tarantino is one of those tough.

21:56Absolutely. No 100%. Um, when you have like your film buffs, so like if you, uh, if you focus on somebody and tilt your camera at an angle and just keep filming, the film students absolutely go nuts for it. Um, like, yes. This is amazing. It has such an eye for production. Yeah. Okay. So the, the folks behind this is Nareal, who are the people behind the, uh, Reigns games, which there is those card. Those like mobile card games. Yes. Wow. Like what a change in tone. Like the, the, I'm, I'm so blown away. They also look like I guess card shark is another game that they did. But this is completely different. Um, I love the departure from their normal card stuff. Yeah. Yeah. I love the concept of this because it's not just the show itself and managing the relationships.

22:58It's managing the audience. And so, um, that's a nice dynamic and also keeps it not too serious. Like it's obviously meant to be kind of like follow hijinks and fun. So I love that approach. I love this. I'm so can play this. It's very silly. It's very funny. There's also like a side story. There's like actual plot to this game. Um, and I won't say much about it because it took me by surprise. And I'm still trying to get to the end of the plot. Uh, it's very good. I've been enjoying it. It's what keeps me coming. Uh, sometimes the gameplay loop can get a little bit repetitive because it is just filming some of the same people over and over. Again. Um, and you go through like seasons every season is a week long. Um, so you get seven days. Uh, but it's really, it's really fun and really silly. Um, I, I've been enjoying it a lot. I love when they get into like little slack fights. And, um, the comments because you get like a stream of comments over on the side that like kind of give you hints as to what it is that the audience wants to see.

24:04And the comments are hilarious. The comments are so funny. They're writing team has always been so funny. And it's used to be more of like the dry kind of like written in humor and like the background like the dialogues of cards and things like that. So I love that they're. This is a departure from that where they get to actually. I flexed a bit more of that writing skill. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I'm so excited. Oh, thank you for bringing up Crush House. I'm. I'm so. Thank you. We measure success in the show by the amount of money we make everybody else spend on the podcast. That's how we do. So I was excited to hear Gabby that you had. Yeah, you know wrong. Yep. Uh, that you had purchased perfect tides after your last visit. I did. I did. I bought both of them. So I'm. I still. I still need to play them. I want to play them on stream. I'm very excited about it. But I have to finish. I can reach the veil guard first. That's a whole other side tangent. We're not going to go into that.

25:04Oh, man. There's so many side tangents. I want to. I want to go into there. But before we do. We do have one more game on your list of games that you have played that are not side tangents, which is. Archipelago multi world randomizers. Another. Another good title. Another like interesting titled game. Tell us about it. So this is a little bit of a misnomer because the archipelago randomizer is kind of a program that enables you to randomize games and play them with other people. So I play randomizers with my friends. We do month long randomizers. Um, and you can do them synchronously, which means that you you play at the same time. Um, and you, uh, you can play them at the same time or you can do them asynchronously, which means that you play them all during your own time. Uh, so the way that the archipelago works is, uh, you pick a game. Any game, uh, there, there's like a list on the website of like official games that have, um,

26:09like support, but there's also a huge list of games that are like in beta testing for archipelago. Or games that are like just about to hit approval and they're just like finishing their testing and everything like that. Um, so for example, right now I am playing an archipelago with my friends that we started in early March. And we're going until early April. I have randomized stardew valley. One of my friends has randomized symphonic Castlevania symphony of the night. Another one of my friends has randomized a Pokemon fire red and leaf green. And so what we do is we all play our games. Um, and normally when you would get like a reward in game, like so for example, if I'm playing stardew valley and I complete the tutorial quest, that means that I have to like harvest a turn up. Uh, that can be an item in my game and everything is completely randomized. Uh, and you can set the randomization levels to your heart's content. So I can randomize entrances if I like.

27:11So if I leave my farm, um, I can show up in the desert. Um, and so it's very customizable. It's a lot of fun. So again, if I, if I harvest a turnip, I can either find seeds from a later season or I can send a sword to my friend who's playing symphony of the night. And so they now have that item and they can go through the rest of their game with like a really overpowered sword that will help them progress through the game. Or I can send, uh, an ultra ball to my friend who's playing Pokemon, uh, and make catches easier for him. And so every time my friend catches a Pokemon and like completes an entry in the polka decks, he can send something. Um, they can send something either to me or to themselves or to our friend who's playing Castlevania Symphony of the night. It's really interesting. It's a lot of fun. It's like a fresh fun way to play games with your friends. Um, I've been doing it for a good long while now.

28:12Um, like I said, I occasionally do like these month long archipelagos. I often listen to my lectures while I'm doing a starting Valley randomizer, which is really neat. But yeah, so the way it works is that you get checks. Um, and so like if I fish up a fish in Stardew Valley, that means that that's a check. Um, which means that I've unlocked something either for myself or for my friends. Um, and so there is, uh, you have like an end condition, which is either you defeat the final boss or you get a certain achievement or you, if you're playing Pokemon, you defeat the elite four. Um, and so you, you have to do that with the items that you are given essentially. So you don't start out, start out, you can't start out with like standard items, but you don't always. So for example, if someone's playing Pokemon, their starter isn't like your typical, uh, Charmander Bulbasaur Squirtle, you can start out with guard of war.

29:12You can start out with skinny, you can start out with bread on like. You deal with the hand that you were dealt and you go from there and it's great. Now, um, I have so many questions because I think especially if you're not familiar with this level of sort of customization and specialization, I can be a little confusing to hear. For sure. Um, so I went to the website to the link and we'll have links in the show notes for all of our games as usual. And a lot of the games on this list are older, but there are also, there's some new ones. I saw like Noida and VVVVV, um, and a few others, but, um, yeah, like it seems like there may need to be some familiarity with the game from the onset in order to. Play just because the. And I just opened a few like the way that they get randomized sometimes does.

30:15Make it seem like it'd be more challenging, but if you're familiar with the story, if you've played a game a few times, that's the level of. I think change in customization that can make the game fresh and new and interesting again. So I get it, but like I would say that might be a challenge if you jump into a game that you're not as familiar with. Just because it does that customization does seem to be. It does seem to vary from game to game. So like just based on what I'm looking at. Yeah, some games have presets. Yeah, you can have like really easy randomization settings. Uh, we're a summer, some require like a little bit more high level knowledge. It's not uncommon. So I brought up our Capella go because our Capella go is extremely popular with speedrunners. We love playing our Capella go. Um, all of my friends who I am playing with, we are all speedrunners. And so, um, it's kind of like an extra additional challenge for like completing a game fast and also.

31:15Uh, doing it with your randomization settings. That's incredible. Some of my friends have like completed their archipelago's live within like two hours. Because they have like such a high level knowledge of the game. It's really impressive. It's really cool. Um, some of my other friends have also like played a completely new game in a randomizer and finished it within a month. Like we're built different. Yeah. But very, very excited to have this, uh, the speedrunning. Yeah. This is so incredible. Like especially since, because I'm looking like Mega Man 2, you know, there's. Dark Souls 3. Like this one interesting. So, yeah. Do you have a, do you have an idea of what like the selection of games? Like the why for the selection of games or anything? I'm, this is purely out of curiosity just because I'm like, oh, yeah.

32:17This is so deep. So this is basically like, um, like a very specific mod. So this is a community, uh, created mod for the game. And it's all centralized within this one website. Um, so it's basically if somebody has an interest importing a game to archipelago, they will develop the mod themselves. Um, and then add it to the game. Like I said, so there are official, like official in that they're like officially sanctioned. They've been tested. Hey, if you want to try out a randomizer here are stable games that you can try out that we know work. Um, on their discord server because there is a discord server that is links on the website. Um, there are also lots of games that are like in testing. And so it's a community of people who are like, I would love to see a randomizer for. Slay the spire. I'm pretty sure that is in testing right now. So there's a randomizer for slay the spire. Um, and so they develop the mod.

33:17It's all community based. So there's no like official team behind it. They, it's very much like, what does the community want? What do the people who play these games want? Do they want the archipelago? Um, like do they want that compatibility? If they do, then they put the work in basically. Um, I have been experimenting recently with a, with an archipelago like a randomizer for rift of the Necro dancer, which is a rhythm game. Um, so my friends send me songs that I can then play. And when I complete the song, I send them other items. It's really fun. I mean, you, you are muted by the way. I just saw you talking. No, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I forget that you watched that. I was just excited and talking, but I didn't want to talk over. Um, sorry. Uh, they've got a gamified version of Microsoft paint. I'm so, I'm so emotional.

34:17That is like such a staple of my child. Like, and so many of these games are. Like, I want to be clear there. There's so much love shown here for specific games and specific. That's why I'm like, what is the selection process? Because I'm seeing deep cuts and main, like major classics and everything in between. So it's, it's obviously a labor of love. But Microsoft paid. Hello. Okay. That's, that's peach my curiosity for sure. Incredible. Uh, should, should we, should we pause here and then go into our speedrunning conversation? I think that might be, I might be where we are right now. So we're going to take a quick break and we're going to come right back and we'll be talking speedrunning. And we are back.

35:31So, Gabby. Let's talk about the world of speedrunning. Um, can you just kind of lead us off? I know a lot. I think most people know what speedrunning is, but, but I, I'd love to hear. I'd love to hear you kind of start with like, what is the speedrunning scene like? How did people enter it? Like what is, uh, you know, just share your experiences. Because this is something you do quite a bit. I do. Yeah. So, um, my philosophy on speedrunning is very simple and very straightforward. You pick an objective in a video game and you try and do it as quickly as possible. That's it. If you've done that at least once, congratulations, you're a speedrunner. Um, amazing. There are, uh, leaderboards and there are like lots of different places where people record times, um, where people keep track of records and keep track of other people and there are huge communities around speedrunning. But the principle of the thing is if you decide, if you like a game, uh, you want to complete it quickly,

36:38you pick your objective and you go as fast as you can and you go from there and you keep going and you keep going faster and faster and faster. Um, that is, that's my philosophy on speedrunning. Um, anybody can do it. Uh, anybody can pick it up and then, uh, it's very, anybody can be a speedrunner, but it, but not everybody can do it well. Not, it's a skill, it's a skill that you learn, right? Like in the way that it's like, not everybody can be an expert, but everybody can speedrun. Anybody and everybody can speedrun. And if it's something that brings you joy, if it's something that interests you, go forth and do it. You don't need to compete with anybody else. You don't need to post your times on any leaderboards. You don't need to submit two events. If you like your game and you just want to complete it quickly, that's all you need. There's a lot of infrastructure around speedrunning, um, speedrun.com is like a huge platform for information on speedrunning.

37:41Um, all of the communities gather there, not all of them, but there's a good number of communities that gather on speedrun.com. Some communities have their own platforms, their own websites, their own leaderboards. Um, so there's no one centralized place where you can speedrun or post your times. Um, but it's very, I, I feel very passionate about it. I think that it is something for everyone. If that's something that they're interested in. Um, so yeah, my philosophy on speedrun is if you want, if you, you pick your objective, you go as quickly as you want. If that is something that you have done, congratulations. Welcome to the club. I have to wonder, like, I know that speedrunning's been around for a super long time. Yeah. And I feel like it kind of came up in like the 90s, like, ish when games were determined by save points, where you would have to like hit a certain save point.

38:43And if you, let's say failed to kill a boss, you would have to fight through all of that stuff over again. And you would just get faster and faster and faster at it. So like, maybe some of us that are older can have an inkling of what that might feel like playing some of those old games. But I have to wonder like, oh, so go ahead. No, go ahead. I'm going to say it's not even the old game. So I think the aha moment I had when Gabby was just talking was actually like that exact experience that you just described me but for silk song. Like there's like all these run backs to the bosses that were like, it was brutal to get there. And then, you know, I'm a couple tries deep in the boss. And I'm like, oh, I'm just flying there through this, what was once like this kind of insurmountable, liminal space between like the resting spot. And yeah, where the boss is. So yeah, it is, it is like yet, I think there is like not just old games, but new games too, a way to like really,

39:48you do it sometimes without even realizing it. Like I didn't even know I was a speed runner. And apparently I am. Yeah, like that was what they just like hearing you describe it. I'm like, I know I feel like I've done that in moments, but never pursued it. And I wonder if that like I appreciate you saying like anybody could do this because I always think like, no, there's no way I could be that quick. And that, you know, like think I guess so frustrated. And I was like, no, wait, we used to beat our head against the wall for hours doing the same thing over and over and over again. And that sense of incremental physical learning is so cool. Like there's, there's that you get that with a lot of, especially with a lot of more challenging platformers that that you're physically teaching your body, how to respond as quickly as possible. Like even faster than you could like explain it or like you're just, you're just sort of training those reflexes, I guess.

40:50Like some of it can be fluxes for sure. Some of it is just pattern recognition. And a lot of it is knowledge. So for example, I speedrun Stardew Valley. That isn't very like if you think about speedrunning, you don't immediately think about Stardew Valley. You think about like Dark Souls or you think about Hollow Knight or you think about like any other kind of like action oriented RPG. Metroid. Yeah. Metroid is huge in the speedrunning scene. The Legend of Zelda is huge in the speedrunning scene. Mario is huge in the speedrunning scene. They've got thousands upon thousands of speedrunners as speedrun Stardew Valley. This is a farming sim. I get a lot of questions about how the heck do you speedrun Stardew Valley? And it's the same principle. Is that we choose an objective that we would like to complete quickly and then we go from there. Stardew Valley has what I like to call a buffet of options. And you can pick and choose and like go wherever you like.

41:55We have lots of categories and subcategories. So for example, we have a restoration like overall category and that can go into restoring the community center. Or you can go like the evil Amazon Joja route. Both of these are valid options because these are endings that you can get in the game. And so you can do either one of these things as quickly as you can. We have like getting to the bottom of the mines, getting to floor 120 of the mines is another speedrunning category that we have. We also have a midway point. So if you don't want to go all the way down to 120, you can hit floor 50 in the mines. And that is also a speedrunning category. My personal favorite is marriage percent where you marry an NPC as quickly as possible. It's great. And I feel that's very, what are the, so what are the times like in that? Like how long does it take? Is it like how long to get to, I don't know, like bed Elliott?

42:58How long does it take to do that for an average? You know, that's a great question. I can look that up right now. So every marriage candidate is different. They all have different work requirements. They all have different favorite items. They all have different schedules. And this plays into the speedrun itself. It's been a minute since I've checked the leaderboards. Specifically for marriage percent. And there's been a lot of development in these games and in these categories specifically. But like, for example, our fastest candidate is Shane where you can marry him in 35 minutes. You asked about Elliott. Yeah, I was pulling a name out of a hat because that's the one that I remember. I think Elliott is the poet who lives on the beach. The current world record for glitchless and we can get into what glitchless means in a second is 50 minutes and 52 seconds. Second place is an hour flat, an hour and 46 seconds.

44:01And then third place is an hour and 10 minutes. There's been a lot of development with all of the marriage candidates. So I think that all of them are you can get them under an hour now. But there's also like, there's also factors that go into it. I wrote a guide for like, for getting into speedrunning Stardew Valley. And so I feel like I'm going to pull that up really quickly. We should link to that. Yeah, put that in the show notes. Yeah, we should. Yeah. And I feel like it's like a really good entry point for learning how to speedrun in general. Probably needs some updating, but it'll be fine. I'd love to see that. Yeah, that sounds awesome. I'd love to look at that. Yeah, for sure. I had a question just sort of in general, because you mentioned a lot of this is very community-based. And like there's a sense of friendly competition. Do you ever do like weird speedruns?

45:01Like what's your like do is has that ever been a contest before? Or like, okay. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. The audience can't see me, but I'm nodding. Yeah. So we have a lot of fun. There are, we have meme categories, which are like silly little side objectives that we do. And those are really fun. We do also have like competitions. And we like some, some communities have internal competitions. Like for example, the Titanfall 2 community has an event called Mach March. They run this every year in that basically the two speedrunners or they have a bracket of speedrunners. And they all go head to head and they run individual levels back to back as fast as they can in a race. And so they do like a whole contest bracket. And whoever is the fastest out of the entire bracket wins Mach March. It's very neat. The Harvest Moon speedrunning community.

46:02I don't know if they have competitions, but they have showcases. So basically they take a month out of the year. They put together a little event and they all show off like the latest speedrun that they're working on. I think Silksong, the Hollow Knight community has also historically had different showcases and different competitions. And it varies. They're all very community based and things like that. It's really neat. It's really cool. Your mileage may vary depending on the community and what the speedrun scene looks like. But with like the bigger community is there's a better chance of having like more showcases, more competitions. And whether that be like formally organized within the communities themselves or just something that you do with your friends really. I'm going to I'm going to put one. I'm going to put one out there inspired by the first game on your playlist today. How about we start to Valley baby erasing simulator speedrun challenge where you have to get a baby and then erase it with the it's existence with the wizard in the fastest possible time.

47:07I think that was actually a pitch for our meme category. Amazing. It didn't go through because babies we do actually have crit the baby percent, which is really fun. Crit the baby is a joke category in that like you marry an NPC you have a baby with them. And in update 1.6 of started Valley there was a very, very small chance that when you like lift your baby into the air and you do like a little a little throw animation. There is a very, very, very small chance that when you throw your baby you throw your baby off the screen and we call that creating the baby. That pleases me so much. It takes a while. It's really hard. But some people do it for fun. And I think that that's beautiful.

48:07I also have people who do like full perfection, which is also a meme category. We had to like come up with really specific rules because perfecting started Valley is an undertaking. People spend years getting perfection on their started Valley farm. I believe that the current world record is under 24 hours. Yeah. I can't even play the regular game normally successful. I'm so impressed. Yeah, that's like. In a maximum of of game knowledge and a certain amount of like min maxing as well. There are also challenge runs within the started Valley community where people are like, oh, I want to complete this specific target. Before like spring second or like not spring to like spring. We'll say spring 15 of year one, which is kind of different because in game days, measure out differently from like real time.

49:09So that's like a different kind of aspect of like challenge and speed running. But yeah, so there are lots of there's lots of also like a lot of terminology in and around speed running. I would love to like explain it to you. Yeah, like give us a couple. I think this would be like a useful resource for people and also yeah, we're doing a run down. This is like your quick and dirty guide to speed running. So we're going to speed run speed running. Let's do it. Yeah. So generally speaking, what you need to do a speed run is a way to record your screen and a timer. A lot of people use open broadcasting software to record their screen. But you know, you do whatever works best for you. For timers, lots of people will like pull up a Google timer or one of the most popular programs is live split. So that will like it will help you like put different categories like different benchmarks of a speed run.

50:09And so you can time how long it takes for you to complete each benchmark. There are different platforms. So like if you speed run a game that's on the ps5, for example, you can some people will just like record point a camera at their TV screen and put a timer in the corner. And that's it. More technologically advanced people will use a capture software. But that's like the long and the short of it. That's the quick and dirty of it. You also time things differently depending on the game. So there are two acronyms that are super important. One of them is IGT, which is in game time. Some games will have an internal clock. Like, like, there's a. Well, I mean, some games have internal clocks that I'm blanking at the moment, but they will time you your attempts internally. So it's like, oh, especially with road likes.

51:09Hades is a great example. Hades is a great example. It will tell you how long it takes for you to like from the beginning of your attempt all the way to the end. How long it takes you to defeat Hades. So that's IGT. That's an in game time. There's also RTA, which stands for real time attack. And that's kind of something that the speedrunning. The speedrunning scene has adopted. Because that's from RPGs, real time attacks. That is like how long it takes in real life. Not, not accounting for load times. Or if your game doesn't have an internal timer. You, you, you time them RTA. Because sometimes like certain games will not time cut scenes, but you'll watch through an entire cut scene. That changes your time, basically. So if you're playing Resident Evil and the timer stops while you're watching a cut scene, your in game time will be different from your real time attack.

52:13So these are important things to know. So yeah, so those are like two really important acronyms when it comes to learning how to speedrun is in game time and then RTA. There's also loadless, which doesn't really count like your loading times, which is a whole other kind of worms. So, so to speak. I have a question. Do you have to do a lot of mental math when you're doing a speedrun? It depends on the game. I guess, I guess if you're doing like a like shortest time ever kind of thing, I guess that makes sense. But if you're doing more like time challenges that can be a bit more flexible. Yeah. I know that like some games are very math based, like Pokemon games are extremely math based. And so that's, there's a lot of internal math putting in there. Stardew Valley is also an extremely math based game. Believe it or not. I think 100% believe that. Yeah. There's like counters going on. Yeah, there's a lot there.

53:15Ballotro is an unconventional speedrun that is very math based as well. But there are also games like Dark Souls where you don't really need to do math and it's very precision based. Or Hollow Knight, which is also very precision based unless you're accounting for geo and you need to make a certain purchase. Then that's like math. A lot of the answers will be it depends on the game. Right. Right. I also want you to talk a little bit about games done quick, which is like the charity speedrunning institution. Can you give us a little background on that and your involvement? Yeah. So games done quick is one of many speedrunning charity institutions. It's one of the most famous, especially here in the United States. There are other charity institutions that are focused on speedrunning abroad. RTA in Japan is one that's very popular in Asia as well as speedons, which is based in France.

54:17But yeah, so games done quick is a charity organization. We have raised money. We have two mainline events, one in the winter, one in the summer. So that is awesome games done quick in the winter and summer games done quick in the summer. Yeah, kind of tracks. You can tell which one came first too. Games done quick has existed since I want to say about 2015. So yeah, it's been about 10, 10 years or so. Yes, that sounds right. And we raised money for charity. So a lot of speedrunning, speedrunning and charity are very interlinked. I think because of the influence of games done quick. So a lot of speedrunners will put in a lot of time and effort into getting like really good times and putting on really good performances so they can eventually be on the big stage at GDQ.

55:17It's a fantastic event. They also have smaller offshoots. But I'm going to talk about the big ones first and then we'll go into the little ones. So awesome games done quick raises money for the prevent cancer foundation. Yes, and summer games done quick raises money for doctors without borders. It is not uncommon that we raise anywhere between two and three million dollars for each of these organizations every year. So for example, I should have pulled up these numbers beforehand. No, an apology is on our part for not for not seeing the questions that you will be asking. It just came up on the fly it's this is so fascinating because I think it's something that most folks have either heard about or seen especially like when Twitch was especially when Twitch was early on coming up. A lot of folks were speedrunning on Twitch and so I think that's where that's where at least I got my introduction to speedrunning.

56:19And it's fun to watch because even if maybe you don't have the reflexes or the game knowledge just being in the audience and being a part of that sort of achievement and participation and knowledge is super cool. Like I think it's it just shows a different side things like I think especially for folks like us. We play so many games with a light touch. It's really nice to hear from people who are playing a specific number of games with a very, very like deep and nuanced touch. Like that's it's such a contrast. I love it. We love our games. We love our games so much, but we also hate our games very much because of the deep understanding that we have of these games in the mechanics. Like we know exactly how RNG, which is random number generation for being uninitiated, how RNG can and will completely miss things up. Sort of like notorious for this by the way. Terrible RNG. It's awful. But it's only for like very specific cases.

57:20So we love our games. We think that they're really neat and that's why we put in so much effort. We play them over and over and over again. And I feel like you could only do that with something that you love because otherwise it's going to tear you apart. Right. So do you dream and start to value that? I know I have every once in a while. Yeah. It's like when you when you spend so much time with something, it just kind of works its way into your subconscious sometimes. Yeah. I've always wondered if speedrunners like run in their sleep. Sometimes we do. So because we're the show that we are, I feel the need to like tether some of speedrunning and what we've been talking about to extremely like experimental theater for a hot second. I'm extremely reminded of there is a theater artist Jersey Gratowski who I'm sure many people have heard of. But the big thing that Gratowski has is like the amount of time that you put the performers into something.

58:26So like in traditional American theater, like you do your show, you have a couple weeks of rehearsal and then the show goes up and then it's done. And Gratowski is like months and years of rehearsal so that you are like seeing the matrix of the piece as it were. So you know it inside and out. And I feel like in some way speedrunning is that compared to like the more classic method styles of rehearsal where you're spending only a couple of weeks. You're getting that really deep knowledge that goes like you go past the point of boredom and into like the total understanding of it. I definitely think so. Yeah. And I feel like a lot of that culminates in like an experience and experience or an appearance is the word that I'm looking for at a mainline games done quick event. Almost I don't want to call it the holy real speedrunning, but it's one of the biggest platforms in speedrunning in the United States. And so people have put in years and years and years of effort into developing their speed games just for a chance to show it off on the big stage.

59:34Starting Valley, for example, had been submitting ever since the game came out in 2016. Wow. And we finally finally got our first mainline appearance during the online era of GDQ because of course we had to shut down for the pandemic. I say we I do not formally work for GDQ. I have done some contract work for GDQ. I volunteer a lot of my time for GDQ. I am not like an official employee of GDQ just putting that out there. So the sort of Valley community finally got our shot at a mainline event in 2022 or 2020 2022. Yeah. Amazing. It's really cool and it's a lot it's a lot. I think that speedrunners are like a very special breed of people like obviously you have your good and your bad. Sometimes your friends really suck, etc. But I think that the fact that we put in all of this effort into speedrunning so we can eventually go to a charity event and raise millions of dollars for charity is really it's it's exceptional.

1:00:50I think that the fact that this is something that we have decided to do with our time. It's it's beautiful genuinely and it's not like there are the mainline events of course but games done quick. First of all has other side events for example we had black and a flash. Back to black 2026 which is black and a flash is mainline event. Black and a flash is the all black speedrunning kind of sector of games done quick. It is all black speedrunners. They raise money for an organization called Race Forward and this past February they raised $53,232 for Race Forward. Wow. There is an all women's and femme's division that is the frame fatale's events which is how I got my start running. I joined like the all women's division it's women and femme's so if you identify as femme in a way that is meaningful to you.

1:01:52You don't have to be cis we welcome transgender folks we welcome gender non-conforming people non-binary people I myself am non-binary I went through a whole gender journey as I was like on as I was in frame fatales I have them to thank for that. We raise money for we started raising money only for Malala fund. We also have two events a year now we have now we raise money for the national women's law center in March for women's history month and we raise money for Malala fund in September and so our last events we raised $147,647 for the national women's law center. It's beautiful and there are also like people have looked at games done quick and have put on their own speedrunning events their own like smaller speedrunning events so for example there is fast-paced events who raise money for take this or the transgender law center.

1:02:53There is one of the organizations that I also volunteer my time for is multi-thon which focuses specifically on multiplayer games co-op games things that focus on community and focus on like more than one player in any way shape or form we are currently right now on our last day of our marathon and we're raising money for blue pass. They give they they they raise service dogs for autistic children and so they offer these service dogs two families for free and so with our fundraising we try and raise about $5,000 every event so we can name a dog that's the little that's the little boost that we do but like all of the funds that we go to go towards like the training costs. The food everything that goes into like raising and like paying paying these service dogs because again blue path offers these the service dogs for free to families who need them.

1:04:04Let me think there are so many there are so many there's there's a gosh there's steel steel city speedsters which is based in Pittsburgh they are brand new there's Midwest speedfest which is based in the Midwest they have they have a mainline event in Minneapolis Minnesota and that's specifically for speedrunners in the Midwest. There's fastest first which is a community of furries who also speedrun and they also raise money for charity and there are all of these little offshoots there's lady archators I can't believe I forgot lady archators I also do work with lady archators which is another like fem centric group which is mostly like women and fems in speedrunning and gaming so like you don't have to be a speedrunner this is also true for frame fat house you don't have to be a speedrunner but like if you're passionate about gaming and you love video games. They have an annual events called the lady archators super showcase where like people do arts last year I did a I did a cooking showcase from from the Stardew Valley cookbook we made a recipe from the Stardew Valley cookbook in an hour and a half incredible.

1:05:15Me and my roommate put that together but like we also do speedruns we also do showcases and this is this is and these are all they raise money for for care every year and so this is definitely I want to say like an influence of games so quick because they are so large but speedrunning and charity are so intrinsically linked we also do like personal fundraising as well it's not uncommon for folks to this is something that has come up within the past few years or so we do mutual aid events basically where a bunch of our friends will get together and raise money for a friend in need. I myself was the beneficiary of one of these things we basically had like an invite only events we called it black hearts past Boston fund and all of my friends help me raise about four thousand dollars to help me move to Boston from Florida so I could go to grad school.

1:06:16We recently had an event called Holathon which was very silly very silly name but it was to help one of our one of our friends raise money for her cost of living while she got bottom surgery so while she was in recovery for bottom surgery we wanted to help. She needed help covering her expenses and so we raise a metric ton of money to help her offset her expenses and then like everything that she didn't need she donated to the transgender law center which I feel like it really exemplifies how community based speedrunning is. We keep an eye out on each other we try and support each other and the best way that we can and like of course like every other community there's drama there's into personal issues it's it come like if you have a group of more than a hundred people is going to happen. But I feel like the nature of speedrunning is very very community based it's very community oriented because all of the resources that we have you can't get from just one person.

1:07:26It's a collaborative effort and so I feel like all of the things that we do for charity all of the things that we we try and make the world a better place and every way that we can and this is kind of the way that we do that and I think that's beautiful. I think I think that's beautiful too yeah it's I hope that like we all like I hope that our community hears that too and comes and joins these communities as well. I think that's really important and you you articulated it like perfectly like this is this is a moment for community this is a moment for taking care of each other and this is an avenue by which we can all do it and that's that's that's amazing. Where can our community find you Gabby I know you're on your at blackheart wings on blue sky but where could people see some of your some of your speed runs online is there a place to do that.

1:08:26Yeah so I am in grad school so my schedule is a little bit all over the place because I'm trying to get my master's degree but when I do stream and when I do practice speedrunning you can find me at twitch.tv slash blackheart. I am trying to finish drag and age the veil guard but I am also trying to learn a few new speed runs I'm going into my horror arc. I think I'm trying to learn some horror speed. Yeah you can keep tabs on me on on blue sky I've been at PAX East a lot lately so there will be lots of posts on about PAX East but I also post my going live posts there. So you can find me on blue sky or on twitch as blackheart wings. Awesome thank you so much for that it's always a pleasure to have you on the show I look forward to to the next time we do. Such a delight. Yeah this is great this has been great and with that I think we should call this an episode.

1:09:32We'd like to thank our producer Jonathan down and for all the hard work that he does also thank you to our composer and yours you can check him out. We'd also like to thank you our listeners for joining us. I'm going to add loop here we'd also like to thank Gabby for coming on and joining us for this episode thank you so much. If you enjoyed this podcast and would like to support us we have a Patreon you can find that a patreon.com forward slash GWJ. You can also support this podcast through reading and reviewing us on your podcast app of choice. Email us your thoughts and opinions at call at gamerswithjobs.com. Love to hear from you. That's going to do it for this week we're going to go ahead and head out and we'll see you again next week.