Super Mario Galaxy speedrunner Jhay has achieved almost everything he can in his discipline. Hard work and community support have allowed the 21-year-old man from Wales to grab six out of nine world records in both Super Mario Galaxy and Super Mario Galaxy 2. As the speedrunner continues his domination in the two games, he also has strong views about how the community could become even better.
The sport has grown immensely from its humble beginning, thanks to innovations like Twitch and important events like the charity event Games Done Quick. It is still a small section within the greater gaming culture, but Jhay believes it will definitely keep on growing and becoming more mainstream. Deeds like Jhay's recent world record live at Games Done Quick 2023 surely makes a big difference, with Game Rant recently speaking with Jhay about his run and how the speedrunning community is improved when developers interact with that audience.
Speedrunning is Becoming More Mainstream
According to Jhay, big events, including the aforementioned GDQ as well as ESA Speedrunning Marathons, definitely have a large part in making the greater public more aware of this very specialized discipline. They make sure that there are always new viewers who can experience the world's best performing their tricks and competing for world records in real time. The experience is enhanced with great commentary, which often includes speedrunners like Rox on the GDQ stream.
However, Twitch, and streaming in general, is also responsible in a significant way for the increase in interest. While speedrunning videos on YouTube, and even recordings pre-YouTube, have existed for a long time, the interactive element of Twitch has made it much more enjoyable for both speedrunners and fans.
"Watching someone on a good run, you start to feel nervous for them, like you feel your heart rate increasing. It's such a different experience with somebody live instead of just watching a video of it."
While streaming makes it harder to cheat in speedruns, which, unfortunately, exists in all competitive endeavors, the most important thing it brings to the table for Jhay is the communal aspect. Speedrunning can be a brutally lonely sport if done in the solitude of one's own home and without an audience. Streaming allows like-minded people, whether fans, aspiring speedrunners, or world record holders to join in, cheer, and help.
Game Developers Can Help Speedrunning
Nearly every game can be run, but not every game is equal in terms of speedrunning capabilities. Speedrunning at its core seeks to find ways to circumvent the capabilities of the player characters and the intended routes designed by the developer. This often includes abusing bugs and glitches that the developer perhaps didn't know about until they were found by the speedrunning community.
There's a huge variance in how these are handled across game developers. Some are fine with releasing a game and having bugs that don't affect the casual players, other developers want to squash each and every bug, no matter how seemingly inconsequential to a regular player. Few even design their games specifically to be good for speedrunning. However, according to Jhay, the category that patches games indiscriminately is hindering the speedrunners, although they might not even realize it.
Speedrunners spend hours, days, and even years finding, learning, and perfecting tricks that a casual player would never even consider. This is sometimes to save seconds or in the most competitive categories mere frames, which equate to split seconds, in the overall time. Occasionally game developers can patch a part of the game, which changed the way the game deals with situations like this. Needless to say, this is highly discouraging for speedrunners.
"I know the Celeste developers are really into the speedrunning scene, and they interact with the community a lot. I hope to see it in the future where a lot more developers just interact with the communities more."
Jhay hopes that there will be, one day, more interaction between the speedrunning community and game developers. A good example of this is platformer Celeste, which is one of Jhay's favorite speedrunning games to watch alongside Lego Star Wars. The developers of Celeste are in active communication with the community, which allows speedrunners to be more confident that patching won't ruin the runs that they've been developing. Speedrunners give a lot of attention to games, especially some of the older titles, that might often be almost single-handedly kept alive by the community. This can't be a one-way street, though, and Jhay believes that communication between the game developers and speedrunners is a way for a much brighter future for both camps.