Glitch abuse is one of the quintessential techniques in speedrunning, in order to be able to complete the game faster than normally.
Or, more precisely, glitch abuse has become a quintessential technique. It has not always been so. For example, in the early years of Speed Demos Archive (which started as a collection of Quake and Doom speedruns, but later opened to all games), out-of-bounds glitches were banned. The same rule applied in its then-major rival site, Twin Galaxies.
It was deemed back then that glitching the game so that the player can go out of bounds, skipping most of a level, or even the entire game, was unfun and bypassed not only the level or game, but also the skills required to complete the game in the normal way.
Of course one of the major hurdles in such a ban was a matter of definition. With some games it was relatively unambiguous what counted as an "out-of-bounds glitch" and what didn't. With other games, however, it became fuzzier and fuzzier. It became a real hassle. Essentially, the people at charge, the ones making decisions, would need to go through every single game submitted and make long meticulous lists of techniques that were banned. With many games these lists became really nitpicky and extremely subjective and contentious, often with disagreements even between the people at charge on whether something should be banned or not.
After some years of this mess, the principle was simply abandoned, and in most cases glitches are completely free to be used and abused at will, within certain basic ground rules that apply to all games (such as no hex-editing savefiles using an external program, etc.) The approach taken by the current largest speedrunning website, speedrun.com, is that besides some simple set of common ground rules, the speedrunning community of each game can decide on what's allowed and what's not, in different categories of the run. In general, the default "any%" category usually allows pretty much everything by default, very much including out-of-bounds glitches. In fact, the very idea of banning such a glitch in an any% run is deemed completely obsolete and silly. At most it can be imposed on a "glitchless", "low-glitch" or "in-bounds" run, if such a category is popular enough for a particular game.
With many games (perhaps even the majority of games), there isn't a "glitchless" category at all, because there simply aren't enough people interested in making such speedruns. In fact, such categories are a real rarity.
But an interesting question is: Should there be? And more precisely, is abusing out-of-bounds glitches a bad thing, from the viewer's perspective?
Almost invariably when you watch a speedrun of some game with such glitches, eg. on YouTube, there will be people in the comment section saying how out-of-bounds glitching is "cheating", or boring. Most speedrunners, and speedrun aficionados, just laugh at such comments and dismiss them as ignorant.
But should we? Why should we laugh at and dismiss such comments?
I think there is merit in the original idea that out-of-bounds glitches bypass what makes speedrunning interesting, and, partially, the requirement of playing skill from the speedrunner. (Of course using such glitches successfully still requires a lot of skill, but not the kind that the average viewer is interested in.)
A speedrun is interesting to watch when the game is played "normally", but with almost superhuman skill and speed. It's interesting to see how an extremely skilled player engages with the game's enemies and kills them marvelously fast, and solves puzzles at extreme speed, and completes the level, using its intended route, really fast.
I think Quake speedruns are some of the most awesome ones to watch precisely because the game doesn't have out-of-bounds glitches, and thus forces the speedrunners to complete levels "normally", within bounds. (Of course Quake speedruns constantly skip lots of "intended routes", but these are just minor skips, which are interesting.)
With many other games, however, out-of-bounds glitches just make the speedrun boring to watch. Sure, seeing the glitch being triggered is interesting to see a couple of times, from a technical point of view, but it gets old pretty fast. The major problem is that it skips the actual gameplay, and replaces it with the player just bypassing everything, often in a jumbled incorrectly-rendered polygon mess.
This might be "fun" to see in its own way, but it's just not what makes a speedrun fun to watch. It might make for a fun glitch exhibition, but not for a fun speedrun.
A good portion of the viewers want to see the game played normally, using masterful skill. They don't want to see a glitch exhibition. They want to see the fights, the puzzles being solved, the levels being completed in the "normal" way, just awesomely fast.
In the worst case scenarios some speedruns might spend minutes on end out-of-bounds, showing nothing but a glitched mess of wrongly-rendered geometry. They might even be for the most part just that. Rather than see masterful gameplay, they just show glitches.
To some people that in itself can be fun to watch. To a good portion of the public, however, it isn't.
And the problem is that with the majority of games there are no options. There are only out-of-bounds glitched speedruns, and nothing else.
Personally, when I have played a new game through, I often go and see if there's an interesting speedrun of it. If the speedrun heavily (and sometimes not even so heavily) abuses glitches, especially out-of-bounds glitches, I get disappointed. Not always, but oftentimes. It's just not what I wanted to see. I wanted to see how an extremely skilled player completes the game almost optimally as quickly as possible. I didn't want to see levels being bypassed by using glitches.
Or, more precisely, glitch abuse has become a quintessential technique. It has not always been so. For example, in the early years of Speed Demos Archive (which started as a collection of Quake and Doom speedruns, but later opened to all games), out-of-bounds glitches were banned. The same rule applied in its then-major rival site, Twin Galaxies.
It was deemed back then that glitching the game so that the player can go out of bounds, skipping most of a level, or even the entire game, was unfun and bypassed not only the level or game, but also the skills required to complete the game in the normal way.
Of course one of the major hurdles in such a ban was a matter of definition. With some games it was relatively unambiguous what counted as an "out-of-bounds glitch" and what didn't. With other games, however, it became fuzzier and fuzzier. It became a real hassle. Essentially, the people at charge, the ones making decisions, would need to go through every single game submitted and make long meticulous lists of techniques that were banned. With many games these lists became really nitpicky and extremely subjective and contentious, often with disagreements even between the people at charge on whether something should be banned or not.
After some years of this mess, the principle was simply abandoned, and in most cases glitches are completely free to be used and abused at will, within certain basic ground rules that apply to all games (such as no hex-editing savefiles using an external program, etc.) The approach taken by the current largest speedrunning website, speedrun.com, is that besides some simple set of common ground rules, the speedrunning community of each game can decide on what's allowed and what's not, in different categories of the run. In general, the default "any%" category usually allows pretty much everything by default, very much including out-of-bounds glitches. In fact, the very idea of banning such a glitch in an any% run is deemed completely obsolete and silly. At most it can be imposed on a "glitchless", "low-glitch" or "in-bounds" run, if such a category is popular enough for a particular game.
With many games (perhaps even the majority of games), there isn't a "glitchless" category at all, because there simply aren't enough people interested in making such speedruns. In fact, such categories are a real rarity.
But an interesting question is: Should there be? And more precisely, is abusing out-of-bounds glitches a bad thing, from the viewer's perspective?
Almost invariably when you watch a speedrun of some game with such glitches, eg. on YouTube, there will be people in the comment section saying how out-of-bounds glitching is "cheating", or boring. Most speedrunners, and speedrun aficionados, just laugh at such comments and dismiss them as ignorant.
But should we? Why should we laugh at and dismiss such comments?
I think there is merit in the original idea that out-of-bounds glitches bypass what makes speedrunning interesting, and, partially, the requirement of playing skill from the speedrunner. (Of course using such glitches successfully still requires a lot of skill, but not the kind that the average viewer is interested in.)
A speedrun is interesting to watch when the game is played "normally", but with almost superhuman skill and speed. It's interesting to see how an extremely skilled player engages with the game's enemies and kills them marvelously fast, and solves puzzles at extreme speed, and completes the level, using its intended route, really fast.
I think Quake speedruns are some of the most awesome ones to watch precisely because the game doesn't have out-of-bounds glitches, and thus forces the speedrunners to complete levels "normally", within bounds. (Of course Quake speedruns constantly skip lots of "intended routes", but these are just minor skips, which are interesting.)
With many other games, however, out-of-bounds glitches just make the speedrun boring to watch. Sure, seeing the glitch being triggered is interesting to see a couple of times, from a technical point of view, but it gets old pretty fast. The major problem is that it skips the actual gameplay, and replaces it with the player just bypassing everything, often in a jumbled incorrectly-rendered polygon mess.
This might be "fun" to see in its own way, but it's just not what makes a speedrun fun to watch. It might make for a fun glitch exhibition, but not for a fun speedrun.
A good portion of the viewers want to see the game played normally, using masterful skill. They don't want to see a glitch exhibition. They want to see the fights, the puzzles being solved, the levels being completed in the "normal" way, just awesomely fast.
In the worst case scenarios some speedruns might spend minutes on end out-of-bounds, showing nothing but a glitched mess of wrongly-rendered geometry. They might even be for the most part just that. Rather than see masterful gameplay, they just show glitches.
To some people that in itself can be fun to watch. To a good portion of the public, however, it isn't.
And the problem is that with the majority of games there are no options. There are only out-of-bounds glitched speedruns, and nothing else.
Personally, when I have played a new game through, I often go and see if there's an interesting speedrun of it. If the speedrun heavily (and sometimes not even so heavily) abuses glitches, especially out-of-bounds glitches, I get disappointed. Not always, but oftentimes. It's just not what I wanted to see. I wanted to see how an extremely skilled player completes the game almost optimally as quickly as possible. I didn't want to see levels being bypassed by using glitches.
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