Quote:
Originally Posted by DoGGz
Never really understood how someone could be interested enough in any game to repeat it over and over and over, but watching a pro at a game can be pretty interesting. I watch the speedrun charity marathon whenever I find it on twitch.
It's honestly a lot like what drives us to be good at poker. The amount of practice (studying) that you have to do in order to get better is very under-appreciated or misunderstood within the viewing public. There's also a science behind it much like poker. Whereas you experiment or try to find different ways of playing poker optimally, strat finding in speed runs is just like that.
I can't really describe the feeling of beating the best run you've ever had or beating the best known public run in existence without doing real justice to it, but I can tell you that it's a feeling that drives the overwhelming majority of us to continue our speed running pursuits.
Honestly what surprises me is you find entertainment in watching a speed run but can't see how we speed runners justify the entertainment in running it. You are watching a run where you don't know what's going to happen, is everything going to be alright, is the runner going to screw up, is the runner going to land that trick perfectly? The same thing goes through our minds. We feel amazing when we land that frame perfect trick, and feel like crap when we make a huge mistake. The highs and lows make for an emotional roller-coaster that hopefully ends us up on top, just like in poker.