Games Done Quick: Banned Into Submission

Kids, we're going to need to give you 150 cc of Mario's stat. I did not agree with this. I mean, it's a shame that we're doing this, but right now, this is a simple charge and all you have to do is move your arms from side to side, yeah, okay, that's the first step, and yeah , now you're doing it, you're doing the Mario and then you just take a step and then again and that's it, you're doing the Mario like this, okay, yeah, I'm still pretty comfortable sitting down, but yeah, no one, no one did the Mario with me , that was a failure more than any other speed racing game community and its events organized by

quick

ly made

games

seem to attract more scandals. indignant controversy and characters stranger than any other in my first video on gdq I reviewed the history of the event and questioned some of the most notable bands and failures of the time since agdq 2018 the event has not been without more mishaps and error handling Let's take a look at who the latest victims of GDQ's banhammer have been, where the outrage has come from, and what some of the deeper issues look like within the speedrunning community this time around.

I'm going to get first-hand experience at one of these sprinting events and the only way to do that is to become a sprinter. I have to go fast, like a little time at the queue level. There is a small jump ahead that allows me to cook. Do people do this well? So maybe I don't have what it takes to be a speedrunner, but I reached out to some of the top players who attended these events and are well known within the community to get their inside perspectives and get a rundown of the events. before summer 2018 and a more detailed overview of the organization, check out my first video on gdq if you haven't already.

The first controversy of this era arises from the summer

games

that were

quick

ly held in 2018, even when the bands were not staffed by gdq. and Twitter users will let players know when they're upset by the type of language used during speedruns, even when that language is literally directed at in-game NPCs, like when gdq staff got angry at player Mike Canis for calling a game boss. SOI guy is very important in luck based things and one of them will happen with this SOI guy right here, it was fun and game until your runner used the recently popular homophobic transphobic slur, SOI guy towards the end, the sad emoji Mike said no.

I don't know, that's what it meant, I'm sorry, okay, so the first mistake was apologizing to an absurd person when you didn't do anything wrong. Mike wasn't using the term to demean anyone for being trans or gay; he was literally insulting a virtual demon boss in a video titled agdq diversity problem speedrunner real alpha gamer shared some thoughts on this chant the boss a soy boy a soy boy he calls one of the bosses a soy boy it's me and they got mad at him god I have to get it shortly after sgdq 2018 the The tragic shooting at Jacksonville Landing in Florida occurred during the esports event Madden 20:19 in response to this group of GDQ organizers.

Maddy created a thread on the speedrunning subreddit detailing plans to create a private blacklist of suspicious and potentially threatening people not only within the speedrunning community, but also other gaming communities, her plan was to involve other event organizers. and get your input of names to add to this private list. Now it's great. Maddie's idea of ​​a private blacklist might be well-intentioned, but ultimately policies that give immense unchecked power to the organizers. For the sake of safety, which is unfortunately what it is, this ends up being riddled with abuse, especially when the brilliant Maddie says that event managers can report as much or as little as they want about particular incidents - basically, managers can decide what to include about specific people without the full context or Even good reasoning as to why that player will be

banned

from not only gdq but other events as well is basically the Patriot Act for gamers and we all know how well that turned out, even the responses from members of the speedrunning subreddit were not enthused.

The idea, to say the least, before agdq 2019, a couple of pre-emptive bans were issued to players rwhitegoose and graviton due to some nasty comments they made in a private discord. Kotaku reported on the situation citing speedrunner Aundrea who I actually interviewed. In my last gdq video I posted a now deleted Twitter thread showing screenshots of discord logs involving White Goose and Graviton. There are pages and pages of records that I don't feel the need to go through here, but the worst was definitely when I was white. Goose made some comments about Jews following the typical far-right narrative of blaming Jews for everything or something like that.

Also the fools used the T-word several times, which many people find offensive initially. GDQ did not take any action against these speedrunners because they could. I didn't check if the discord logs were real, after some angry tweets they of course relented and man Juice and Graviton, interestingly, although both players had completely different reactions, rwhitegoose seems to have changed his mind by claiming that those screenshots show conversations that contain hurtful concepts. ideas and conspiracy theories that I have come to completely and completely reject, while Graviton, who actually seems to have said much less damning things, reacted by saying in a now-deleted tweet that when you're wrong you think you'll get more followers than you would have had. with your career at gdq.

I reached out to Super Mario 64 Speedrunner and world record holder Cheese to get his take on this as he knew White Goose before all of this and had shared some thoughts on this situation and when I found out what it was through Andreas from what. them showing what a graviton said and all that stuff online. I had no idea beforehand about anything our goose had said or even that he had a secret online alias. I think most people had no idea and I was shocked when I saw that. kind of thing and I felt a little differently about, well goose, I lost Allah, Allah definitely lost a sense of respect for him, which really bothered me and overall I guess the conversation was all the retweets and replies that I saw Andreas. tweet that was a lot of the trans community, a lot of the LGBT community in general that started replying and retweeting and saying things like laqad is disgusting people or whatever, speedrunning, totally unacceptable community, gdq and everything for the organization, etc., transphobic, this and that, just all of these. crazy stuff and the first thing I saw was hiding solving this situation with the graviton and okay, goose, great, let's do it, but I immediately jumped into these crazy, crazy accusations, all these things about the entire speedrunning community in games, earthquakes and all.

This was like if you go out and complain about everyone and say, "Oh, everyone often accepts you," then other people won't like you either if they're going to know how to just separate the community further. So if you say that, you'd accuse an environment of interception, that's one thing, but then they used to say these horrible words and talk about all the other speedrunners and how horrible they are, so that's just going to make people lose their nerve. I respect. you more Despite the discriminatory nature of these discord logs, although one could argue that they were still conversations held in a private chat and that none of it had to be related to the speed itself, either way, streamer Calebhart seems being fed up with the hyperpolitical climate surrounding video game speedrunning, of all things, it's this recent event with goose and whatever, I don't know, it's getting a little bit, it's just getting too much, he used to be into gaming video games and raising money for charities, that was it. now it's all about this, you know, political correctness in this other irrelevant thing that just isn't important, even aside from external politics, tensions are also high within the walls of gdq events.

Bonesaw was a sprinter that I covered in my last video. He is a very respected man. -significant and widely admired player who was

banned

for some of the most trivial comments and jokes I have ever heard that were directed at Air Canada and Owen Wilson. Please tweet to Air Canada. Well, Air Canada hates us. Owen Wilson hates this broadcast I came to. I wanted to collaborate with Bonesaw for this video and, instead of an interview, he chose to share with me some of his experiences with the gdq staff in the form of a long but detailed video that I will link in the description.

It's too long to go over in its entirety here, so I encourage you to watch it on his channel, but to summarize some key points, Bonesaw talks about the lack of respect he felt towards Maddie, the gdq organizer, a whole year later of his ban from competing, which once again. it was for Owen Wilson jokes, he takes me to cool down Maddie, who's like the COO of GDQ, he's sitting at the badge counter and Darkman and I walk up to him and Darkman says, Hey Maddie, are you Well if Bonesaw comments for a technician? Silent Hill There will soon be confrontations and Maddie looks at me like it's like she's looking at me like absolutely why do you ask?

That's definitely not going to happen and he just looks at me and says no and I was like why not? and he says because of what happened last year they told us to stop talking about how unbelievable and then this is where I started to get a little angry, but I didn't say anything bad, I actually just said look, I'm a little confused. because this anonymous speedrunner who has also been temporarily banned from submitting games to the marathon can go on the couch and comment without warning, you told me he couldn't submit games but he could comment and now you're telling me I can.

It doesn't make any sense, the conversation went on a little longer. I expressed my concern. I can't really remember the rest, but like I knew damn well that I was being treated unfairly at the time, but ultimately Maddie. He agreed for me to comment, but not without saying it, but remember I don't want any of that Air Canada, not Owen Wilson, any of that, even after they allowed me to comment on a Silent Hill speedrun, it seemed like the staff at gdq was still having problems with the bone saw bouncing. and that's Ben, he's beaten up a bit, the Silent Hill run ends and I head back to my hotel room.

I came across gdq's Twitter and saw photos of the official gdq photographer or whatever who had taken the race. I immediately realized that he was cut out of every official Silent Hill photo. In each and every one of them you cannot find an official post from gdq's twitter that shows me in a photograph. I was meticulously and deliberately cropped from these photographs. You can get the whole album and you can find the pictures from that race and then compare them and you'll see Air Canada hates us wow wow wow wow you don't lose anything now before we continue.

I should mention that some of the following sections will involve players who I happen to be trans nonbinary LGBTQ queer and all that and I want to make it clear that I respect all human rights, including trans rights, queer rights, nonbinary rights. I respect people as people above all else and you should too. I'm not. go after anyone here for being trans or being queer and I think my reviews will reflect that, however at the same time unlike gdq I don't think trans people, non-binary people and queer people are above all critical or infallible, so when I maybe point out things that they've

done

, don't take it as me attacking them because that's not what I'm doing and if you're doing that, you're missing the point for a reason I'm sure.

It was entirely for the enjoyment of its audience and viewers and definitely not at all to further appease the lgbtq+ community. GDQ decided to host an entire panel discussion called setting the queer record hosted by a proto-magical girl who is apparently doing her best Jeb Bush impression, this is the part. where you clap please clap welcome awesome games made fast in 2019 to set queer live record hello my name is Alexis and my pronouns are idiots and she she and I are two of your hosts I'm sorry, and I'm two of your hosts , then it turns out that the proto magical girl made a container of pasta explaining that they are plural in this container of pasta, proto explains that I am plural, we are plural, even in the past we have talked about our notion that Alexis and the proto magical girl of The person was, metaphorically speaking, a different girl, effeminate and sharp, and a big boisterous entity, confident and determined to achieve success, it turns out that there was nothing metaphorical about it.

Alexis and proto are completely different conscious entities in our mindsshared during the last month. We have been working hard. to understand our plural selves and now it's time to share that understanding with everyone by going deeper into this an answer about proto adjustment readings it's more like a multiple personality brain thing or like when Yami and Yugi shared the same proto body responded with okay, honestly, ukyo had a significantly different influence than zero, whatever that means, on our experience of plurality, so it's a lot like that, but they're also multiple personalities, it's just that those personalities have independent consciences, yes: but yes, we can change and talk to each other like you, are you okay?

I was a little confused at first, but honestly, it would be pretty badass to have the spirit of an ancient Egyptian pharaoh, the king of games, in your consciousness from the deck to my hands. Nice try, Yugi, but you activated my 3-card trap jar. allowing me to do whatever I want through the rules. I have money. It seems like the rules just got screwed up. Sorry, that was my Seto Kaiba character. Now I actually sat down and listened to the whole record-setting queer podcast and it was. about fascinating as you'd expect, you know, that's like that too, a lot of it is like normal community building, you know, though, I have to give credit to the panelists for being so open about their struggles with depression and anxiety, which is not easy. do and yet it seems to be prevalent among the speedrunning community.

I was actually going through a pretty serious phase of depression at the time. It's not uncommon for streamers and queer people to struggle with depression. I too struggle with depression and anxiety so I don't always have the energy to stream and even if I'm adopting a good pattern of streaming schedules that can be disrupted any day by a depressive episode or anxiety to address so , to be honest, I don't really balance it. On that topic, I would also like to point out that I, and since we've all talked about suffering from depression, we can also suffer from depression and getting to run fast was also a big help for me, as well as because I don't.

I don't know, I just realized that as a friend you know in person your local friend groups and the scared internet groups you know, they morphed and changed over the years and I felt more and more isolated and I wanted to get into something that was more People were involved in this, it seems like, above all, what these people want, what they're looking for is a sense of community of friendship, of having people around them who really care. and they happen to be LGBT or queer in this case and these issues. Symptoms of depression, anxiety, and loneliness are very common among disenfranchised youth who spend much of their free time on the Internet or gaming, and I might have even included myself in that camp just a few years ago, all of whom They find themselves in that situation, they deserve the same. attention, help and support like anyone else, whether queer or not, however, I feel that there is an additional emotional fragility that comes with being in that lgbtq+ community that is not always necessary to have, like when the proto magical girl revealed that Me felt unsafe in GD q in a series of tweets I didn't really have much fun, this GDQ honestly seeing people was nice but the overwhelming and constant fear and paranoia we were in all week was pretty exhausting to say the least , knowing that you are the most hated. person in a room and any stranger has a good chance of wishing you didn't exist it's no fun knowing there are event attendees who don't believe you or people like you deserve to be safe or comfortable no better not knowing which fan you're leaving with bumping into every corner makes progressing through the event an agonizing experience and knowing that the event staff won't do much to improve those conditions, guess the trolls finally caught up with us, huh, proto magical girl.

You don't deserve to feel unsafe or unwelcome at gdq or any other event, but sometimes fears and anxiety aren't always well founded, in other words, they aren't always necessary, so instead of someone like proto having to feel them unnecessary fears and anxiety all the time, if they really are unnecessary, then the solution would not be to monitor everyone around them and ban everyone who might disturb them, which is unrealistic and does not solve the core problem, but rather find a way to overcome these fears so they no longer have this anxiety and ultimately feel comfortable in their own skin, which the proto and anyone else deserves to be and then there is this case of a sprinter named Clare's Robin who demands bring them food through Twitter.

I need food to craft. I'm having a minor anxiety attack, so I would really appreciate some help making dinner right now. I really need help with this. I have been dealing with very bad emotional pain for so long and yesterday made it so much worse. I just wanted to enjoy a controversial heat. Be careful, but if you are so anxious that you need help getting food and your only way to get help is to tweet about it, then you probably shouldn't be at a sprint event, you should get the help and therapy you need. deserve again I'm not saying it's degrading I'm serious you shouldn't have so much anxiety when it comes to getting food that's not normal anyone GDQ our new pet speed has no gender prefers pronouns it cuts them well I'm glad they clarified either that or else I might have used the wrong pronouns when addressing these Sonic fanfics that a teenager just drew to be gdq's mascot hello, yeah, I'm not a very sleazy dinosaur, am I that out of touch?

No, it's us kids who made the mistake of moving on to the summer games

done

quickly 2019 Speedrunner caleb hart that I referenced above returns to the spotlight, but this time he is the victim of what appears to be a sexual assault accusation made in his Contra In a now-deleted tweet by assistant Nancy, she claims Caleb grabbed several girls inappropriately last night, including me, and I'm about to come up and say something in response to this. Caleb responded. I remember talking to you for a total of two or three minutes with several people around me who may call this a lie, I would love for you to present some type of proof.

Nancy then clarified that she had no proof, but that she needed to know if anyone else felt unsafe, a vague reason for making such serious accusations, although this random Twitter user does. make a good argument, does Caleb have proof that he didn't touch her ass? Hmm and then Caleb does the sensible thing here by deciding to stay very far away from irrational people. He's like a friend and I'm just not welcome and they accuse me. for sexual harassment when it never happened and brother, there was a disaster, so if I don't go, they can't accuse me of it.

I think I'm pretty sure that SpongeBob's Battle for Bikini Bottom isn't the first game to come. in mind when considering speedrunning, but the change in streamer has helped create a niche community for this game. He was actually scheduled to attend sgdq 2019, but was banned on short notice, seemingly out of nowhere. He soon realized that the ban actually came from a report issued by a long-time harassing doctor and a bully of his who unearthed a clip from the previous year in which Shift used the "f" word in homophobic street slurs, Tom , why I have friends who got banned, who really said the word. and his gdq can make runs, this is direct objective harassment, this is objective harassment, someone like found a clip of me saying something a year ago and sent it to gdq and probably said look at this guy, this happened a year ago man , You've done it.

Not a year ago and I received my punishment. I learned the lesson. I understand that you can't use that word for anything anymore, even if you don't say it like that in a video explaining the whole situation from his own YouTube channel. he goes out of his way to express remorse for overusing the word and even discouraged his viewers from blaming gdq even though he believes they made the wrong decision by caving in to a bad faith actor who reported him even after I made this container of pasta I made. say on Twitter that you guys shouldn't like to be treated this way because, again, it's being hypocritical if you want people to forgive me for something I did, you have to forgive the other, be willing to forgive them too after talking to Shift about this series of events seemed to me like I had already moved on from games quick organization as for my personal wishes I like to send Really no, it doesn't really bother me, you know, I already did the event once There are other speedrun events, there are other big ones speedrun events and communities that I can have the opportunity to be a part of now that I'm not focused on bringing the game to this event for the second time, you know, right?

We already had the opportunity to show it to you. It won't increase our interest in the game much if I do it again. Welcome everyone to amazing games made quickly in 2020. This time, some speedrunners' pronouns appeared next to their names in the broadcast overlay to start this show, another of the community's most beloved players, Trihex, to Lea He was retroactively banned from the event after he had already submitted his race because more than two years ago, in October 2018, he said — you guessed it — the dreaded f-word. in his livestream somewhat reflecting on the situation Shift found himself in trihex, he wrote a long apology post at the time, but of course no one cares about apologies and no one is interested in forgiveness or getting over Personally, this might come as a surprise, but in 2020, some gdq viewers were outraged once again.

A now viral tweet from Lady Alexis called the Spanish speedrunner lolz bel hein who was participating in a Final Fantasy 8 speedrun because his Twitter bio says he hates remi Nazism and because he supports a conservative economy. obviously the only course of action is to ban them for 18 months, which is exactly what happened immediately after lols bell hon completed his run. Kotaku reported that gdq founder mike uyama himself actually pushed lulz aside by informing him of the ban due to his Twitter bio, which also contains some ironic pronouns and the demi non-binary gender distinction, being offended by that It makes absolutely no sense, on the one hand we are told that the gender binary is arbitrary, on the other hand if someone invents a new gender distinction it is suddenly a problem.

I thought the point was that everyone can invent their own genre. lulz is just taking that to the extreme for what it's worth. Lulz was reported to be a kind and caring person in real life. life even among non-binary and trans people, maybe you shouldn't judge a person just by their Twitter bio, hey, maybe the doors will agree and finally in this event the most important topic within the community of speedrunning came to light, attention to all attendees at agdq 2020. I have been at agdq for just over 24 hours at this point you should have showered at least once to maintain optimal hygiene.

One word above all has grown to define the high-pressure, politically correct climate of quick games. I achieved a world record in April 2015 and I realized that I could apply for a gdq 2015 and see what happened and then of course it was accepted because it was a race between the top three 120 star players, but as far as To my personal desires, I don't do it. It doesn't really bother me, you know my truck was strictly I'm not a ban issued by gdq, which means you can no longer submit games for you to play and display, speed racer, speed racer who has invested countless hours perfecting a series of tasks and maneuvers, often extremely difficult, in a game that requires the greatest precision and the most efficient strategies to overcome it and, in addition, each speed racer competes with other players in their community to even be able to submit. a race worth watching, a player has to be better than the vast majority of other players who have not achieved the same world record time and yet, after all that, a sprinter must present not only the race but also himself to gdq is an organization that funnels viewers into speedrunners, each gdq stream gets over a hundred thousand live viewers and for the duration of their races each player gets a timeslot from that audience , if a sizable enough percentage of spectators enjoy the sprinters' personality or their game enough, they usually will. starting to follow that streamer and being interested in their content is one way to get recognition on Twitch;

However, by creating a community of viewers in their own players, such as shift cheese trihex and even calebhart, have created their own platform, these streamersthey no longer need. submit to the authority of gdq and who knows, maybe one day if they grow a large enough community, these streamers won't need Twitch anymore. Shift explained to me how he had formed his own community and was looking forward to other future speedrunning events. from gdq, my speedrun community has formed its own community over the last four years, where I mean all the popular ski slopes here, there are lots of small events you can go to, just look around, ya you know, I'm Personally, this year my plans for speedrunning events are: I will attend pace 2020, which is a speedrunning event, but it's not charity oriented and it's more competition oriented, so it would be like a tournament in which you go and people will compete. prize racing the speedrunning community continues to expand even outside the scope of gdq events such as the european record breaking live brings new competition to the scene where on january 31, 2020 cheese broke his own world record for super mario 64 live winning a $10,000 reward and yet, from a commercial point of view, games made with quick events are still a huge success.

Agdq 2020 attracted more than 200,000 live viewers and raised more than three hundred million dollars for charities, which is an admirable achievement despite its growing success, although each new event seems to bring scandals of subsequent controversies. and questionable bands, it seems that gdq staff were much more interested in appeasing people who are outraged by potentially offensive jokes, words or beliefs, even the boundaries of what is not acceptable will only continue to expand. GDQ continues to appease those people and that's not to say that no one should be punished or banded, but there should also be some responsibility on the part of viewers to not get so outraged or offended by everything they see or hear and to not go overboard. every little joke or word into something big.

Controversy, the biggest tragedy in all of this is that trying so hard to prevent anyone from being sidelined and even the smallest amount of 'quickly' made games has left out some of the biggest players, Bonesaw Shift and Trihex, all of whom They embody the spirit of goodness of self-improvement and a desire to truly grow and change for the better as people, rather than being considered shining examples of players to admire in the community, who are instead punished and excluded from the games that are made. quickly, all for a couple of words. I might have said a few years ago that it might have offended someone.

I also reached out to gamers Cheese and Shift to get their thoughts on mental health and its impact on gaming. I played quick community games in general so as not to sound like you know what all the players are doing. meme, but like a lot of games are like people who are like outcasts or just like you said, lonely people who struggle with, like you know, mental health disorders and things like, I mean, I've struggled with depression in the past. I've gotten over it since then I felt like I feel like a lot of people who like or are passionate about games and isolate themselves from others for a period of time, like him, they relate to things like that and you know, that's how it is.

I guess what makes the most sense for a company is to try to create an event that includes not only types of people but also types of games. I also have personal experience of having a lot of depression. used when I started sprinting during the first year and a half of sprint running. I still lived in Trinidad and no longer enjoyed living there. I could probably say, please, that I didn't leave my house to hang out anywhere all year and half the time I was running I missed my house to go visit my mother and her family and to play with my band when we had band practice that was the only time I went out I never left my house I would never go out for a walk I never left my house and Trinidad because I was I was depressed living there and I think that had a lot to do with me I stayed home practicing mario64 oh they probably had a lot to do with why I got so good so quickly because I didn't want to do anything else and I just sat and played all day and that made things worse.

You know, that made me feel more and more alone. I felt lazier and it made things worse. What changed my life was when I really decided. Even my mom, mom, I want to move to Spain where my dad is and my uncle's because I can't do this anymore, I even get emotional thinking about it because it was a difficult time, but I made the decision to do something personally. When I moved to Spain I started many things in my life very differently and now I am by far the happiest I have ever been. I wake up every day with something to do outside or just something to do in general, someone to talk to and I have never been happier.

I know it's all because I made sedums to do everything instead of donating them to quick-made cancer research games. It would be best to donate to mental health organizations and establish support systems for people struggling with anxiety and depression within their homes. own community, that seems like a better way to go than addressing what might be outrage over someone saying the "f" word two years ago or false accusations of sexual assault or God forbid someone calls a boss a demon boy soy. Wow.