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> It's not a particularly complex or surprising "ethics" though Yes, you are mostly right, but it’s still interesting (and positive!) that the community landed

by szvsw 2y ago

> It's not a particularly complex or surprising "ethics" though Yes, you are mostly right, but it’s still interesting (and positive!) that the community landed on an “anything goes so long as you are honest” set of norms. As someone without much (well, any) interaction with speedrunning communities, it’s still fun to see how other internet communities have codified or tacitly established their operating procedures, expectations, norms etc.

dahart 2y ago
What is interesting or unique about honesty as a shared norm? You are, again here, despite trying to deny it elsewhere in this thread, claiming the “anything goes” part within the bounds of the game and within the rules of the competition is somehow reflecting on the community norms and making this “interesting”. It’s like trying to say “Oh wow it’s so interesting that marathon runners have their own ethics; they can just run as fast as they want as long as they don’t take shortcuts”.
- krisoft 2y ago
  > they can just run as fast as they want as long as they don’t take shortcuts In fact that is not how marathon running works. If you take certain drugs that is frowned uppon, even if you are honest about it. Similarly you can’t break the legs of the competitors. That is heavily frowned uppon even if you are honest about it. These are not obvious. There could be a full-doping version of marathon running but there isn’t. There could be a combined martial art&marathon running competition where you try to hurt your opponent without getting hurt while running a marathon distance but there isn’t.
  - dahart 2y ago
    Frowned upon? Not obvious? What are you talking about? This is straw man. Doping is against marathon rules and assault is both against the rules and also straight up illegal. Maybe you should read some marathon rules https://www.baa.org/sites/default/files/2021-08/Boston_Marathon_Rules_and_Policies_08_2021.pdf https://www.baa.org/sites/default/files/2021-08/Boston_Marat... There could be a doping-allowed marathon, indeed, if anyone actually wanted that. And that still wouldn’t demonstrate any unique community norms or change my point at all.
    - cgriswald 2y ago
      As a disinterested third party I’m not sure what your point is. Honesty isn’t unique? I don’t think anyone is saying otherwise. You seem to be proving the other poster’s point that people interested in marathons landed on a class of rules that is specific and that nobody wants the alternatives. It’s the difference between that and the speed-running community’s “anything goes, we’ll just classify it” rules that people find are finding interesting.
      - dahart 2y ago
        I don’t see how you’ve arrived at marathons having any specific norms. No doping and no assault is pretty universal. Can you explain it better? The point was that speed runners are not operating with different ethics than any other competition, or society in general. “Anything goes” isn’t accurate as a description, and the top poster maybe didn’t realize that suggesting that exploiting game glitches somehow represented flexible ethics might be a bit presumptuous and patronizing, and also incorrect. It’s interesting to me that people would assume otherwise.
        cgriswald 2y ago
        > I don’t see how you’ve arrived at marathons having any specific norms. No doping and no assault is pretty universal. Can you explain it better? Sure. First, I'm going to leave 'assault' because I think it sort of changes the mapping between marathon running and speedrunning in an analogy-breaking way and adds ethical concerns that aren't really relevant to the point and practically don't exist for speedrunning anyway. I understood what the poster was saying, but I think it's not a great example. Second, I'm going to suggest that like speedrunning, a marathon run is really against the clock. This isn't strictly true, but it's true enough for the analogy to work. With all that in place, the apparent universality of 'no doping' is half the point. There are no marathons where you can choose to dope or not dope and they simply categorize you that way. Doping has a fair chance of ruining a career and disqualifying the participant from future marathons. The other half of the point is that it doesn't have to be this way. We could have separate marathons for dopers, allow them to race together with non-dopers but categorize them differently, or even have specified paths to run but no organized marathon and allow people to get creative in speedrunning them. We could allow people to find shortcuts on trails to improve their time and then categorize them differently from those who follow the proscribed path. Yet we don't do any of it. In contrast, speedrunning does allow this sort of activity. Tools are okay, but now you're categorized as TAS. You don't have to 100% the game, but now you're doing an Any% run. This does not exist in marathons. You can't take a short cut and get an "Any%" time, for instance. Simply put, if a speedrunner finds a shortcut it is celebrated, but if a marathon runner happens to find a path down a vine that saves him 10 minutes of running, he's a cheater. These are two different ethical systems. > The point was that speed runners are not operating with different ethics than any other competition, or society in general. As you can see above, I disagree with this statement. I haven't read all the sibling and cousin posts, but neither the poster you responded to nor the top poster said the ethical system was bad; in fact both found it interesting. Both the marathon system of ethics and the speedrunning system of ethics seem to have the same moral or ethical basis in fairness, but the approach is different and therefore is the ethical system. > “Anything goes” isn’t accurate as a description, and the top poster maybe didn’t realize that suggesting that exploiting game glitches somehow represented flexible ethics might be a bit presumptuous and patronizing, and also incorrect. This is not my interpretation of the top post and I think it's extremely ungenerous. He expressed surprised that a system designed to work around the rules still develops a system of ethical rules. His edit then points out that honesty is a core tenet of the ethics of the group.
pdpi 2y ago
An interesting peculiarity of the speedrunning community is that there is also a large component of "the community vs the game" mattering more than than "runner vs runner".
- Adachi91 2y ago
  That is very accurate, whenever I was dethroned from a position (legitimately) I was happy for that person and challenged me to find a better way to complete the run. Although the games I've done are very niche and have small moderation teams.
  - vanderZwan 2y ago
    So the e-sports version of track and field basically, with similar attitudes that arise from the similar nature
- djur 2y ago
  A lot of games have community members who are known more as researchers than as competitive runners. Even if you don't have the reflexes or time to get on the leaderboard, you might be able to devise strats for the people who do.
me_me_me 2y ago
Just to add a bit more context. For a given game there are often multiple categories. With rules for each. Some forbid some exploits, some complete game as fast as possible some 100% it. When a new tech gets discovered there might be a debate if it belongs to certain categories or not.

by szvsw 2y ago

dahart 2y ago

What is interesting or unique about honesty as a shared norm? You are, again here, despite trying to deny it elsewhere in this thread, claiming the “anything goes” part within the bounds of the game and within the rules of the competition is somehow reflecting on the community norms and making this “interesting”. It’s like trying to say “Oh wow it’s so interesting that marathon runners have their own ethics; they can just run as fast as they want as long as they don’t take shortcuts”.

krisoft 2y ago
> they can just run as fast as they want as long as they don’t take shortcuts In fact that is not how marathon running works. If you take certain drugs that is frowned uppon, even if you are honest about it. Similarly you can’t break the legs of the competitors. That is heavily frowned uppon even if you are honest about it. These are not obvious. There could be a full-doping version of marathon running but there isn’t. There could be a combined martial art&marathon running competition where you try to hurt your opponent without getting hurt while running a marathon distance but there isn’t.
- dahart 2y ago
  Frowned upon? Not obvious? What are you talking about? This is straw man. Doping is against marathon rules and assault is both against the rules and also straight up illegal. Maybe you should read some marathon rules https://www.baa.org/sites/default/files/2021-08/Boston_Marathon_Rules_and_Policies_08_2021.pdf https://www.baa.org/sites/default/files/2021-08/Boston_Marat... There could be a doping-allowed marathon, indeed, if anyone actually wanted that. And that still wouldn’t demonstrate any unique community norms or change my point at all.
  - cgriswald 2y ago
    As a disinterested third party I’m not sure what your point is. Honesty isn’t unique? I don’t think anyone is saying otherwise. You seem to be proving the other poster’s point that people interested in marathons landed on a class of rules that is specific and that nobody wants the alternatives. It’s the difference between that and the speed-running community’s “anything goes, we’ll just classify it” rules that people find are finding interesting.
    - dahart 2y ago
      I don’t see how you’ve arrived at marathons having any specific norms. No doping and no assault is pretty universal. Can you explain it better? The point was that speed runners are not operating with different ethics than any other competition, or society in general. “Anything goes” isn’t accurate as a description, and the top poster maybe didn’t realize that suggesting that exploiting game glitches somehow represented flexible ethics might be a bit presumptuous and patronizing, and also incorrect. It’s interesting to me that people would assume otherwise.
      - cgriswald 2y ago
        > I don’t see how you’ve arrived at marathons having any specific norms. No doping and no assault is pretty universal. Can you explain it better? Sure. First, I'm going to leave 'assault' because I think it sort of changes the mapping between marathon running and speedrunning in an analogy-breaking way and adds ethical concerns that aren't really relevant to the point and practically don't exist for speedrunning anyway. I understood what the poster was saying, but I think it's not a great example. Second, I'm going to suggest that like speedrunning, a marathon run is really against the clock. This isn't strictly true, but it's true enough for the analogy to work. With all that in place, the apparent universality of 'no doping' is half the point. There are no marathons where you can choose to dope or not dope and they simply categorize you that way. Doping has a fair chance of ruining a career and disqualifying the participant from future marathons. The other half of the point is that it doesn't have to be this way. We could have separate marathons for dopers, allow them to race together with non-dopers but categorize them differently, or even have specified paths to run but no organized marathon and allow people to get creative in speedrunning them. We could allow people to find shortcuts on trails to improve their time and then categorize them differently from those who follow the proscribed path. Yet we don't do any of it. In contrast, speedrunning does allow this sort of activity. Tools are okay, but now you're categorized as TAS. You don't have to 100% the game, but now you're doing an Any% run. This does not exist in marathons. You can't take a short cut and get an "Any%" time, for instance. Simply put, if a speedrunner finds a shortcut it is celebrated, but if a marathon runner happens to find a path down a vine that saves him 10 minutes of running, he's a cheater. These are two different ethical systems. > The point was that speed runners are not operating with different ethics than any other competition, or society in general. As you can see above, I disagree with this statement. I haven't read all the sibling and cousin posts, but neither the poster you responded to nor the top poster said the ethical system was bad; in fact both found it interesting. Both the marathon system of ethics and the speedrunning system of ethics seem to have the same moral or ethical basis in fairness, but the approach is different and therefore is the ethical system. > “Anything goes” isn’t accurate as a description, and the top poster maybe didn’t realize that suggesting that exploiting game glitches somehow represented flexible ethics might be a bit presumptuous and patronizing, and also incorrect. This is not my interpretation of the top post and I think it's extremely ungenerous. He expressed surprised that a system designed to work around the rules still develops a system of ethical rules. His edit then points out that honesty is a core tenet of the ethics of the group.

pdpi 2y ago

An interesting peculiarity of the speedrunning community is that there is also a large component of "the community vs the game" mattering more than than "runner vs runner".

Adachi91 2y ago
That is very accurate, whenever I was dethroned from a position (legitimately) I was happy for that person and challenged me to find a better way to complete the run. Although the games I've done are very niche and have small moderation teams.
- vanderZwan 2y ago
  So the e-sports version of track and field basically, with similar attitudes that arise from the similar nature
djur 2y ago
A lot of games have community members who are known more as researchers than as competitive runners. Even if you don't have the reflexes or time to get on the leaderboard, you might be able to devise strats for the people who do.

me_me_me 2y ago

Just to add a bit more context. For a given game there are often multiple categories. With rules for each. Some forbid some exploits, some complete game as fast as possible some 100% it. When a new tech gets discovered there might be a debate if it belongs to certain categories or not.