The resounding success of the infectious Games Done Quick

For over ten years, the Speed ​​Demos Archive and SpeedRuns Live, which were eventually replaced by the Games Done Quick, have been delighting video game fans with two annual events full of high quality professional gaming. 

In addition to amusing the public, the two events, which last around seven days, from Sunday to Saturday, collect donations for humanitarian causes, raffling prizes and offering extra categories of speed runs unlocked as certain goals are achieved. Generally, the marathon Awesome Games Done Quick takes place at the beginning of the year, in January, and collects funds that benefit the Prevent Cancer Foundation, an organization focused on research for the discovery and prevention of cancer, while the Summer Games Done Quick takes place in July, in the middle of summer in the northern hemisphere, focusing on the famous humanitarian aid organization Doctors Without Borders.   

Despite the humble beginnings as a mere meeting between a few enthusiasts of speedrunning – game mode in which you try to reach the end as quickly as possible – the resounding success of the event was not long in coming. In 2014, just four years after the first edition, the Games Done Quick reached the milestone of one million dollars raised, and that amount has grown exponentially since then, reaching the milestone of two million dollars in 2017 and an absurd three million in 2020.

But after all, what is speedrunning, the focus of Games Done Quick?

For many, the term speedrunning it might not make a lot of sense. After all, how can someone run without wanting to be fast in the first place? Linguistic jokes aside, the genre of speedrunning has been popular for a long time in some corners of the Internet, and in recent years it has been gaining an ever-increasing audience, thanks in large part to events hosted by Games Done Quick. 

Unlike many activities that require a high level of skill and that limit participation to a restricted group, playing games quickly and becoming a Speedrunner it's something anyone can do. The community is incredibly diverse and friendly, and its members are a huge crowd pleaser for new players to join the scene. And it's no wonder that charitable events like those of the Games Done Quick have been growing so quickly, as the number of participating players inflates more and more as time passes.

speedrunning is a term that encompasses the activity of playing games quickly, and there are many ways to do this. Many of the techniques used use mechanics programmed by the developers when creating the games played, but, several times, digital runners create their own ways to reach this goal. By doing this, they even “break” the structures of the games, following paths that ordinary players would never use.

Like any skill, speedrunning it requires a lot of training and, as a consequence, repetition. Lots of repetition. For Summer Games Done Quick e Awesome Games Done Quick, especially. Players enrolled in these marathons play for hundreds of hours beyond their normal training so they don't miss their presentations during live broadcasts. And even with so much practice, there is always some unexpected moment during these events. 

The best moments in over ten years of Games Done Quick 

Even with so many different games being shown, a bit of variety is needed after years of marathons like these. That's where some of the best marathon moments come in, with speed runs that left their marks in history.

This is the case of blind gambling Super Punch-Out !! (from the Super Nintendo) during the Awesome Games Done Quick of 2014, when the player Zallard1 attacked Mike Tyson and his boxing friends with their eyes completely blindfolded. He has beaten all opponents without even being knocked out once.

However, Zallard1 returned in a future edition of the event, in 2019, and repeated a similar feat in the Wii version of Punch Out!!.

Not content with bringing just one fighting game to be played blindfolded, in 2016, one of the most difficult versions of the classic Tetris, titled Tetris: The Grandmaster (arcade) had a demo on stage where several players displayed incredible feats. The stages with invisible parts were just one of them, but the most impressive happened when KevinDDR covered his eyes and managed to finish a game screen without seeing anything.

And it wouldn't be an event Games Done Quick without some kind of rush. Each edition of the annual marathons has different types of modalities, often pitting more than two digital runners against each other to see who is the best. Speedrunner faster. In recent years, the best races have been with the game Super Mario Maker 2 (Nintendo Switch), with relay races, putting participants to play phases created by the community, without having seen them previously. They are usually the climax of marathons, and almost always take place on the last day of the event.

Games Done Quick lives not only on marathons

The big news of Awesome Games Done Quick this year, which has been happening since last Sunday and is expected to end on the 15th, is the release of the documentary Running With Speed, produced by members of the speedrunning community, including many of the marathon organizers. At the moment, the only way for Brazilian fans to watch the video is by renting it on the Amazon Prime platform.

As long as there is a passion for finishing games faster and faster, there will be no end to the potential that events like those organized by Games Done Quick have to show that the gamer community is much more than memes and boring jokes. There is a lot of generosity and willpower among a huge amount of potential speed runners, no matter where they come from or what they look like. Everything depends on the desire to help others, and we see this without fail every six months on the company's Twitch channel. Games Done Quick.  

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For more details on Games Done Quick events, see more at:

Running With Speed ​​Documentary

Games Done Quick official website

Doctors Without Borders official website (Medicins Sans Frontières)

official website of Prevent Cancer Foundation