The Speedrunning Reader
To suggest an article: @rhombical
♦Articles♦
Animal Crossing
Banjo-Kazooie
The Body and Speedrunning
Celeste
Crash Bandicoot
Design for Speedrunning
First Person Shooters
Games Done Quick
General
Don't die: livestreaming turns video game speedruns into a spectator sportby Andrew Webster
The Legend of Zelda
Mario
The Pull of Nostalgia: Speedrunning and NES Games by Natalie Schriefer
Neon White
Queerness and Speedrunning
Role-Playing Games
Speedrunsby Games That Exist
Spelunky
Tool-Assisted Speedrunning
Misc.
♦Academic Articles♦
"The aesthetics of speedrunning: Performances in neo-baroque space"
by Emilie M. Reed
"“ANY% NO SKETCH GLITCH”: SPEEDRUNNING FINAL FANTASY VI AND EXPANDING “WELL PLAYED”"
by Lucas Cook and Sean Duncan
"A Practiced Practice: Speedrunning Through Space With de Certeau and Virilio"
by Rainforest Scully-Blaker
"Automating Speedrun Routing: Overview and Vision"
by Matthias Groß, Dietlind Zühlke and Boris Naujoks
"Between Invention and Discovery: What Video Game Speedrunning Can Teach Us about Mathematical Practice"
by Noel Arteche
"Breaking The Stack: Understanding Videogame Animation through Tool-Assisted Speedruns"
by Madison Schmalzer
"Catch and Release: Ludological Dynamics in Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly"
by William Huber
"Code is Law: Subversion and Collective Knowledge in the Ethos of Video Game Speedrunning"
by Michael Hemmingsen
"The complexity of speedrunning video games"
by Manuel Lafond
"From NES-4021 to moSMB3.wmv: Speedrunning the Serial Interface"
by Patrick LeMieux
"Fully Optimized: The (Post)human Art of Speedrunning"
by Jonathan Hay
"GAMEPLAY VIDEOS AND FAIR USE IN THE AGE OF TRICKS, GLITCHES AND GAMER CREATIVITY"
by Howard S. Chen
"High-performance play: The making of machinima"
by Henry Lowood
"Illegal deposit: Game preservation and/as software piracy"
by James Newman
"The impacts of live streaming and Twitch.tv on the video game industry"
by Mark R. Johnson and Jamie Woodcock
"Live-Streaming Changes the (Video) Game"
by Thomas P. B. Smith, Marianna Obrist and Peter Wright
"Negotiating Textures of Digital Play: Gameplay and the Production of Space"
by Justyna Janik
"On Game Art, Circuit Bending and Speedrunning as Counter-Practice: 'Hard' and 'Soft' Nonexistence"
by Seb Franklin
"Player power: Networked careers in esports and high-performance game livestreaming practices"
by Emma Witkowski and James Manning
"Playing along and playing for on Twitch: Livestreaming from tandem play to performance"
by Rainforest Scully-Blaker, Jason Begy, Mia Consalvo and Sarah Christina Ganzon
"Playing with(out) Power: Negotiated conventions of high performance networked play practices"
by Emma Witkowski and James Manning
"PLAY WHILE PAUSED: TIME AND SPACE IN VIDEOGAME PAUSE MENUS"
by Madison Schmalzer
"The right way to play a game"
by C. Thi Nguyen
"Running With the Dead: Speedruns and Generative Rupture in Left 4 Dead 1 and 2"
by Fraser McKissack and Lawrence May
"See You Next Mission: An Analysis of the Super Metroid VARIA Randomizer"
by Michael Iantorno
"The Significance of Jeep Tag: On Player-Imposed Rules in Video Games"
by Felan Parker
"Speedrunning for Charity: How Donations Gather Around a Live Streamed Couch"
by Stephen Tsung-Han Sher and Norman Makoto Su
"The Speedrunning museum of accidents"
by Rainforest Scully-Blaker
"Straight Paths Through Queer Walking Simulators: Wandering on Rails and Speedrunning in Gone Home"
by Bo Ruberg
"“Twere Well It Were Done Quickly”: What Belongs in a Glitchless Speedrun?"
by Martin Ricksand
"Videorec as gameplay: Recording playthroughs and video game engagement"
by Gabriel Menotti
"“We Need Radical Gameplay, Not Just Radical Graphics”: Towards a Contemporary Minor Practice in Computer Gaming"
by Seb Franklin
"Wrong Warping, Sequence Breaking, and Running through Code: Systemic Contiguity and Narrative Architecture in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Any% Speedrun"
by James Newman
♦Books and Book Chapters♦
"Curiositas and Critical Glitches: Speedrunning The Legend of Zelda"
by Ethan Smilie in Mythopoeic Narrative in The Legend of Zelda
Metagaming: Playing, Competing, Spectating, Cheating, Trading, Making, and Breaking Videogames
by Stephanie Boluk and Patrick LeMieux
"Platformizing Nostalgia" in Who Are You?: Nintendo's Game Boy Advance Platform
by Alex Custodio
"Play against Control" and "Pokémon Plays Twitch" in Ludopolitics: Videogames Against Control
by Liam Mitchell
Speedrunning: Interviews with the Quickest Gamers
by David Snyder
Speedrun Science: A Long Guide to Short Playthroughs
by Eric Koziel
"Speed Runs, Slow Strolls, and the Politics of Walking: Queer Movements through Space and Time" in Video Games Have Always Been Queer
by Bo Ruberg
"Superplay, sequence breaking and speedrunning" in Playing With Videogames
by James Newman
"The Transformative Power of Speedrun: Deconstruction and Recodification of Pokémon Games’ Communicative Structures"
by Fanny Barnabé in Japan’s Contemporary Media Culture between Local and Global
"Tool-Assisted" in I Am Error: The Nintendo Family Computer/Entertainment System Platform
by Nathan Altice
"What Would Foucault Think About Speed Runs, Jeep Jumps, and Zombie?”
by Felan Parker in Halo and Philosophy: Intellect Evolved
♦Conference Presentations♦
"“But First We Need to Talk About Parallel Universes”: Vectorizing Trans Power in Videogames"
by PS Berge
"GENERATE RANDOMIZED GAME: THE AMBIVALENCES OF ONLINE ROM-PATCHING APPLICATIONS"
by Michael Iantorno
"On Becoming “Like eSports”: Twitch as a Platform for the Speedrunning Community"
by Rainforest Scully-Blaker
"Spectacularization of Play in Live-Streaming Speedrun Marathons: From Performance to Mediation"
by Fanny Barnabé and Sacha Bernard
"Speedrunning: Transgressive play in digital space"
by Dom Ford
♦Theses and Dissertations♦
"Born to Run: A Grounded Theory Study of Cheating in the Online Speedrunning Community"
by Christopher G. Brewer
"(Broad)casting the Game: The Spectacle of Real in Representing and Narrating Video Game Play"
by Tero Kerttula
"Computers Can’t Get Wet: Queer Slippage and Play in the Rhetoric of Computational Structure"
by Sandra L. Nelson
"Critical Breaking"
by Christopher Kerich
"Expanding Livestream Experience and Interaction Design Through Examining the Videogame Speedrunning Subculture"
by Stephen Tsung-Han Sher
"Game and Metagame: About a precarious ludological Relation"
by Sebastian Otto
"Game Randomization: Emergent Gameplay Communities"
by Celeste Clark Jewett
"Gotta go fast: Measured rationalities and rational measurements in the context of speedrunning"
by Marcus Schmidt
"How to Go Fast: Ways to Model and Approach Speedrun Routing Algorithmically"
by Matthias Groß
"I, GAMER: ADDRESSING TOXIC LUDOLOGY AND NARRATOLOGY IN THE GAMER DISCOURSE COMMUNITY THROUGH REINTERPRETING VIDEO GAMES AS HYPERTEXTS"
by Andrew S. Latham
"Playing on the periphery: Metagaming and transgressive play"
by Patrick S. Love
"Playing Pacifism"
by Robert Budac
"The Polymediated Experience of Broadcasting and Consuming Highly-Skilled Video Game Gameplay"
by Benjamin Luttrull
"Mode and tempo of cultural evolution in video games"
by Ivan Dmitriy Ortiz Sánchez
"Re-curating the Accident: Speedrunning as Community and Practice"
by Rainforest Scully-Blaker
"Transformative Gameplay Practices: Speedrunning through Hyrule"
by Kaitlin Elizabeth Hilburn
"Transition Games: Speedrunning Gender"
by Madison Schmalzer
"Why Speed Matters: Collective Action and Participation in Speedrunning Groups"
by Juan Escobar-Lamanna
♦Non-English♦
"Die kulturelle Aneignung des Spielraums. Vom virtuosen Spielen zum Modifizieren und zurück" (German)
by Alexander Knorr
"Framework analysis of Speed-running: Towards a Comparison Between the Normal Gameplayer and Speed Runners" (Korean)
by Araujo Silva Thiago and Seung-Keun Song
"Geronimo! Oder: Eine kurze Kulturgeschichte des Speedrunnings." (German)
by Sebastian Standke in Time to play. Zeit und Computerspiel
"Le speedrun, pratique compétitive du jeu vidéo" (French)
by Vincent Bézaguet
"Le speedrun: pratique compétitive, ludique ou créative ? Trajectoire d’un détournement de jeu vidéo institué en nouveau game" (French)
by Fanny Barnabé
"Modding: Künstlerische Forschung in Computerspielen" (German)
by Thomas Hawranke
"'Schwester, ich entferne nun die Narration!' Ein Selbstversuch. Über das Verhältnis von Speedrun und strukturell bedingtem Flow" (German)
by Sebastian Standke in Flow aus Spielen: Optimale Erfahrungen durch Computerspiele
"Speedrunner as a Virtual Naturalist" (Russian)
by Vladislav V. Kirichenko