What to Know Before You Start Speedrunning: A Beginner's Briefing

Speedrunning — the practice of completing a game as fast as possible — has grown from a niche hobbyist pursuit into a vibrant global community with dedicated events, charity marathons, and hundreds of thousands of active participants. If you've watched a run online and thought 'I want to try that,' here's what you should understand before you dive in.

First, pick one game and one category. This is the mistake almost every newcomer makes: they browse leaderboards, get overwhelmed by options, and never actually start. Every speedgame has multiple categories — Any%, which means reaching the credits by any means necessary; 100%, which typically requires collecting everything the game defines as complete; and various Low% or category extensions in between. Each category is effectively a different discipline. Choose one, learn it, and resist the urge to branch out too early.

Second, understand that glitches are a feature, not a failure. Most popular speedrun categories actively use glitches, sequence breaks, and exploits discovered by the community. Learning why a glitch works — not just that it does — will make you a better runner and help you recover when something goes wrong mid-run. Community wikis and Discord servers for most popular games document these techniques in remarkable detail.

Third, get a timer. A split timer like LiveSplit (free, widely used, and well-supported) lets you track each section of your run individually, compare your performance against your personal best, and see exactly where you're losing time. Running without one is like training for a race without a stopwatch — possible, but you're flying blind.

Fourth, manage your expectations around world records. For many games, the top leaderboard spots belong to runners who have invested years into a single title. A healthier target for beginners is a 'sub-X' goal — getting a run under a round-number time that feels meaningful to you. The community broadly celebrates personal bests, not just world records.

Finally, connect before you compete. Speedrunning communities are, on the whole, genuinely welcoming to new runners. Watching experienced runners stream and explain their routes, asking questions in the relevant Discord, and sharing your early attempts — even the disastrous ones — will accelerate your learning faster than solo grinding ever will.

Speedrunning is one of gaming's most rewarding corners precisely because the competition is ultimately with yourself. The leaderboard is just a scoreboard; the real goal is understanding a game more deeply than almost anyone else ever will.