"Taking damage to save time!"
— The Catchphrase of the Something Awful forum's Let's Race threads
"Have you ever played a game so much that you feel like you've ran out of replay value? Some people choose to come up with additional challenges, such as beating a game as fast as possible, scoring as many points as possible, or pushing a multiplayer game to its competitive limit. Ocarina of Time has no scoring system; it's not multiplayer. It is a single-player journey through an epic world. So, how fast can someone beat it?
"Stop skipping my dialogue. I'm trying to threaten you here but no all you do is mash that A button. I mean, a-are you speedrunning or something? Is that all this is to you? Bragging rights? You're ignoring what could be SIGNIFICANT character development just for some numbers on a website? I mean this entire scene took weeks to get JUST right with everything! Pay it some attention!"
Step 1: Think beyond possible.
Step 2: Familiarize with game.
Step 3: Find the easy way.
Step 4: The game and its moves doesn't have to make sense.
Step 5: You make the rules.
Step 6: Bend over the game.
Step 7: Find the quick kill and never miss it.
Step 8: Don't fight the boss if you don't have to.
Step 9: No risk, no speed.
Step 10: Have fun.
Step 2: Familiarize with game.
Step 3: Find the easy way.
Step 4: The game and its moves doesn't have to make sense.
Step 5: You make the rules.
Step 6: Bend over the game.
Step 7: Find the quick kill and never miss it.
Step 8: Don't fight the boss if you don't have to.
Step 9: No risk, no speed.
Step 10: Have fun.
— A post in a speedrunning thread on 4chan's /vg/ board.
I think, in a way, the role of the speedrunner is, like, the exact opposite of the role of the game designer. The game designer painstakingly carves a beautiful sculpture out of wood, first chiselling it out of a raw block, and then gradually rounding off any rough edges, making sure it works when it's viewed from any angle. The speedrunner takes that sculpture and they look it over, carefully, from top to bottom, from every angle, and deeply understand it, and they appreciate all the work that went into the design, all of the strengths, all of the weak points... and then, having understood it perfectly... they break it over their knee.
—Bennett Foddy, reacting to a speedrun
of Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy
of Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy