Speedrunning is playing a video game — or one section of it — with one goal: finish as fast as possible. Runners plan routes, learn tricks, and practice the same levels for months. The Wikipedia entry on speedrunning describes it as beating a game quickly, often by following planned routes that skip sections or use glitches to move faster than the designers intended.
Why does your family see it everywhere? Because speedruns are built for watching. A full game gets compressed into minutes of pure skill, streamed live on Twitch and posted on YouTube. Marathon events bring runners together on stage to play for charity and crowds. It is competitive, it is cheap to try, and it turns games your family already owns into brand-new puzzles.
What exactly is speedrunning, and where did it start?
The idea is older than you might think. According to Wikipedia's overview of speedrunning, racing the clock has been part of gaming since the early days, alongside chasing high scores, but it did not attract broad interest until 1993. Early games helped push it along: Metroid and Prince of Persia showed players their completion time, and Wolfenstein 3D printed a "par time" based on designer John Romero's own best runs — his way of daring players to beat him.
The modern community took off with Doom in 1993. That game let players record and share tiny replay files called demos, which traveled easily over early internet message boards. Fans built leaderboards to rank completion times, and the habit stuck. When video sharing and streaming arrived in the late 2000s and early 2010s, speedrunning stopped being a niche and became a spectator sport.
What do the different run categories mean?
Every game has several ways to race it, and the category name tells you the rules. The big ones:
- Any% — finish the game by any means necessary. Glitches, skips, anything goes, as long as you reach the end.
- 100% — finish with everything collected or completed. Slower than Any%, but far more thorough.
- Glitchless — no exploits allowed. Pure movement and routing skill.
- Individual level — race one level or chapter at a time instead of the whole game.
- Tool-assisted (TAS) — not human play at all. A runner uses software to program perfect inputs frame by frame, showing what a game's limits truly are.
Per Wikipedia, tool-assisted runs use emulation or extra tools to create precisely controlled inputs or slow the game down to perfect each movement. That matters for families: a TAS video is a kind of technical showcase, not a record anyone sat down and set with a controller. Community leaderboards for each game — not one giant global list — are the main way runners compete, and head-to-head races between two runners are popular too.
How do runners actually get so fast?
Speed comes from three things: routing, tricks, and repetition.
- Routing. Before the timer even starts, runners map the best path through a game — which items to grab, which doors to ignore, which order breaks the game in their favor.
- Sequence breaking and glitches. Wikipedia's speedrunning entry notes that routes often "break sequence," playing parts of a game out of order, or exploit glitches that skip whole sections. A well-timed jump through a wall can remove an hour of gameplay.
- Practice and splits. Runners use timers that show their pace at every checkpoint, called splits. They replay the same thirty seconds hundreds of times until the movement is automatic.
Some tricks became famous in their own right. Quake runners popularized "bunny hopping," a way of gaining speed that later showed up in games like Counter-Strike and Team Fortress, again per Wikipedia. Watching a runner explain a trick in one sentence is often the best part of the video.
Why do millions of people watch?
Three reasons, and none of them require you to ever pick up a controller yourself.
First, the drama is real. A run that has gone perfectly for twenty minutes can end on one missed jump. Stream chat holds its breath together — that shared tension is the draw.
Second, it is a master class. Seeing a game you have played for years broken open like a lock-picking kit changes how you see it. Kids who love a game often love learning its secrets even more.
Third, marathon events turn it into community theater. Runners perform live on stage, explain their tricks as they go, and the audience cheers every skip. It is the friendliest corner of competitive gaming, and it raises money for charity while it does it.
What this means for your family
Speedrunning is one of the few gaming hobbies where watching and doing are both genuinely fun, and where the barrier to entry is a game you already own. If your kids want to try it, keep a few practical notes in mind.
- Start with a short, familiar game. Racing a level your child already knows beats grinding a long one. Timer apps are free.
- Check the game itself first. A run's category rules matter less than whether the game suits your household. Our guide to Game Ratings, Explained: What E, E10+, T, and M Really Mean covers how to read the rating before the timer starts.
- Watch the category, not just the game. A glitchless run of a family favorite looks very different from an Any% run that clips through walls. Preview streams before younger kids watch.
- Keep it friendly. Racing your own best time — not a stranger's world record — is where the fun lives for beginners.
One honest caution: speedrunning rewards repetition, and some runners grind a single section for hours. That is the hobby working as designed, not a problem — but it is worth setting expectations before a Saturday disappears into one hallway jump. If screen time is the negotiation point, our walkthroughs of Nintendo Switch parental controls, Xbox family settings, and PlayStation 5 parental controls cover the timer tools each console offers. Readers following this should also see How to Choose Your Family's First Game Console: Switch vs. Xbox vs. PlayStation.
The bottom line for curious families
Speedrunning takes games your family already owns and turns them into a race against the clock — and against history, since every run chases the times recorded on community leaderboards. It started with par times in early '90s shooters, grew up on internet forums, and now fills live events watched by millions. You do not need to run a game to enjoy it. But if someone in your house starts timing their trips through a favorite level, now you know exactly what they are doing — and why it is harder, smarter, and more social than it looks.
