In games that lack e-sports style competition, there is no surer demonstration of mastery than the speedrun. Anyone can clear a game given enough time; doing it under time pressure often involves mastery of macro, micro, and meta gameplay.
Generally, games that have categories that are fully solved (like
Pokemon R/B Any%) are often, but not always, about technical mastery - understanding the fundamental aspects of the game's programming in a meta sense. This can be used to just clear the game instantly in some games (Gen 1 being a fairly famous example where you get through the intro, walk into a wall, and warp to the credits, because Gen 1 is famously badly programmed), or make use of the limitations of cartridge memory for arbitrary code execution (ACE), which can lead to
real-time programming and other fun things. Categories like this are usually not seriously competed in because execution is often less important; some Sonic 1 individual levels are like this, where due to the way the game handles its levels, it's trivially easy to tie the world record on some stages,
notably Marble 1.
Categories with less glitches or less impactful glitches (like the standard 'glitchless' category used in almost every game that has a single dominant glitch) tend to focus more on strategy and execution. This is why a very optimized game can cause even minor mistakes to be intensely frustrating: unless new tech or routing is found ('found' here meaning developed by the community or individuals therein), often the only way to improve a time is to make fewer errors, so even a small time loss can effectively doom a run. At this point, competition tends to die off, usually referred to as 'optimizing the fun out of the run'. A truly enduring category is pretty uncommon, especially in simpler games, which by virtue of having simpler designs makes them much easier to solve. Conversely, some games represent this spectrum within themselves: Halo CE famously varies from being essentially a platforming game with limited combat on Easy difficulty, to being almost exclusively about combat improvisation at Legendary difficulty.
There are also some categories which exist largely as an excuse to be used in direct competition (i.e. racing), like
FF6 Kefka-Narsh or
Legend of Legaia Zeto. In these cases, because the cutoff is much earlier than 'the end of the game', the strategy that goes into routing a run can be very different from a full game run; the same is also true for categories like Chrono Trigger 100%, which comes in both
glitched and
glitchless varieties. This run tasks the player with completing all of the game's quests given by the Guru of Time: reviving Crono, clearing the Black Omen, Mother Brain, Yakra XIII, and Ozzie's Fort, and gaining access to the Wondershot, Greendream, and Masamune II, before finishing the game by defeating Lavos Core. This represents completing, functionally, all of the content within the game, and as was common for Square games of that era, most of it can be done in an order of the player's choosing, which leads to deep strategic and tactical decisions to make when routing; Chrono Trigger also has relatively interesting execution for a JRPG due to the way its ATB system works, which makes it somewhat demanding over time.
Particularly long runs often require less mechanical execution overall, in part because there tends to be less competition: if you aren't interested in getting your time down to prove that it can be done (the same reason anyone climbs Mt. Everest: because it's there), and just want to have a competitive time, then stable play over long periods ('safety strats') can often be a superior metastrategy than attempting the riskiest, fastest strategy at every junction and resetting every time you fail; the latter will ultimately be mandatory when the game reaches a state of 'optimizing the fun out of the run', but the former is more practical for a human being.
Of course, not every game is suitable for speedrunning by a human being, and some runs are not possible for humans. Ecco the Dolphin, for example, is not possible to complete damageless -
but a TAS can do it. A TAS (Tool-Assisted Speedrun) is almost entirely a logical puzzle, as by definition there is no execution involved, but the laborious nature of creating a TAS makes it an entirely different kind of challenge than just playing a game normally, especially in games where manipulating RNG matters, because a change earlier in the run invalidates everything that comes after it. Taking this to its logical conclusion,
there is a sequence of inputs which is guaranteed to beat Pokemon Platinum regardless of which RNG seed you're on. Actually carrying this out would be a laborious task for a human, and asking a human to carry it out isn't really the purpose of the experiment, but that hardly detracts from the research and work put in to creating it. This is true for most TASes; a speedrun brings a game to its human limit, but a TAS can bring a game to its mechanical limit. In fact, there is actually a subcategory of TAS called a
playaround, which involves using the TAS to show off game logic interactions which would be difficult or impossible for a human player to encounter.
In summary, there's a lot of nuance to speedrunning as an idea which is often lost in a mainstream context, especially with the absolute state of gaming journalism often going out of its way to whine about speedruns. If you think it's 'lame and cringe' to get frustrated when something you've devoted serious time to goes poorly, that's a you problem - it's normal for humans to be frustrated when their efforts come apart. And remember, speedrunning is physically and mentally demanding: most games require significant, sustained focus both in the current moment and in the long-term view, diligent practice, the physical coordination to execute that practice, and the willpower to continue practice even when you fail. Compared with sports, there's a much lower floor of physical ability for most games (and with the increasing acceptance of specific hz turbo for games like Metroid Dread, you don't need to risk giving yourself an RSI to compete), making competition more accessible and significantly more
competitive - the impact of the body you were born with, or damage you've taken, is dramatically reduced compared to mainstreaming sporting. In essence, speedrunning is one of only a few avenues that involves truly egalitarian competition; most other human competition requires a physical or financial predisposition, and in some cases, avoiding that competition is the best way to engage in it (like with e.g. professional boxing, which tends to involve the top-rated boxers doing endless promos and never actually stepping into the ring to comete).
The good news is, with so many categories, it's easy to find one that appeals to you. If you don't like superglitched credits warp categories, you can pretty much guarantee that your game that has that also has a glitchless category. Inversely, if you love glitches, especially difficult-execution ones, you can look at categories like
Ocarina of Timy Any%, which is so busted the time is now down to less than 4 minutes. Like FF6 and want to execute a glitch a lot? You can do
Any% No Sketch. Want to not just use Slots forever after you get Setzer?
Any% glitchless is here for you. Don't have time for a full game run? Do Kefka-Narshe.
If putting time into something, becoming skilled at it, and then successfully performing that skill doesn't appeal to you? There are other hobbies and other genres. YouTube alone has more than 5.1
billion videos hosted on it, and that's mostly content you can watch
for free. You don't have to watch speedrunning content, and you certainly don't have to participate: it is a buyer's market.
