Gotta Go Fast: Measured Rationalities and Rational Measurements in the Context of Speedrunning
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Örebro University School of Humanities and Social Sciences Sociology Gotta go fast: Measured rationalities and rational measurements in the context of speedrunning Sociology, Second Cycle Independent project, 30 credits, 2018 Author: Marcus Schmidt Supervisor: Monika Berg Abstract This thesis studies the Weberian notion of rationality in the context of speedrunning and the speedrunning community. By contrasting the instrumental rationality of the speedrunning practice with the value-oriented rationality of the community, it crystallizes the difference between “performing the metrics” as an extension of community values and as a function of externally imposed constraints. The former is an expression of autonomy, while the latter an expression of heteronomy. This difference, it is argued, is found in many different areas of society, sometimes in the guise of “audit culture”, at other times as an unintended side-effect of established forms of practice. In either case, a return to communal values (e.g. the sociological imagination) is seen as an antidote to becoming an extension of someone else’s metrics; autonomy is not a function of performing to external specifications, but of being able to rationally choose which measurements to use and which to leave aside. Speedrunners, in their endeavor to go fast, express such autonomy, albeit implicitly. By analyzing YouTube videos wherein runners explain their tactics and methods, this thesis endeavors to make this aspect of autonomy ever so slightly more explicit. Keywords: audit culture, autonomy, communities of practice, Diablo 2, Habermas, instrumental rationality, Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Max Weber, Prey, speedrunning Contents 1. Introduction .............................................................................................................................................. 1 2. Research question ..................................................................................................................................... 2 2.1 Delimitations and demarcations ......................................................................................................... 3 3. Background ............................................................................................................................................... 3 4. Previous research ...................................................................................................................................... 5 4.1 Initial survey ........................................................................................................................................ 5 4.2 Second survey: audit culture .............................................................................................................. 7 4.3 Summary – performing the metrics .................................................................................................. 11 5. Theory ..................................................................................................................................................... 13 5.1 The division of labor .......................................................................................................................... 13 5.2 Specialization for everyone ............................................................................................................... 16 5.3 Rationality and where to situate it ................................................................................................... 20 6. Method ................................................................................................................................................... 23 6.1 An ideal type of gamer ...................................................................................................................... 24 6.2 Ethical considerations ....................................................................................................................... 25 6.3 Sample ............................................................................................................................................... 25 6.4 Why speedrunning? .......................................................................................................................... 26 7. Analysis ................................................................................................................................................... 27 7.1 Diablo 2 – harnessing randomness for fun and profit ...................................................................... 27 7.2 Prey (2017) – “Walls are more like guidelines than actual rules” .................................................... 30 7.3 The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of time – “The bottle is an incredibly powerful item” ...................... 32 7.4 Synthesis ........................................................................................................................................... 34 8. Discussion ................................................................................................................................................ 36 9. Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................... 40 Bibliography ................................................................................................................................................ 41 1. Introduction Speedrunning is, in the simplest terms possible, to play a computer game with the intention of completing it as fast as possible. To attain this goal, seemingly unorthodox methods are applied, so as to remove every possible Planck unit from the sum total. Speedrunning is an extremely goal-oriented activity, where the goal of going fast overrides all other concerns. The only thing that matters is the reduction of play time, by any means necessary. The result is an activity that barely resembles an intuitive understanding of the notion of playing a computer game, yet which by definition still adheres to it. This single-minded pursuit of minimizing the time an activity takes to perform is not new, by any means. Most famously, the time studies applied by Taylorism and similar strands of scientific management sought to find the most efficient way to perform, in minute detail, any given motion involved in industrial production. By studying how factory workers moved while performing their work, inefficiencies could be discovered and chipped away, be they on the individual or the organizational level. The result, over time, was a faster pace of industrial production, where unnecessary motions and other expenditures of time and energy were reduced to a minimum, ensuring maximum efficiency. More generally, identifying a key variable and taking steps to ensure that the measurements associated with this variable increase is a wide-spread social practice. In finance, fluctuations in stock prices override many other concerns; laying off thousands of workers in order to increase quarterly earnings is standard procedure (Billger & Hallock 2005; Gunderson et al 1997). In education, performance on standardized tests (PISA foremost among them) becomes a vital basis for public policy; elections hang in the balance, depending on whether performance results show an uptick or a downturn (Bulle 2011; Engel & Frizzell 2015; Gaber et al 2012; Lingard & Rawolle 2011). In healthcare, funding is awarded to programs that can demonstrate immediate short-term performance gains, over programs that emphasize long term continuity of care and other intangible health benefits (Brown & Calnan 2010; Brown et al 2012; Nutbeam 1999). In academia, the paradigm of publish or perish is so entrenched as to be hegemonic – having contributed to the accumulated knowledge of mankind is secondary to having garnered 1 citations which increases one's h-index (Burrows 2012, Cerulo 2016; Eliason 2008; Sparkes 2007; Vannini 2006). There is, to generalize, a tendency to put the metric first and foremost, and rearrange the practices measured so as to achieve measurable results. The list of examples can be made arbitrarily long, should we wish to maximize this particular variable. In essence, however, what we see is what Weber warned us about in the end of his Protestant Ethics (1976): the disenchantment of the world and the looming iron cage of rationality, the minmaxing “nullity [which] imagines that it has attained a level of civilization never before achieved” (p. 182). For any given preferred variable, efficient technicians and bureaucrats stand at the ready to make improvements; whether or not these improvements actually improve things that are not measured by this variable is an open question. Implicit in this famous passage from Weber is an imperative to resist and confront this tendency of modernity, to remain human in the face of the overwhelming momentum of an indifferent rationality let loose upon the world. Resistance is not futile; it is mandatory (Boltanski 2011). Speedrunning is not uniquely situated in the trajectory of this modern tendency. The speedrunning community is, however, surprisingly open about how it goes about maximizing its preferred variable, and the methods employed to achieve that end. As such, a closer look at speedrunning will generate insights which can potentially be generalized to other instances where the same tendency is at work. It is, to jest, the fastest and most efficient way to go about theorizing and exemplifying these matters. 2. Research question