Chapter6 Superplay, sequence breaking and speedrunning Superplay, high scores and performance 'G.L.C.' JERRY: Hey, Iook at the high score George Louis Costanza. That's not vou. is it? GEORGE: Yes! 850,000. I can't believe it's still standing. No one has beaten me in like 10 years. JERRY: I remember that night. GEORGE: The perfect combination of Mountain Dew and mozzarella . just the right amount of grease on the joystick . ('The Frogger', SeinJeld,Episode l7+, 1998) Though they may not be familiar with the term, most people w.ith more than 'superplay'. apassinginterest in and knowledge of videogames will be aware of Superplayis a generic term that describes a range of gaming practices that dif- fer significantly in their execution and implementation but that are bound together by a common desire to demonstrate mastery of the game through performance. As we shall see throughout this chapter, superplay may be oriented around com- 'pacifist' pleting games in the fastest possible time, or by tackling the challcnge in a mode dispatching only those enemies that actually bar progrcss and cannot be avoided.It may seek to use as few additional capabilities or weapons as possible, and it may involve exploring as much or, indeed, as little of the gameworld as 'complete' 'low possibleby engagrng in or percent' runs to completion. Moreover, some forms of, superplay may even centre on pushing gameplay beyond the limits of human performance by harnessing technical tools to enact the theoretically perfect performance. All of these practices require great skill and commitment and involve meticulous planning and the utilisation of the Game Guides and walkthroughs we saw in the previous chapters as reference works that document the extent and scope of the game as well as other documents and collaborat- ive strategies that are devised and refined by gamers reviewing and discussing 124 Superplay,sequence breaking, speedrunning each other's vvork. What \4.c note in the practices of superplay is thc use of thc knorvledge and techniques uncovercd ancl laid out in Game Guides, the exploitation of the structures, (non ) linearitv ancl limitations of videogames as designs as rvcll as the harnessing of glitches in gamc codc. All of these are com- bined bv superplaycrs and used to gain garneplaving acivantagc.This iroint re<:alls Dovey ancl Kcnncdv's commentarv on Eskelinen's (2001) ancl Moulthrop's (2004) conceptualisatjons of gamcplav as configuratir.e practice in vrhich thcv notc a tcnclcncvtowards an'incipient humanism' (2006: 105) that pri'r.ilegesthe plaver as principal or cvcn solc agernt.As we shall note, both playcr as pcrlormer and game svstem should bc considcred agents in the processes of gamerplav. Krzl.rvinska 'tcxtual' (2002) makes a similar point in drar.ving ()ur attention to the ancl'per- lbrmative'aspects of r.idcogamt:sand the \\raysin u'hich the'gamc systcm rcstricts and limits the gameplav potential of the plaver. However, r,i'e should bc mind- ful that this system of rules and Lroundarics is rrot lixed but rather is perme- able and in a statc of fiux as it is interrogated, operatccl on and plaved rvith. Moreor.er, the svstem mav bchal.c in an unpredictable manncrr unintcndcd by tht: game designers cJueto inipcrlcctions in the code or unanticipatecl emt'rgcnt contingcncies. As u-c shall see, superplav necd onlv bc obliquely concerned with the ostcns- 'aim' ible of thc r.ideogame and frequentlv superimposcs an additirinal ruleset. 'challenges' In this w,av, superplav is closclv rclated to the that u-c saw-circu- lating in Game Guides in the- previous chaptcr. Supcrplav is essentiallv the per- lormancc or cnactmcnt of gamer clesignecland imposcd challenges. Completion, in tcrms of moving along a narratir-e or through thc branching structure of levels 'encling' or scqucnccs tou.ards an is not aiu.avs thc primarv concrern of supcr- play,ers and again thc various activities, challengcs ancl practices highlight the 'cornpletion'. complexitv and fluiditv of the idea of videogame Thc task of the 'iinal' supcrplayt:r mav involrc reaching thc scqucnce in a game, though if 'start' 'finish' the challengc is to movc from to as specdilv as possibler,the journev may involve dcvising and implementing strategies to allorv thc sidcstepping of huge portions of thc intervening narrative or a largc numbcr of lc'r.els along the rvay thcrcbv making lbr a stripped dolvn, discontiguous and potentially incom- prehensible narratir.c cxpcricnct--. The superplayer in search of a high score, on thc other hand, does not neccssarily want to mo\.e through the game's structure at speeclanci n-rayrathcrr erxplore each detour in somc dcpth so as to maximise the point scoring potcntial, unless of course the game's rule svstcm au'arclspoints lor speedv traversal of thc lcvt:ls and assuming the game is cr.cn onc that has a finite structurc. As the extract from se;f/d atror.c illustrates, probablv thc--most culturallv visible lirrm of superplav is the attainmcnt of high scores. Perhaps surprisinglv, the high scorc has not alu-aysbeen a part of the viclcogamc and it rvas not until -\-_ Superplay,sequence breaking, speedrunninS 125 of 1979's Astercidsthat gamers u'ere afforded the opportunity to tag their achievc- te ments with their initials and both broaclcast and cvaluate their perfbrmance. While AS the entries in the Coin-Op cabinet's high score table were retained, thcy were n- not permanent and would be resct if thc machine was powered dor,r.'n(thc events lls of the SeiryfZldepisode see George buying and attempting to move tht Frogger +) cabinet with his still resplendent high scorc atop the table, rigging up a tem- porary battery so to preserve his initials for posterity). The very existcnce of er a scoring systcm that opcrates as thc means of assessingprogress and a table rd of the highest scoring gamers goes some way to embedcling superplay into ka the reward structure of the game. ln Asteroids,with its inlinite structurc (see Newman 2004) that theoretically allows the game to continue ad infnitum (see rts also Brzusto'r'l'ski's(1992) work on fetris), the score is the primarv means of I comparing and evaluating progress but it is interesting to note the prescnce of scoring svstems in games wherc othcr, sometimes more obviously dominant, h. reward systems are in plac-e. Games such as SuperMario World ancl StarFoxthat )y proudly advertise the number of levels they offer the gamer and where progress nt through the gameworld is communicated via movcment across the overr.iew map towards an ultimate confrontation, also include scoring systems, while Aez olfers 'ScoreAttack' S- a modc that foregrounds thc challt:nge of accumulating as high a t. scoreas possible. l- In these games, then, we see the presence of an at least two-tiered svstem r- of rewards where gamers can c()ncentratc eithcr on the m()vement across the :t, map tou'ards the final encountcr or on thc acquisition of points through a ls thorough investigation of the space and thc collection of items ancl objects, or perhapsthey mav trv to combine both. In fact, the titles in thc Super.Mario series, IE like Sonlc the Hedgehogancl many other titlcs, also include countdown timcrs IC that further add to the array of rneasures of performance. Regardless of the way if the game presents itself, the wavs gamers play, what they privilege, what thev )y ignore, is partly a matter of personal choice and prefercnce and may wcll altcr rf through time as thc game is plaved and replaved. What is important to notc, rq is that the itself suggests and even hardwires the evaluative mechanisms for b game l- a number of different game tvpes and play stvles cncouraging gamers to person- n alisctheir experiencc and challcnge thcmselvcs in new manners. Often, of course, thesemodes of play and their contours arc suggcsted bv other agencies. re High score challcnges are among the most vencrable in vidcogaming culturc. tS As n'e noted in Chapter 2, magazineshar.e long run competitions and challenges IS that, among other things, have the cff'ect of locating the gamer in the w'ider context of a communitv of gamers. We notcd also that in thc 1980s in particu- v lar, magazines sought evidr:nce in thc fbrm of photographs of the gamer's final scorecard. In this regard at least, things have changed markedly. More recently, i1 developments in nctvr.orked gaming deviccs ancl services such as Xbox Livc, 126 Superplay,sequence breaking, speedrunning PlayStationNctu'ork as wcll as systcrnsbuilt into many PC-bascd MM()RPGs th havc mcant that gamcrs' achicvements are frequentlv and automaticailv loggi:d SU at an online high scorc table vrherc successcan be assessedand broadcast and th u'here rclativc pcrfbrmancc is locatcd within a potcntially global community of or gamcl's. For thosc rvishing to compete at thc highest levcl, thc lirrmalisation of alt rankings and ratings has, in l)ct, bcen carcfulll monitorcd and controllcd for is nearlv a quarter of a ccnturv. Tu'in Galaxics dc-scribesitsclf as, th: the lr.orld authoritv on plaver rankings, garning statistics an<l championship ilh tournamcnts, u'ith pinball statisticsdating from thc 19JOsand vidcr>gamc est statistics lrom thc carlv 1970s. As thc elcctronic gan'ringindustrv's prcmicrc the statistician, Tw'in Galaxit:s prcscrvcs the history of gaming in a historical un databast',r,r.hich rlocurncnts the historical rnilcstoncs of the clectronic ganr- bla ing hobbv as it cvolvcs into a prof'essionalsport. it,u ('Our Unique History' 2004 [online]) en( its Ganrers clcdicatr:d to acl'rieving u'orld record scorr:s inclulge-in marathon scs- the sions in search of their goal.