Ah, so now we see your true colors, Myster DAHN. An easily angered, immature fool.
Do you honestly think you look respectable spouting off garbage like that?
Have you given a thought to the fact that maybe this whole topic was an utter waste of time? Especially if it could be so easily defeated by three words from a single person, albeit an admin?
Why would you have any sort of a reaction to his reply if you saw
no truth whatsoever in it? It's not rational, especially on a medium like the internet.
My reply to the whole situation is best centered around the common "misconceptions" Reciprocal posted.
#1) People think they are not fake, cheated, video edited, or illegitimate.
Since they exist, they must be real. That is the foremost meaning of 'fake'; the second is covered by the other terms and therefore 'fake' is simply repetitive.
'Cheated' is a completely relative term in the context you're using. I feel that context is utterly worthless, because it is 100% subjective and therefore opinionated. The objective meaning of 'cheat' is to deceive. If no deception occurs, there is no cheating. But there will always be deception in all realms of life, and therefore there will always be cheating. Your goal is conclusively pointless.
I'd like you to think about how utterly boring the world would be if no one lied about anything.
They
are edited, yes. So are all files. In order to construct essentially any file in RAM before it is written to disk, numerous edits are made. The point of editations is meaningless. They are a very welcome course in computing and in nature. To say that edits are bad is to say that change is bad -- guess what that makes you? A conservative, of course.
The term 'video' is a misnomer. ZSNES recordings are re-emulations, not videos. It is accurate to say that they are button-press recordings.
'Illegitimate' is the same as 'cheated' in the context you use. There's no need to cover the same thing twice; it's redundant.
#2) People think that doing a run with savestates and slowdowns is almost as amazing as doing the same without.
It
is amazing. Obviously you've never actually done the kind of 'perfected', re-recorded run you're speaking of. It takes a hell of a lot of work and a massive amount of patience to re-record the same stupid jump a thousand times over until it works exactly the way you wanted.
Whether it is
more amazing than playing the game as it would be done on the original hardware is entirely subjective. I'm not going to argue such a foolish matter of degree in the first place.
#3) People frequently refer to these as either speedruns/time attacks/emulator runs/superplays/tool-assisted, when all are currently used to define legitimate runs.
How is this a misconception, under any interpretation? You've phrased something wrong here. This is closer to fact.
What it's called is ultimately unimportant. The distinction is the aspect which holds the importance, and it is not necessary to use separate words to convey separate meaning. Often preferable, but unnecessary.
#4) The creators of these videos obviously often make little to no effort in assuring the viewer that what they are watching is in fact fake/cheated/edited. See #1.
There is no need to make the viewer aware that the demonstration is fake (because it isn't), cheated (because it isn't), or edited (because all computer files are edited). Re-examine response to point 1 if necessary.
When the run is complete and published, I feel distributing it as an emulator file is enough to ensure natural skepticism in any individual. The viewer should be able to figure out the conditions of the recording by the nature of the output.
While it would be ideal for all runs to be specifically labelled, to have an in-depth interview of the recorder for each one, it is not reasonable.
If the player was conscientious about the subject, it is not difficult for them to label how they created the demonstration.
The fact that you and other players do not agree on a standard by which demonstrations should be submitted, examined, and accepted is precisely why you need a well-developed, conceptually sound organization as mentioned by other posters.
#5) Some people think these videos do not harm legitimate gamers in any way when obviously the opposite holds true.
This is similar to the argument "guns don't kill people, people kill people". I hold that statement to be neither true nor false, merely opinionated. My opinion on it is that it is foolish. People do kill people, and sometimes the gun is the tool performing the assist. They may or may not have been capable of the action without the gun; that cannot be accurately determined and therefore it is irrelevant. It is enough to know the fact that Person A shot Person B.
Likewise in this situation. Your argument is best summarized as: "Legitimate gamers don't ruin themselves, Illegitimate runs ruin legitimate gamers." Subjective statement with no real meaning.
If players very good at any given game give up doing normal runs because someone proves that it is theoretically possible to do better, my opinion is --
GOOD! It's clear that if they gave up their hobby so easily, they were never doing it for a self-motivating reason in the first place.
The fact of the matter is that competition is not kept going by the players mainly for fun. There are plenty of ways to entertain oneself or others, many of which do not involve competiting with other people in any way. Competition is like battle -- it's about proving who is the best. Who will survive, who will rise to the top, who will dominate?
It's basic instinct. Competition is going to survive no matter how many ways people find to deceive others into believing they are the best. The real truth is that there is no
best, and there never will be. Such a concept exists only in our minds.
