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AGDQ - Awesome Games Done Quick 2021 (January 3rd - 10th)

TheContact

Member
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GDQ is a week-long, 24 hours a day, bi-annual event which showcases speedrunners beating games as quickly as possible. I've been watching since 2012 and the event has really come a long way. Each year they raise millions of dollars for the Prevent Cancer Foundation and Doctors Without Boarders. While the events feel progressively more "corporate" than they used to be, it is still extremely entertaining and I look forward to them every year.

Awesome Games Done Quick is set to an online-only event like Summer Games Done Quick was unfortunately, but it's still better than no event at all.

(Please do not comment about how woke the event has become I just want this thread to focus on the gaming aspect of the event)

You can find the schedule: HERE
And the link to the stream: HERE

 
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Dthomp

Member
I wish AGDQ would do the same.
Same.

I'll give the event a chance again, mainly cause I have at times enjoyed runs in past years. Ignoring the absurd amount of woke they are, I really have been let down the last couple of years. Alot of stuff that just isn't fun to watch, or players who are just awful at talking about the game they are playing to keep people engaged.

I wish for more 100% or non skip speed runs, and less of the 5 minute clip through the world that seems to be all the craze. And can we possibly have like 50% less Souls games this time? You watch 1 speed run, it kind of feels like you've seen them all, and last GDQ had a few too many runs in those titles.

Thanks for the links, off to see the schedule and hope something is of interest. Bummer, just saw that it is online only again this year. I'm gonna miss seeing the 12 neckbeards in the crowd yelling "ORB" or "HONK" every 3 seconds trying to get on stream.
 

Desudzer10

Member
Mirror's edge starting things off is great. Looking forward to wild arms and blinfolded mario 64 16 star run. I just hope for fun runs.
 
Too many He/Him's at this event, hoping for more Xe/Xims

Seriously though, looking forward to it, introduces me to some really good speed runners and other events like the 1cc challenge
 

Dthomp

Member
Schedule is hit or miss for me, mostly misses but a few standout games to watch.

Serious question, does anybody actually enjoy watching people speedrun Pokemon titles? That killed my interest at the end last GDQ, 4 hours of Pokemon Platinum...

Oh god, and two hours of Pokemon Blue towards the end too.
 
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Schedule is hit or miss for me, mostly misses but a few standout games to watch.

Serious question, does anybody actually enjoy watching people speedrun Pokemon titles? That killed my interest at the end last GDQ, 4 hours of Pokemon Platinum...
Agreed, i have similar problems to seeing certain FPS speedruns where a majority of the time, the runner is staring at the ground.
 

Dthomp

Member
I think they are set up for another GDQ where they miss out on big donations at the end with the last few hours. Pokemon Blue catch them all will drive away people, maybe the OOT 50 minute finale will help, but man I remember couple years back I think when they had the Mario Galaxy? I think run that was hours long with a great runner that brought in SO much donations. I'd rather they save the last game to be a 3-5 hour run of an all time great game that gives time for people to enjoy the run and donate big.
 

Dthomp

Member
Agreed, i have similar problems to seeing certain FPS speedruns where a majority of the time, the runner is staring at the ground.

What's worse is that 90% of these runs are on PC so when they fail their glitch 3 times they just load a save state that already has it done for them. If you can't do the shit during your run, maybe it shouldn't be a part of your run.
 

rofif

Can’t Git Gud
fuck agdq... was such a good even up to 2014/15 maybe. But no later. Some good runs but aside from all the woke crap...
Why can't anyone swear? Some runner says "shit" and it's like he murdered someone. I would let them swear and fuck on the scene if they collect for charity.
Then the games selection is terrible. The put these 5-8h runs of final fantasy or zelda crap and all these noname unknown games...
 

Coolwhhip

Neophyte
I watched this once years ago, it was funny to see those incredibly awkward people in action.

So they went full resetera then? I'm sure all the women and groups they are defending are really proud of these twitchy computer nerds fighting for their cause.
 
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Dthomp

Member
fuck agdq... was such a good even up to 2014/15 maybe. But no later. Some good runs but aside from all the woke crap...
Why can't anyone swear? Some runner says "shit" and it's like he murdered someone. I would let them swear and fuck on the scene if they collect for charity.
Then the games selection is terrible. The put these 5-8h runs of final fantasy or zelda crap and all these noname unknown games...

I actually enjoy one or two long RPG runs, but it sucks that they are always in the overnight US hours. One of my favorite runs was a few years ago somebody ran FF8, and was awesome at explaining what was happening in the story and the motives behind stuff, but yeah the sheer amount of trash unknown games is dumb. People tune out during those hours, how are you getting donations when people tune out? I'm sorry, the purple haired dude dressed like a girl playing some trash tier NES game even I've never heard of isn't keeping me tuned in. Awful block is fine, but that needs to be shit people have heard of before, not just whatever game they were gifted that 12 people have played and the entire "speedrun" community is 3 players, all employed by GDQ.
 

Garnox

Member
I share the same sentiments as Dthomp and SJRB.

Its not the same unless there is a energy to the audience. Some great runs (Bawkbasoup - Resident Evil 2 Remake) with the runner and audience really getting into it.

Plus I like the long RPG runs overnight (Tojju, Muttski, and Luzbelheim in particular) Also, I don't ever watch these live, I always just catch them later on YouTube and never see the woke stuff.
 
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Dthomp

Member
This guy running Just Cause 3 was really fun, made me care about a game that I couldn’t stand, so of course their stream seems to have exploded and is down...
 

Dthomp

Member
That Dragon Age run was everything I hate about speed runs. What’s the point of a game to run if you just get unlimited everything and clip thru The Whole game? That shit isn’t fun to watch, me and the misses were both bored out of our minds during that, and we both were looking forward to a fun game run
 

kingwingin

Member
How on earth do speed runners find glitches to bypass large portions of the game? They can't all be accidental discoveries.
 

Dthomp

Member
How on earth do speed runners find glitches to bypass large portions of the game? They can't all be accidental discoveries.

Some folk play looking for glitches, and all these folk are in discord’s sharing and experimenting to push them even further.
I hope they make a lot of money for charity again .
They will likely hit the same amount they do each time, they for years have done more harm pushing people away from their cause by focusing on the wrong shit. I’d argue a company that has been doing this as long as they have should be able to raise twice as much as they do over an entire week. I want production value, and better hosts/people on air getting the viewer excited.


First day had a great start, but that DA:Origins run was bad, and I find racing game speed runs to be terrible. So glad Diddy Kong is over, hoping Pikmin and MGS4 bring some life
 

Portugeezer

Member
Might catch some highlights if worth it, no crowd is a bit meh though.

And the charity aspect?
SGDQ is better as it's for MSF.

AGDQ charity is America specific, for a world wide streaming platform, like they picked some random cancer charity (because cancer) 10 years ago and never changed it.

I wonder if the world situation will affect the money raised, will be interesting.
 

JSoup

Banned
It's not their fault because covid, but I'm not digging the way it's done currently. I ended up not watching more than a couple minutes of the summer show.
 
Some great runs (Bawkbasoup - Resident Evil 2 Remake) with the runner and audience really getting into it.
YES.

That's how I first learned about Bawkbasoup, and by extension some of the rest of the awesome Resident Evil community (WolfDNC, CarcinogenSDA, etc...). That RE2 stream with Bawk was amazing, are ADGQ runs usually like that?

Regarding this year's schedule: LMAO, not only did I learn today that people actually play Sonic 2006, but it even has a speedrunning community! The more you know...

Resident Evil selection is kind of meh this year. Director's Cut which should only be amazing because of that hilariously catastrophic basement music, and RE5, which I guess is fine. But it's not the same without an audience, I'm sure the laughter when Wesker says "Complete Global Saturation" would be pretty funny/hype.

EDIT: Obligatory link. May your ears have fun bleeding :messenger_tears_of_joy:
 
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j0hnnix

Member
Always watch the annual GDQ charity streams but it's not as fun to watch without the weird crowd in the back ground and the actual couch. It's still fun just not as much. I'm just watching for tonight's MGS run. One of the big gripes is the frame drops due to streamers connections. oh well. it's nice they keep it going. Plus it's great as background noise for this week.

Watching the lightmatter run and one of the commentators just disappears and they runner keeps asking for him. he eventually starts talking again. lol
 
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They lost me as a viewer after what they did to Bonesaw. Like I get the submission ban. He kept on making Air Canada and Owen Wilson jokes after being told to stop, and a punishment makes sense. I thought the jokes were hilarious, but I get it. They didn't stop there though. The unofficially black balled him from the event since. He was slated to be on the couch for another runner, and they sat him on the very end, didn't give him a mic so he couldn't talk, positioned the camera so he wasnt on screen the majority of the time, and cropped him out of a promotional photo. Then he was met with open hostility from the staff when he attended the event as a guest to watch friends runs. All the woke shit is annoying, but I refuse to support an event that will destroy someone over something as innocuous as that 3am Jak run. Bunch of petty fucking scumbags
 

notseqi

Member
I'm sorry but I can't support a 'charity' which is more like a money laundering front for Mike Uyama and that also bans fan favorite speedrunners like Neaglerias and Trihex all in the name of being woke. Fuck that noise.
Naegleria and Trihex made so many games look cool that I wasn't at all interested in, I still watch Naeglerias botched Sonic run at SGDQ quite regularly.
Highly entertaining with a focus on their passion for the game.
They banned Bonesaw and other people for dumb reasons, people weren't allowed to bring their plushies anymore (which I don't care for, but I'm happy they're enjoying their stuff with other people).
I feel their decisions are keeping a lot of great players away so it's gotten less interesting, now I only check for PJ and MechaRichter VODs of the event.
 

NeoIkaruGAF

Gold Member
Regarding this year's schedule: LMAO, not only did I learn today that people actually play Sonic 2006, but it even has a speedrunning community! The more you know...
Any game with a famous name has a speedrunning community. And GDQ has had a “Awful games done quick” segment for years. The games are terrible, but you get the chance to see something like Virtual Hydlide without having to dig for it and *shudder* play it.

No crowd means less hype, yeah, but also less cringe. GDQ has had cringefests and “scandals” for at least half of its existence, and none of it was something you’d want to see in a sane world. While some people there clearly have brains to go with their gaming skills, the amount of awkwardness on show has been downright uncomfortable at times. At the end of the day, an awful lot of those people are the most stereotypical nerds with blatant social problems, and seeing them performing live with a certain type of crowd hardly did them any favors.

So I think that no crowd may be for the better, at least for a while. Less stopgap moments, less cringe, fewer opportunities for arguments.

I quite enjoyed the Megaman X5 run. I don’t care for the game, but as a longtime classic Megaman fan, I always appreciate how runners can cut the worst parts of the games.
 
So I think that no crowd may be for the better, at least for a while. Less stopgap moments, less cringe, fewer opportunities for arguments.
Does this happen a lot? I rarely watch these things live, whenever I do catch one is through a YouTube video long after the event itself already happened. And, barring some small amount of obvious awkwardness from the crowd and sometimes the runners/couch themselves, it seems mostly fine. But then again I've largely stuck to Resident Evil ones, not sure if some games have a tendency/inclination to bring out more awkwardness and more drama.
 
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TheContact

Member
Star tropics is next. Loved this game as a kid.

Just a reminder that AGDQ or SQDQ do not feature the very best Speedrunners, it seems it's just the most woke ones these days :/

ESA is next month and tends to be a bit better for runs, both are still fun to watch and I always have it on the side

RPG Limit break and ESA are both great events too. In a lot of ways they remind me of the GDQ of old.
 

notseqi

Member
Star tropics is next. Loved this game as a kid.



RPG Limit break and ESA are both great events too. In a lot of ways they remind me of the GDQ of old.
ESA feels way more relaxed and much more of a mature attitude.

RPG Limit break I did not know about, will look it up.
 
Just a reminder that AGDQ or SQDQ do not feature the very best Speedrunners, it seems it's just the most woke ones these days :/

ESA is next month and tends to be a bit better for runs, both are still fun to watch and I always have it on the side
ESA is great. Definitely filled the hole GDQ left for me
 

tichamac

Banned
It only took me 10 seconds to get permanently banned from chat for asking why they went with their far left communist bullshit and included pronouns. Nice. I hope they don't raise a dime.
 

TheContact

Member
It only took me 10 seconds to get permanently banned from chat for asking why they went with their far left communist bullshit and included pronouns. Nice. I hope they don't raise a dime.

nice, you join a stream (which you clearly do not like) which its goal is to raise money to prevent cancer, say something which is clearly going to get the mods riled up, then wish that they don't raise money for cancer. what a dick!
 
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