That's part of why I suggested a separate category for plays with major time-for-entertainment tradeoffs (and actually glancing at previous discussion here it seems to be under consideration anyway - whoops): as Bisqwit mentioned in the publishment acceptance comment, it's very difficult to be objective when "entertainment value" is the only real standard, making strict judgment for public publishing purposes is an open invitation to ugly drama and politics. Different people will have different standards, expectations, and even preference in entertainment, so there really aren't any hard and fast rules about what would be publish-worthy and what wouldn't.
I'd be tempted to suggest setting it up as a less structured "here's a place to share screwaround TAS runs, we'll make a .avi for ones that get a lot of public support and the judges like," but that feels somewhat contrary to the professional tone of the site and leaves me a bit nervous about it causing more trouble further down the line. (Though I admit, I haven't really followed the community, so I may not be the best judge of this...) Splitting it off into a "sister site" with that more casual air may get around that, as long as the respective admins/site owners don't have ways to get on one another's nerves too much. But I'm a complete newbie to office politics, so that may just be my fantasies speaking.
Warp wrote:
where is the line of acceptable timewasting?
Again, this is mostly a personal preference, but I'm inclined to think that taking more than a minute or two (maaaaaybe stretch to 3-5 in very slow games or while showcasing a LOT of glitches with item you'll never encounter again) is where goofing off without moving the game forward tends to get tiresome. Even that may be too long if the goofy actions aren't kept fresh, and hesitating to set something up without a good reason is very very bad. Taking unusual or impossible paths at the cost of time is fine (see: trashcan pit toss), but the speed should at least come close to expert "real" play without any embarrassing slip-ups and proper abuse of frame advance when the 'mistake' isn't a fresh piece of amusement. Avoiding uninteresting backtracking through glitches or suicide (as used in this video) is also wise, and may actually make opportunities for entertaining "one-sided-against-the-player" RNG abuse in RPGs and the like. But, I think I'm on a rather forgiving end of the spectrum as far as professionalism of entertainment runs goes; I wouldn't really object if TAS-quality speed outside of entertainment segments remained the standard. Not that I'd have any place to object anyway, but, y'know.
I've been lurking the TASvideos site for a while now (maybe a little under a year?) but this video is what made me decide to register in order to state:
I approve of this Tool Assisted Silliness.
In all honesty, inhuman acts of perfection get old after a while. I've more often been entertained by abuse of game glitches or mechanics in order to tighten up other TAS videos, and this is a fantastic example of glitch/gameplay showcasing that I REALLY enjoyed. I don't know if such glitch/gameplay showcasing is strictly appropriate for tool-assisted gaming (aside from glitches requiring frame precision, at least), but I certainly enjoyed it immensely. More videos of this sort, or (in my fantasies) a sister site or category for goofing around and showing off glitches and gameplay oddities would be immensely appreciated.
Thanks for the laughs, adelikat and JXQ!