Personally I don't mind if someone wants to use the term "superplay" instead of "speedrun" in their video. After all, the author of the video is entitled to name his video whatever he likes (well, as long as it's not deceitful, eg calling it solely as "speedrun" and nothing else).
What I do object to is this strange opposition of using the term "speed". I don't understand why people hate it so much. They will find even the slightest reasons for not using it. I find that attitude exactly as silly as if someone said "hey, I found a video at SDA which does not aim for speed; they should immediately stop using the word "speed" in the name of their site!". That would be just ridiculous.
Personally I don't mind if someone wants to use the term ... deceitful ... I do ... strange ... people ... They will find ... I ... silly ... someone said "hey, ... SDA ... should immediately stop using ... their site!". That ... ridiculous.
If all movies aim for entertainment and all except for 3 aim for speed then:
Every movie is a superplay
99.995% (100-(3/600)) of all movies are speedruns
I think we should use "superplay" mostly so people don't think our only goal is to complete games as fast as possible.
But you guys, use what ever you want to as long as your movies are rad.
I think we should use "superplay" mostly so people don't think our only goal is to complete games as fast as possible.
What I don't understand is why would it be so wrong if people got this "misconception" that these videos try to complete the games as fast as possible? (And it's not a misconception at all, fwiw.)
Even if someone believed that everything we try to do is to complete the game in minimal time, why would that be so horrible?
As I have been saying many times "tool-assisted speedrun" is an accurate and established term. Changing it because of some tiny technicality (which doesn't matter at all) would be just foolish.
As long as the Tecmo Bowl superplay exists, you're wrong.
There are also concept demos which do not adhere to the rules. Does that mean that the rules have been obsoleted?
One exception does not make the rule false.
I thought one exception automatically disproves a theory, or something along those lines.
You are confusing different concepts here (on purpose, probably).
"These videos try to complete games as fast as possible" is not a mathematical statement. It's a colloquial expression which describes a general property of the vast majority of videos. That statement is no more false than for example "dogs have four legs".
If someone says that dogs have four legs, telling them that it's not true because there are some exceptional cases, some individual dogs which do not have four legs, is nitpicking and missing the point completely. In regular human communication a phrase such as "dogs have four legs" is perfectly valid and true because it describes the general rule which describes dogs. A few exceptions do not make that rule false. It is not intended to be a mathematical statement.
Another example: "JPEG is a lossy format." Responding "that statement is false because there exist JPEG files which produce the exact same image as the original" is nitpicking and basically wrong: The exception doesn't make the general rule false.
Saying "these videos do not aim for speed" is wrong. The general rule is that they do. A few exceptions do not change this.
Joined: 8/1/2004
Posts: 2687
Location: Seattle, WA
Warp wrote:
Saying "these videos do not aim for speed" is wrong. The general rule is that they do. A few exceptions do not change this.
The current argument is not "these videos do not aim for speed."
Currently, the debate is as follows:
"These movies aim mainly to be entertaining. The easiest way to be entertaining is to do things super fast. Any focus on speed is a subsidiary to the focus on entertainment as a whole. To call the movies on this site 'speedruns' is misleading. This is further proven by the fact that a portion of the hosted movies do not focus on speed."
versus
"The main focus of these movies is speed. The main criteria that we use to accept submissions is how fast they are, not how entertaining they are. To call the movies on this site anything but 'speedruns' is misleading. This is further proven by the fact that the majority of the movies hosted on this site keep speed as a primary focus, and the exceptions to this rule are an unimportant minority."
Or something like that.
This is where we decide whether
Warp, I respect your passion and devotion and I don't want to argue these things. :) However, the fallacy of your argument is primarily the fact that dogs are not art, nor do they choose to have an exception to the four legged rule.
The second fallacy is that you argue that people have an irrational bias against the word "speedrun" when it is in fact you who has an irrational bias for it. You're trying to assert that the fallacy of reduction to absurdity applies to the "tool assisted superplay" mentality, simply because non-speedruns are the minority. It doesn't, because the concept of minority does not apply.
The rhetoric here is still over the definition of entertainment, where it should be over the definition of art.
This is an art community.
You are trying to arbitrarily constrain the definition, if not acceptance, of art itself based on criteria which fly in the face of all established civilization in the history of the world.
We're trying to enhance, expand, and preserve this community by philosophically redefining it.
Yeah I know "robustify" isn't a word ;) I'll expound later, but it'd just be a redigest of what I already wrote earlier in this thread. If you don't understand it, I sincerely suggest that you reread and think about it as many times as it takes until you do!
There's a Wendy's advertisement I saw at the restaurant that says "Frosty: The only soquid you eat with a fpoon." I had no idea what to make of it. I thought fpoon was supposed to be someone saying spoon with a cold mouth, but after reading what you posted, it seems it could be a fork-spoon, just as so-quid is a solid-liquid.
Xebra's original idea was a spin-off of this same slogan.
Soquid...what a dumb idea.
Hmm, I was going to guess that "fpoon" was just "spoon" spelled with one of those old-fashioned s's that look like f's.
But on the current topic, well, I would say that the speed is something you throw into a video walkthrough in order to waste no more of the viewer's time than necessary... But as long as you're being speedy, you might as well be FAST AS POSSIBLE! So speed should probably be a part of every video, yeah. Sure. Actually I didn't really read those 9 pages that sprung up in much detail, so maybe somebody already said that.
put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude
I thought one exception automatically disproves a theory, or something along those lines.
You are confusing different concepts here (on purpose, probably).
"These videos try to complete games as fast as possible" is not a mathematical statement. It's a colloquial expression which describes a general property of the vast majority of videos. That statement is no more false than for example "dogs have four legs".
If someone says that dogs have four legs, telling them that it's not true because there are some exceptional cases, some individual dogs which do not have four legs, is nitpicking and missing the point completely. In regular human communication a phrase such as "dogs have four legs" is perfectly valid and true because it describes the general rule which describes dogs. A few exceptions do not make that rule false. It is not intended to be a mathematical statement.
Another example: "JPEG is a lossy format." Responding "that statement is false because there exist JPEG files which produce the exact same image as the original" is nitpicking and basically wrong: The exception doesn't make the general rule false.
Saying "these videos do not aim for speed" is wrong. The general rule is that they do. A few exceptions do not change this.
"These movies aim mainly to be entertaining..."
versus
"The main focus of these movies is speed..."
That's exactly the fallacy in your reasoning. You talk as if entertainment and speed were mutually exclusive things. You use "entertainment versus speed" there as if they were: a) comparable concepts of equal conceptual level, and b) mutually exclusive.
The concept of "entertainment" is much broader and basically obsolete. It is obsolete because it's self-evident. Why else would we be doing these videos if not for entertainment? Is there some other possible reason why we could be doing these? Is there some confusion about it? Could someone think that these videos are not for entertainment but for something else? What else could they be?
Speaking of "entertainment" and "speed" as two mutually exclusive terms of equal conceptual value is just silly. Don't you see that "we aim for entertainment" and "we aim for speed" are both true? The difference is that the former doesn't say anything, the latter does.
Now, could you please answer these questions: Do the videos at SDA aim for entertainment? If the answer is yes, then is it wrong for them to use the word "speed"? Is it misleading?
Oh yeah. I found where I heard the term "tool assisted superplay". It's on the frickin site's own icon! Look at the top left of any of the forum's pages!
FYI, it seems like you people are essentially participating in a round robin of ideas, basically saying similar or same things as each other but cycling through the ideas, as verbal sparring fodder.
You're certainly being redundant against my original encyclopedic tome post. FREAKIN READ AND GROK IT, KIDS! Establish vocabulary. Realize your consensus. Move the discussion *forward*. <3
The second fallacy is that you argue that people have an irrational bias against the word "speedrun" when it is in fact you who has an irrational bias for it.
I think that you have a small misconception about what I'm fighting against. If you have noticed, I have said several times things along the lines of "I don't care if someone uses 'speedrun' or 'superplay' or whatever to describe his own video". Why would I say things like that if I had an irrational bias for the word "speedrun"?
What I do object against is this strange idea that the name "TAS" to describe these videos is wrong and misleading and that it should be changed. I also find it irrational to say "we aim for entertainment, not for speed", as if they were mutually exclusive things and as if "entertainment" would somehow describe these videos better.
Another reason why I strongly object to changing the name is that changing the name of the site is just silly, and a lot of work. Just look how much time and effort it took to change the usage of the inaccurate and truely misleading term "timeattack" to the more accurate "TAS". It was a process of years, and in fact you can still find the old term used at some places.
I'm still convinced that, like the furious passion pro "timeattack" and against "TAS" some people showed in the past, this new fashion of "it's entertainment, not speed" is also a product of a misunderstanding. I believe that it comes from the fact that Bisqwit at some point wanted to emphasize that we are not competing with regular speedruns and he used an expression along the lines of "we are not trying to compete with regular speedruns, these videos are not about competition but only about entertainment; these videos are just art". What he meant with that was "don't take these too seriously, we are not trying to take anything away from regular speedrunners, just enjoy these as a separate form of art". However, it seems that some people have overinterpreted that and somehow got the idea that "we are not making speedruns, we are making entertainment" which was not what he meant.
Saying "these do not aim for speed" would be quite inaccurate for over 300 videos distributed here. I think that a better solution than trying to change the terminology is to put the videos (well, the one video) which does not aim for speed in its own category. After all, we already have a special category for videos which do not comply with all the rules: The "concept demos" category. I don't see any reason why there couldn't be a category where this one non-speedrun video could be put into.
FYI, it seems like you people are essentially participating in a round robin of ideas, basically saying similar or same things as each other but cycling through the ideas, as verbal sparring fodder.
This is a very accurate observation in my opinion.
I think you're wrong about this. A good analogy would be how "speedrun" is a bad description of the movie we make here, since the primary goal of our runs is entertainment.
So there you go.
Okay but can we PLEASE agree at least on a format first? (Not necessarily based on the former discussion or any other relevant topic)
MOVEMENT 1: SHOCK AND AWE
1) statement of argument platform with interwoven irrational assumptions (stated and unstated, explicit and implied)
2) unsubstantiated claims posed as supporting data
3) appeal to authority, appeal to the unnamed masses
MOVEMENT 2: MISDIRECTION
4) ad hominem attack based on projecting the inverse of #1 upon someone else
5) rambling analogies, baby! think of cars and sports for expedient irrelevancy, or else complex topics of business and economics you can't possibly understand for maximum impact
6) questioning of sexual orientation. either explicit or implicit
MOVEMENT 3: ??????
7) optional abstract ad hominem in summary
8) assorted bizarre statements tangiential to the topic, to smear the reader's attention span into paste. NOTE: the more analogies the better.
MOVEMENT 4: PROFIT!!!!!!!!
9) totally absurd suggestion to solve an unrelated problem, masqueraded as if it was relevant (very important to leave as a postscript, for maximal lasting confusion after they already thought it was over and started to relax)
