as promised, i have compiled a document laying out my reasoning for appearing "anti-TAS" in the past. this is a very important issue for me, and so i tend to react strongly to it whenever it crops up. i hope that this post will give everyone a good sense of what is going on in my head when it comes to TAS.
1. Definitions
1a. For the purpose of this article, a "speed run" shall mean any successful attempt by an individual to complete a video game in the shortest amount of time possible. A "TAS" (originally from "Tool-Assisted Speedrun") shall mean any of the subset of speed runs created using methods unacceptable to the average viewer. By using these definitions, I can proceed to the crux of my argument without needing to define the "tools" that are used or not used in producing a TAS. I instead defer this subjective judgment to the general public as a whole, and this public will be the focus of my argument against the status quo.
1b. The "average viewer" in this context shall mean any of the largest single group or majority of viewers of all speed runs, those who do not prefer to watch a TAS. That is, if you drew the name of a speed run viewer out of a hat, you would more likely than not have drawn someone who prefers not to watch a TAS. Good examples of the minority status of TAS occur whenever a mainstream publication includes something about the speed running community: if TAS is mentioned at all, it is relegated to a footnote.
1c. The "TAS problem" shall refer to the numerous instances whereby an average viewer attempts to view a speed run and sees a TAS instead without knowledge that it is a TAS. An instance of the TAS problem usually results in one or more of the following: an inaccurate representation of the speed running community as a whole in the mind of the viewer, less desire on the part of speed runners to develop runs outside of the TAS community, and an increase in anti-TAS sentiment.[1]
2. Majority and Minority Responsibility
2a. In a democratic society, "majority rule" is often utilized to help ensure that the government remains effective even if a given issue is deeply divisive. The purpose of government is to ensure the life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness of all its people. However, because some action is in many cases preferable to no action at all, the minority agrees to support the majority when it comes to important issues like relations with the outside world. In this way, everyone wins, though some people win more than others.
2b. It is the responsibility of the majority to fulfill only their role - that is, they must give up their privilege if they are no longer the majority. Likewise, it is the responsibility of the minority to follow the laws laid down by the majority. If either the majority or the minority does not voluntarily carry their responsibility, then it is the duty of law enforcement to force them to comply.
2c. For the purpose of my argument, the "majority" is the speed running community and their audience, while the "minority" is the TAS community and their audience.
3. The Ideal
3a. If you recall from my definitions, I stated that TAS is a subset of speed running (1a). TAS community members and their audience are distinguished from the majority of speed running community members and their audience by their use of methods the majority (1b) will not expect to see used in creating speed runs. The TAS community is only concerned with pleasing the minority TAS audience when they produce their runs. As you might expect, speed running existed before TAS[2], and speed running with the TAS elements subtracted today remains larger than TAS.
3b. Because TAS is the minority, a TAS is not given the same level of interest that a comparable speed run accepted by the majority receives. For example, googling for speed run produces Speed Demos Archive, the largest majority speed running site, as the first result, while the largest minority or TAS speed running site, NESVideos, is not even in the first page of results[3]. As another example, in the context of a hypothetical unified speed running community website, TAS content might be found behind a TAS link, while the runs the majority is interested in would be found linked from the home page. This disparity is not punishment: it is majority rule in action (2a).
4. The Reality
4a. The situation right now is comparable to that of a democratic society with no effective law enforcement. In a democratic society, the minority most often never admits that they are wrong, and they often attempt to convince the majority that their minority views are correct. Indeed, the minority's view may be correct in the sense that it benefits the minority. However, if the minority is unable to convince the majority, then the minority is made to obey the majority, against the minority's will, by law enforcement (2b). Members of the TAS community -- the minority -- knowing that there will be no penalty to them for their actions, allow their TAS to appear in a fashion that effectively suggests to the audience that what they are seeing is no different from what they are expecting to see. Similarly, members of the speed run watching audience disregard any warnings that might appear before a TAS and damage the community as a whole with their ignorance.
4b. It is not in the best interests of the TAS community to obey the majority, and without the threat of law enforcement, the TAS community has been remiss in implementing solutions to the TAS problem (1c). The majority has offered a number of solutions to the TAS problem over the years. These solutions usually involved some sort of labeling of the TAS products so that potential viewers are made aware of the difference between TAS and what they were probably expecting to see. However, it has proven very difficult to effectively warn viewers before they see a TAS, for two reasons: the concept of TAS is foreign to what the viewers are expecting to see (the burden is on the minority to explain themselves), and the TAS community, as a minority, does not believe that they should be required to do anything to please the majority. That is, to the TAS community, there is no TAS problem. To effectively solve the problem requires more effort than the TAS community has put forth to date.
4c. Attempts by the majority to solve the TAS problem by punishing the TAS community have been unsuccessful. In many cases, the majority has suffered more than the minority when it has attempted to correct the situation in its favor. I no longer believe that the majority will prevail unless the TAS community voluntarily acquiesces to the majority's demands.
5. The Solution
5a. In the absence of any perfect solution, an imperfect one must be chosen (2a). This solution will be disliked by the minority.
5b. When analyzing the minds of those who make up the majority audience, one word neatly sums up their concept of TAS: "cheated". No other word by itself is capable of communicating to the majority audience what they need to know about the speed run in question. However, a different definition of cheating exists inside the TAS community. The TAS community has therefore been reluctant to apply this adjective to their products. They are looking out for the minority audience.
5c. The inappropriateness of the word "cheated" as applied to all TAS notwithstanding, does the application of this word to a given TAS cause any real harm? The creator of the TAS may argue that his or her work has been trivialized or otherwise reduced by its application, because he or she is thinking of how it is applied in his or her community, not of how it is applied by the majority audience. Again, the minority is putting itself before the majority (4a).
5d. Additionally, the TAS community may argue that labeling all TAS "cheated" will interfere with their ability to recruit new members. On the contrary, the culture that the TAS community represents has existed perhaps as long as the culture that spawned the speed running community as a whole. So long as there have been video games, there have been ways to "cheat" at them. This is indisputable: the existence of any video game world that a human created presupposes that a human ought to be able to change the rules of that world according to his or her own volition. Those who choose to play by the game creator's (or "stock") rules are the majority, while those who seek to change the rules to introduce new, (some would say) more interesting elements into the game are labeled cheaters by the majority. But these cheaters wear their badge with pride: Game Genies and GameSharks have always sold well whenever they have been introduced. Indeed, googling for cheat codes produces a guild of self-proclaimed cheaters as its first result[4]. Certainly those who would make productive members of the TAS community, those who have already discovered the joys of manipulating game worlds using so-called "tools"[5], would be interested in watching a video labeled "cheated".
5e. This experimental solution is in fact already in use in a Metroid 2002-sponsored TAS, Dragonfangs's Metroid Fusion 0%[6]. No evidence of any harm to Metroid 2002 or the TAS community as a whole has been shown to stem from the inclusion of the word "cheated" on a sufficiently long (five second) introductory information card before each segment of the video begins. Dragonfangs acknowledged that this was a strong word with many connotations, some of which he would rather not have applied to his work, but he heroically agreed to its application because the majority would benefit.
5f. In the absence of any demonstrable harm to the minority, and in the absence of a better solution, I recommend that the word "cheated" appear prominently on a five second or longer information screen presented before any publicly-accessible (i.e., non-emulator video) presentation of a TAS. Additionally, the title of any TAS should also include the word "cheated"[7].
6. Conclusion
6a. In this post, I have clarified the core of the anti-TAS sentiment witnessed by the TAS community, and I have offered a controversial way out of the harmful current situation. I expect that a friendly debate will follow this post, and I will punish any disrespect shown to any member of the speed running community, whether TAS or not.
Notes
[1] Please see this URL for an instance of the TAS problem that produced all three results: http://speeddemosarchive.com/yabb/YaBB.pl?board=other_games;action=display;num=1114928159
[2] The following excerpt was taken from the EsperNet #metroid log from 17-18 August 2003 (CDT), when the community that would go on to create Metroid HQ, Metroid 2002 and modern Speed Demos Archive encountered TAS for the first time. Note especially the unrehearsed use of the word "cheated" in this context. http://nate.quandra.org/espernet_metroid_17_august_2003_morimoto_smb3_tas.txt
[3] http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=speed+run&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
[4] http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=cheat+codes&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
[5] The Metroid Prime Sequence Breakers of GameFAQs, some of whom have been instrumental in bringing speed running to the masses through Speed Demos Archive, were told time and time again by other users on GameFAQs that what they were doing to the game was considered "cheating". But sequence breaking differs from tool-assistance as defined by the TAS community in that no special assistance is required to perform any of the legal sequence breaks accepted by the majority of Metroid Prime speed runners and their majority audience (1a, 1b).
[6] http://dfangs.metroid2002.com/
[7] Please see the following URL for an example of why placing "cheated" in the title is necessary: http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=legend+of+zelda (top right video as of 6 May 2006) This video was also recently in Google Video's Top 100 videos list, underscoring the scale of confusion this kind of distribution can cause.
1. Definitions
1a. For the purpose of this article, a "speed run" shall mean any successful attempt by an individual to complete a video game in the shortest amount of time possible. A "TAS" (originally from "Tool-Assisted Speedrun") shall mean any of the subset of speed runs created using methods unacceptable to the average viewer. By using these definitions, I can proceed to the crux of my argument without needing to define the "tools" that are used or not used in producing a TAS. I instead defer this subjective judgment to the general public as a whole, and this public will be the focus of my argument against the status quo.
1b. The "average viewer" in this context shall mean any of the largest single group or majority of viewers of all speed runs, those who do not prefer to watch a TAS. That is, if you drew the name of a speed run viewer out of a hat, you would more likely than not have drawn someone who prefers not to watch a TAS. Good examples of the minority status of TAS occur whenever a mainstream publication includes something about the speed running community: if TAS is mentioned at all, it is relegated to a footnote.
1c. The "TAS problem" shall refer to the numerous instances whereby an average viewer attempts to view a speed run and sees a TAS instead without knowledge that it is a TAS. An instance of the TAS problem usually results in one or more of the following: an inaccurate representation of the speed running community as a whole in the mind of the viewer, less desire on the part of speed runners to develop runs outside of the TAS community, and an increase in anti-TAS sentiment.[1]
2. Majority and Minority Responsibility
2a. In a democratic society, "majority rule" is often utilized to help ensure that the government remains effective even if a given issue is deeply divisive. The purpose of government is to ensure the life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness of all its people. However, because some action is in many cases preferable to no action at all, the minority agrees to support the majority when it comes to important issues like relations with the outside world. In this way, everyone wins, though some people win more than others.
2b. It is the responsibility of the majority to fulfill only their role - that is, they must give up their privilege if they are no longer the majority. Likewise, it is the responsibility of the minority to follow the laws laid down by the majority. If either the majority or the minority does not voluntarily carry their responsibility, then it is the duty of law enforcement to force them to comply.
2c. For the purpose of my argument, the "majority" is the speed running community and their audience, while the "minority" is the TAS community and their audience.
3. The Ideal
3a. If you recall from my definitions, I stated that TAS is a subset of speed running (1a). TAS community members and their audience are distinguished from the majority of speed running community members and their audience by their use of methods the majority (1b) will not expect to see used in creating speed runs. The TAS community is only concerned with pleasing the minority TAS audience when they produce their runs. As you might expect, speed running existed before TAS[2], and speed running with the TAS elements subtracted today remains larger than TAS.
3b. Because TAS is the minority, a TAS is not given the same level of interest that a comparable speed run accepted by the majority receives. For example, googling for speed run produces Speed Demos Archive, the largest majority speed running site, as the first result, while the largest minority or TAS speed running site, NESVideos, is not even in the first page of results[3]. As another example, in the context of a hypothetical unified speed running community website, TAS content might be found behind a TAS link, while the runs the majority is interested in would be found linked from the home page. This disparity is not punishment: it is majority rule in action (2a).
4. The Reality
4a. The situation right now is comparable to that of a democratic society with no effective law enforcement. In a democratic society, the minority most often never admits that they are wrong, and they often attempt to convince the majority that their minority views are correct. Indeed, the minority's view may be correct in the sense that it benefits the minority. However, if the minority is unable to convince the majority, then the minority is made to obey the majority, against the minority's will, by law enforcement (2b). Members of the TAS community -- the minority -- knowing that there will be no penalty to them for their actions, allow their TAS to appear in a fashion that effectively suggests to the audience that what they are seeing is no different from what they are expecting to see. Similarly, members of the speed run watching audience disregard any warnings that might appear before a TAS and damage the community as a whole with their ignorance.
4b. It is not in the best interests of the TAS community to obey the majority, and without the threat of law enforcement, the TAS community has been remiss in implementing solutions to the TAS problem (1c). The majority has offered a number of solutions to the TAS problem over the years. These solutions usually involved some sort of labeling of the TAS products so that potential viewers are made aware of the difference between TAS and what they were probably expecting to see. However, it has proven very difficult to effectively warn viewers before they see a TAS, for two reasons: the concept of TAS is foreign to what the viewers are expecting to see (the burden is on the minority to explain themselves), and the TAS community, as a minority, does not believe that they should be required to do anything to please the majority. That is, to the TAS community, there is no TAS problem. To effectively solve the problem requires more effort than the TAS community has put forth to date.
4c. Attempts by the majority to solve the TAS problem by punishing the TAS community have been unsuccessful. In many cases, the majority has suffered more than the minority when it has attempted to correct the situation in its favor. I no longer believe that the majority will prevail unless the TAS community voluntarily acquiesces to the majority's demands.
5. The Solution
5a. In the absence of any perfect solution, an imperfect one must be chosen (2a). This solution will be disliked by the minority.
5b. When analyzing the minds of those who make up the majority audience, one word neatly sums up their concept of TAS: "cheated". No other word by itself is capable of communicating to the majority audience what they need to know about the speed run in question. However, a different definition of cheating exists inside the TAS community. The TAS community has therefore been reluctant to apply this adjective to their products. They are looking out for the minority audience.
5c. The inappropriateness of the word "cheated" as applied to all TAS notwithstanding, does the application of this word to a given TAS cause any real harm? The creator of the TAS may argue that his or her work has been trivialized or otherwise reduced by its application, because he or she is thinking of how it is applied in his or her community, not of how it is applied by the majority audience. Again, the minority is putting itself before the majority (4a).
5d. Additionally, the TAS community may argue that labeling all TAS "cheated" will interfere with their ability to recruit new members. On the contrary, the culture that the TAS community represents has existed perhaps as long as the culture that spawned the speed running community as a whole. So long as there have been video games, there have been ways to "cheat" at them. This is indisputable: the existence of any video game world that a human created presupposes that a human ought to be able to change the rules of that world according to his or her own volition. Those who choose to play by the game creator's (or "stock") rules are the majority, while those who seek to change the rules to introduce new, (some would say) more interesting elements into the game are labeled cheaters by the majority. But these cheaters wear their badge with pride: Game Genies and GameSharks have always sold well whenever they have been introduced. Indeed, googling for cheat codes produces a guild of self-proclaimed cheaters as its first result[4]. Certainly those who would make productive members of the TAS community, those who have already discovered the joys of manipulating game worlds using so-called "tools"[5], would be interested in watching a video labeled "cheated".
5e. This experimental solution is in fact already in use in a Metroid 2002-sponsored TAS, Dragonfangs's Metroid Fusion 0%[6]. No evidence of any harm to Metroid 2002 or the TAS community as a whole has been shown to stem from the inclusion of the word "cheated" on a sufficiently long (five second) introductory information card before each segment of the video begins. Dragonfangs acknowledged that this was a strong word with many connotations, some of which he would rather not have applied to his work, but he heroically agreed to its application because the majority would benefit.
5f. In the absence of any demonstrable harm to the minority, and in the absence of a better solution, I recommend that the word "cheated" appear prominently on a five second or longer information screen presented before any publicly-accessible (i.e., non-emulator video) presentation of a TAS. Additionally, the title of any TAS should also include the word "cheated"[7].
6. Conclusion
6a. In this post, I have clarified the core of the anti-TAS sentiment witnessed by the TAS community, and I have offered a controversial way out of the harmful current situation. I expect that a friendly debate will follow this post, and I will punish any disrespect shown to any member of the speed running community, whether TAS or not.
Notes
[1] Please see this URL for an instance of the TAS problem that produced all three results: http://speeddemosarchive.com/yabb/YaBB.pl?board=other_games;action=display;num=1114928159
[2] The following excerpt was taken from the EsperNet #metroid log from 17-18 August 2003 (CDT), when the community that would go on to create Metroid HQ, Metroid 2002 and modern Speed Demos Archive encountered TAS for the first time. Note especially the unrehearsed use of the word "cheated" in this context. http://nate.quandra.org/espernet_metroid_17_august_2003_morimoto_smb3_tas.txt
[3] http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=speed+run&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
[4] http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=cheat+codes&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
[5] The Metroid Prime Sequence Breakers of GameFAQs, some of whom have been instrumental in bringing speed running to the masses through Speed Demos Archive, were told time and time again by other users on GameFAQs that what they were doing to the game was considered "cheating". But sequence breaking differs from tool-assistance as defined by the TAS community in that no special assistance is required to perform any of the legal sequence breaks accepted by the majority of Metroid Prime speed runners and their majority audience (1a, 1b).
[6] http://dfangs.metroid2002.com/
[7] Please see the following URL for an example of why placing "cheated" in the title is necessary: http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=legend+of+zelda (top right video as of 6 May 2006) This video was also recently in Google Video's Top 100 videos list, underscoring the scale of confusion this kind of distribution can cause.
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