Hacker News Reader

Comment by szvsw | Hacker News Reader

As someone with absolutely no knowledge of speedrunning community norms, it’s very interesting to see how a practice that is fundamentally about exploiting generally unintended mechanisms within a system design still develops its own notion of ethics, legitimate and illegitimate exploits, etc. Not that different than something like the Astros technology-assisted sign-stealing scandal (as opposed to legitimate sign-stealing) against the Dodgers in the ‘17 WS, at least from the perspective of needing to identify the lines between fair play and illegitimate advantage.

Edit: children have helped point out the precise notion of ethics - no exploit is unethical on its face, so long as it is disclosed, which allows the speedrun to be correctly classified and compared to others in its class.

View on HN

> its own notion of ethics, legitimate and illegitimate exploits, etc.

There are run “categories” for any given game. Super Metroid’s arguably most prestigious category used to be called “Any%”, referring to the required item collection percentage as distinct from 100% or Low%, and now it’s called “Any%, No Major Glitches” because someone discovered that you can go out of bounds with the X-Ray Scope and a door. It specifies “major” glitches because the run otherwise makes heavy use of (among others) a “minor” glitch called Mock Ball, which lets you move in morph ball form at regular form running speed. Ultimately, the community has to agree on what is major and what is minor but it’s usually moot until a new exploit is discovered.

It is interesting and it makes a whole lot of sense once you look at it from this angle. The categories actually have pretty rigorously defined rules precisely because there is so much competition involved.

Another good example is the Zelda Ocarina of Time any%, which progressed as new techniques allowed skipping more and more of the game, but which was still pretty broadly popular even when it was a warp to the final boss in under 20 minutes, is now way less popular now that they discovered a arbitrary code execution method that credits-warps in under 5 minutes.

This process had already been going on before, but you have this progressive sequence of the speedrun getting harder to play and harder to watch. You see some spliting out to restricted categories but even those aren't all that popular, but also something else that's recently become really common particularly in the communities for these games that have been optimized to death: randomizers. Shuffle around the positions of the necessary items, or the map itself, and you have something that's fresh for viewers and people who've played the game forever, an extra aspect of chance, usefulness of skills and familiarity with parts of the game that wouldn't otherwise be relevant... but it does split the community even more.

It also depends on what is "fun". Major glitches in Super Metroid make you skip too much of the game and that just isn't fun to watch.

Speedrunning is a spectator sport, so spectators ultimately determine which categories are the prestigious ones.

An example I'm aware of is the Lufia II No Major Glitches/No RNG Manipulation run. That game is very easy to make essentially deterministic with RNG manipulation, but like most highly technical RPG runs it's long and exhausting. The No RNG run not only bans RNG manipulation but also certain very rare drops that RNG manipulation is usually used to obtain. Why? Because otherwise, the optimal strategy would be to grind runs 10 minutes at a time until you got the rare drop from an early boss, and that's not fun. So the ruleset is designed to be accessible for runners who aren't interested in pathological optimization.

And they are oh-so-contentious. If anyone wants to go down a fascinating rabbit hole, the recent conversation/debate around whether Bomb Torizo skip (a very difficult, borderline-human-impossible trick) should be allowed in Super Metroid runs was actually fascinating and ended up getting into deep research about inconsistencies between hardware polling rates vis-a-vis what runners could reasonable/humanely expect from one another... that's a thin gloss from a non-expert, but it's a great concrete example to work from.

(The debate was sparked by a runner proving that the trick was humanly possible, raising the spectre of someone actually pulling it off in a world record run, which would force all subsequent world record would-bes to replicate a trick that would kill 99.99% of runs, execution of which depending on the vagaries of how different controllers poll inputs in addition to nearly inhuman levels of sustained, frame-perfect inputs).

And there's generally a combination of principles involved, and different speedrunners and communities will prioritise different ones:

Fairness: generally speaking the competition wants to be fair. Part of this is just having a consistent set of enforced rules, but it also comes down to decisions about timing and allowing or disallowing certain tricks: if how fast part of a game is depends on how fast your hardware is, for example (whether by a trick working or simply lag), then most communities will try to eliminate this effect by banning hardware-dependent tricks or adjusting timing rules to remove loading times.

Competition: At the end of the day speedrunning is a competition around a game, so there's a general resistance to modifying the game itself, or e.g. use of external tools to assist the player beyond what was intended by the developer. But that will sometimes be compromised if there's some aspect of the game which badly affects other goals.

Fun: At the end of the day, speedruns are something that should be fun and rewarding to play and watch. So if the optimal run of a game becomes unfun to play or watch, then generally something will be done about it, whether by banning the trick which is unfun or by allowing something which alleviates the pain point (sometimes this even verges into health concerns: some pokemon games, for example, have very long runs with a huge amount of button-mashing to get through dialogue quickly, and RSI is a very real concern which means that turbo controllers which automate that are sometimes allowed). This can go as far as patching the game to remove particularly unfun or RNG-heavy parts, though it's rare.

And of course you can have different categories which will focus on different aspects of this, especially as different runners and watchers will have different ideas on what is fun: apart from what counts as 'beating the game' (any%, 100%, 'true ending', whatever), there's different levels of what other compromises are allowed. And it can get pretty contentious: from hardcore 'play the game as intended' purists to arbitrary-code-execution TASers, everyone has a different idea about what they enjoy in the competition, and different games can have strengths in each area of focus.

You can always play whatever you want - you just can't rank it on leaderboards if it doesn't follow the rules of that leaderboard.

TASes break every rule and are pretty cool.

> TASes break every rule and are pretty cool.

There's still rules in TASing, just a different set of rules! Specifically, you have to submit a file containing a sequence of controller inputs that completes the game when played back in an accurate emulator (or a replay device connected to the controller port of an original console running the original game).

I co-authored the current fastest TAS of Super Metroid: https://youtu.be/m-Gt57ur7OA?t=2m30s We completed the game in under 2 minutes of gameplay by exploiting a race condition in the game's sprite animation system to start an exploit chain leading to full arbitrary code execution (full writeup: https://tasvideos.org/8214S ).

We used all kinds of tooling to create the run: a recording emulator with savestates, slowdown, and frame-by-frame input editing, scripting tools, debuggers, disassemblers, and memory viewers. We used memory editing tools during development to test different scenarios without having to set them up in-game first, but the actual run you submitted is completely "pure"; just an input file that beats the original, unmodified game.

And just like real-time speedruns, TASes are split into categories too. Here's the world record TAS with major glitches disallowed, by Sniq: https://youtu.be/Rr9gdQ-VkO4 Whereas our ACE TAS is more like a CTF challenge than anything else, Sniq's run is a masterpiece of gameplay that shows how far the game can be pushed beyond the current human limits. But again, it's still a true run of the game; the only difference is that you submit an input file instead of a realtime performance of the run.

A bit outdated now, but Saturn TAS made a very good TAS. It optimized door transitions to get the best in-game time. Unfortunately this was right as the rules changed between tracking in-game time and real-time, so the run never made it into the leaderboard. It made him stop making TASes for Super Metroid altogether. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3THRhCgCO4

> There's still rules in TASing, just a different set of rules! Specifically, you have to submit a file containing a sequence of controller inputs that completes the game when played back in an accurate emulator (or a replay device connected to the controller port of an original console running the original game).

Enter TASBot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rha61Y3_Voc

It's a really cool project. In case "just" running a TAS on a real console through some wired up controller... Nintendo DS is also supported: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHQCJX0RzS8

It's such a funny and rewarding escalation of the really impressive world of TAS.

Here is the TAS we produced for Diablo (the original goal before we got side tracked by the issue found in what as supposed to be the baseline): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiwoqd4arI0

I mean there can still be rules. Like using a hacked ROM or spliced video. Of course you wouldn't splice to get good performances, but different RNG states or something.

You can still do that, just don't submit it to a normal or TAS leaderboard. Put it on Youtube and say here's this cool thing I did. Even Doodong's Cavern is a meme.

It's not a particularly complex or surprising "ethics" though: the point of competing between speed-runners is an honest comparison of human skills, so all exploits require full disclosure to ensure a fair comparison and the ability to agree on which skills are actually being compared. This is why tool-assisted speedruns are separated from human speed runs, for example.

> It's not a particularly complex or surprising "ethics" though

Yes, you are mostly right, but it’s still interesting (and positive!) that the community landed on an “anything goes so long as you are honest” set of norms.

As someone without much (well, any) interaction with speedrunning communities, it’s still fun to see how other internet communities have codified or tacitly established their operating procedures, expectations, norms etc.

What is interesting or unique about honesty as a shared norm?

You are, again here, despite trying to deny it elsewhere in this thread, claiming the “anything goes” part within the bounds of the game and within the rules of the competition is somehow reflecting on the community norms and making this “interesting”.

It’s like trying to say “Oh wow it’s so interesting that marathon runners have their own ethics; they can just run as fast as they want as long as they don’t take shortcuts”.

> they can just run as fast as they want as long as they don’t take shortcuts

In fact that is not how marathon running works. If you take certain drugs that is frowned uppon, even if you are honest about it. Similarly you can’t break the legs of the competitors. That is heavily frowned uppon even if you are honest about it.

These are not obvious. There could be a full-doping version of marathon running but there isn’t. There could be a combined martial art&marathon running competition where you try to hurt your opponent without getting hurt while running a marathon distance but there isn’t.

Frowned upon? Not obvious? What are you talking about? This is straw man. Doping is against marathon rules and assault is both against the rules and also straight up illegal. Maybe you should read some marathon rules https://www.baa.org/sites/default/files/2021-08/Boston_Marat...

There could be a doping-allowed marathon, indeed, if anyone actually wanted that. And that still wouldn’t demonstrate any unique community norms or change my point at all.

> Doping is against marathon rules

Yes. That is what I'm saying. Thank you for repeating it.

> assault is both against the rules and also straight up illegal.

This is coupled. What is or isn't assault depends on the rules of the sport. What is absolutely a-okay in boxing would be considered assault in other situations.

If there would be thousands and thousands of people with long history who think it is just and right to do a kind of marathon where they stop occasionally and have a kickboxing match on the side of the road then it would not be considered assault to participate in it.

> Maybe you should read some marathon rules

Doesn't appear that we have a disagreement on marathon rules. So why would I?

My point is that in marathons the people running and organising them have very specific ideas about what is or isn't a valid kind of marathon. "Doping-allowed marathon" is not a thing, even if all participants were honest about it. "boxing while distance running" events are not a thing.

The norm "anything goes as long as you are honest about it" has two parts. Part 1 "anything goes". Part 2 "as long as you are honest about it". You think part 2 is the curious thing. What I'm pointing out is that Part 1 is the curious thing. In most kind of competitions people are a lot lot more picky about the circumstances which they feel "okay" to compete under.

> There could be a doping-allowed marathon, indeed, if anyone actually wanted that.

And that is my point. People don't want that. People are repulsed by the idea and feel a strong disdain towards others who would participate or organise a "doping-allowed marathon". If such an event were ever contemplated very likely there would be protest and pressure on the organisers to abandon the plan. Do you agree with that?

In other words in long distance running they do not have a norm of "anything goes as long as you are honest about it". Not because they are not honest, or don't require honesty (part 2). But because they all agree to a sufficient degree that "anything does not go" (part 1). Therefore the curious thing is part 1 in speed running. That they celebrate, and consider to be appropriate, a much wider variation of circumstances than in other competitions.

This discussion is sloppy and failing to define or be careful with ethics and how ethics is distinct from competition rules. Let’s drop the word norms since it’s ambiguous, and be clear about ethics. My point from the top and throughout is that video game exploits don’t raise any ethical questions outside of competition. Your examples do raise some interesting ethical questions on their own, but that’s a different subject than speedrunning, and they don’t actually challenge what I was trying to say.

Outside of fighting sports, assault is default illegal and considered unethical, and there are very few exceptions for it. Importantly, a sport’s rules must make an explicit exception for assault because it’s illegal, otherwise assault is not allowed. Marathon isn’t a fighting sport, and like any sport it does not need to state that assault is not allowed. Marathon’s ethics on assault match society’s ethics on assault, and therefore the marathon does not have unique ethics when it comes to assault.

Boxing is an interesting example, one where the sport’s rules do bend social ethics. Speedrunning is not an interesting example, as glitch exploits and tool assisted speedruns aren’t considered unethical outside of competition - they don’t harm anybody. The only ethical question anyone’s raised so far about speedrunning is whether the speedrunners have followed the competition rules, or whether they’ve cheated.

There is chess boxing, which is perhaps similar to your idea of a boxing while distance running event. People have suggested doping-allowed sports https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/30/sport/enhanced-games-olympics...

Looks like the people in the article objecting are people who make a living doing sports, so perhaps unsurprising. The primary objection to doping is that it’s unfair to competitors. I’m not sure the general public would be repulsed. Whether doping is generally unethical is debatable since outside of competition, the main harm a doper does is to themselves. Some ethicists consider self-harm a type of social harm, but it’s different than directly harming others, and challenging the right to self-harm may raise ethical questions about freedom of choice. But, if you’re right about people considering doping to be generally unethical, then that means it’s in the same bucket as assault, and so does not help support the idea that speedrunning represents unique or flexible ethics.

Anyway, there are no competitions where anything goes, they all have rules. Most of the rules aren’t based on ethics, they’re just rules. When rules do bend society’s ethics, I agree it can be interesting. When rules don’t bend normal ethics, then we’re only talking about a different competition and not a case of flexible ethics. I think video game speed running falls in that latter group, and I haven’t yet seen any examples or reasoning here that demonstrate otherwise.

> This discussion is sloppy and failing to define or be careful with ethics and how ethics is distinct from competition rules

Because I think what we are talking about here is not ethics. Do note that I haven't used that term at all. What I'm talking about is the participants shared sense of "what goes" and "what doesn't". What I'm talking about is norms. Norms of the activity. vanderZwan uses the word "ethics" in quotes, but from the context, and the quotes, I think it is clear that it's not about literal ethics.

> Anyway, there are no competitions where anything goes, they all have rules.

Of course. The observation is about what kind of things are okay according to the shared sense of the participants. In some activities this space is very narrow, in some it ends up much more expansive. In my observation it seems speedrunning has a more expansive notion of "a-okay rules" than what I have experienced in other activities. I find this interesting. You don't find this interesting.

It sounds like you want to litigate this and convince those who find this interesting that it is not interesting. That's a fool's errand.

> Because I think what we are talking about here is not ethics.

This is why I said your argument is a straw man in relation to mine. I am and always was talking about ethics, because that’s what the top comment said. The top comment used the word “ethics”. You jumped into a conversation about ethics and without being clear until now and tried changing topics to the ill-defined “norms”, which is why we have some miscommunication. I assumed incorrectly that your use of norms meant ethics, because we were talking about ethics from the start.

> It sounds like you want to litigate this and convince those who find this interesting that it is not interesting. That's a fool's errand

SMH You’re here debating too, I didn’t ask for you to misinterpret and try to contradict me. I’m not trying to convince you about what you find interesting, I’m pointing out that speedrunning is not interesting from an ethical point of view. I don’t think it’s particularly interesting from a norms point of view either, but you do you. I don’t feel like you’ve even demonstrated that speedrunning competition rules represent norms at all, your argument is making more unstated assumptions.

> The top comment used the word “ethics”.

Yes. In quotes. Which I think means something other than ethics without quotes.

> You’re here debating too,

I'm not really. I'm chatting with you and others. Not everything is a debate.

> I’m pointing out that speedrunning is not interesting from an ethical point of view

And you won that argument. Your internet points will be transferred to your permanent record within one to two days.

The top comment did not use quotes around ethics. I used quotes merely to point out the exact word that was used, and I meant ethics, not something else.

You’re absolutely right that not everything is a debate, but your very first sentence in reply to my comment was argumentative, and it was followed by several more. Feel free to reflect on that.

> Your internet points

Doesn’t using snark kind of undermine the claim that you’re just chatting? I would have loved to actually hear some definition around and justification about norms and get to something interesting. I finally feel like what I (and top comment) said was understood correctly and don’t have to keep trying to explain it.

As a disinterested third party I’m not sure what your point is. Honesty isn’t unique? I don’t think anyone is saying otherwise.

You seem to be proving the other poster’s point that people interested in marathons landed on a class of rules that is specific and that nobody wants the alternatives.

It’s the difference between that and the speed-running community’s “anything goes, we’ll just classify it” rules that people find are finding interesting.

I don’t see how you’ve arrived at marathons having any specific norms. No doping and no assault is pretty universal. Can you explain it better?

The point was that speed runners are not operating with different ethics than any other competition, or society in general. “Anything goes” isn’t accurate as a description, and the top poster maybe didn’t realize that suggesting that exploiting game glitches somehow represented flexible ethics might be a bit presumptuous and patronizing, and also incorrect. It’s interesting to me that people would assume otherwise.

> I don’t see how you’ve arrived at marathons having any specific norms. No doping and no assault is pretty universal. Can you explain it better?

Sure. First, I'm going to leave 'assault' because I think it sort of changes the mapping between marathon running and speedrunning in an analogy-breaking way and adds ethical concerns that aren't really relevant to the point and practically don't exist for speedrunning anyway. I understood what the poster was saying, but I think it's not a great example.

Second, I'm going to suggest that like speedrunning, a marathon run is really against the clock. This isn't strictly true, but it's true enough for the analogy to work.

With all that in place, the apparent universality of 'no doping' is half the point. There are no marathons where you can choose to dope or not dope and they simply categorize you that way. Doping has a fair chance of ruining a career and disqualifying the participant from future marathons.

The other half of the point is that it doesn't have to be this way. We could have separate marathons for dopers, allow them to race together with non-dopers but categorize them differently, or even have specified paths to run but no organized marathon and allow people to get creative in speedrunning them. We could allow people to find shortcuts on trails to improve their time and then categorize them differently from those who follow the proscribed path. Yet we don't do any of it.

In contrast, speedrunning does allow this sort of activity. Tools are okay, but now you're categorized as TAS. You don't have to 100% the game, but now you're doing an Any% run. This does not exist in marathons. You can't take a short cut and get an "Any%" time, for instance.

Simply put, if a speedrunner finds a shortcut it is celebrated, but if a marathon runner happens to find a path down a vine that saves him 10 minutes of running, he's a cheater. These are two different ethical systems.

> The point was that speed runners are not operating with different ethics than any other competition, or society in general.

As you can see above, I disagree with this statement. I haven't read all the sibling and cousin posts, but neither the poster you responded to nor the top poster said the ethical system was bad; in fact both found it interesting. Both the marathon system of ethics and the speedrunning system of ethics seem to have the same moral or ethical basis in fairness, but the approach is different and therefore is the ethical system.

> “Anything goes” isn’t accurate as a description, and the top poster maybe didn’t realize that suggesting that exploiting game glitches somehow represented flexible ethics might be a bit presumptuous and patronizing, and also incorrect.

This is not my interpretation of the top post and I think it's extremely ungenerous. He expressed surprised that a system designed to work around the rules still develops a system of ethical rules. His edit then points out that honesty is a core tenet of the ethics of the group.

The edit was a response to multiple people including me calling out the framing of game exploits as a reflection of ethics at all, and it was an explicit admission of having done that, and perhaps indicated a change of perspective. You are contradicting that post.

I can see why you’re dropping assault now, since it undermined @krisoft’s argument. It was a mistake to defend it. And as for doping, you agree with me that anti-doping rules are universal? Okay so marathoners don’t have different norms than other sports, or at least you’ve run out of examples.

I disagree with your equating of TAS and doping. But that’s mostly irrelevant anyway. There is no ethics of TAS outside of a competition that disallows TAS. The only ethics we’re talking about is the ethics of cheating, which is universal; whether or not the agreed upon rules were broken. It’s the same for speed runners as it is for marathoners.

That’s a wholly inadequate and inappropriate response to my post.

I have only read the edited post and don’t know if in addition to the addendum he also edited the original post. If that is the case then there may be context here I don’t have, so feel free to educate me there, but I stand by my interpretation of what I’ve read here. I think you might be confused and trying to make this personal between us doesn’t convince me otherwise.

I’ve edited my post above, before I saw your reply. I’m not making anything personal here, I’m debating you. If you don’t like that, then don’t state your disagreement with me and invite argument.

BTW, you lobbed an ad-hominem with “extremely ungenerous” which is why you got my retort that was edited out. Maybe you didn’t realize you were already making it personal yourself?

Personally, I think you’re confused about the difference between rules and ethics. Yes, we’re talking about different sets of rules. But we have not been talking about different sets of ethics. The difference between a speedrunner’s shortcut being good and a marathoner’s shortcut being bad is rules, not ethics.

You ignored the entire content of my post to make essentially a personal attack because you think someone recognizing that your interpretation of a post is ungenerous is ad hominem. I wasn’t making an argument. I was telling you what you’re arguing against isn’t what was said or at least wasn’t what was meant.

Then you edited your post completely to essentially attack a point that wasn’t really mine, that you wouldn’t see the way it was actually meant, and that I was already conceding for expediency since you yourself claimed you didn’t understand. I posted to you because regardless of who posts you seem to not understand their point of view and want to “debate” about things they didn’t say or if they did say them they didn’t mean them the way you took them.

You’re doing this in several response not just to me. But I’m sure it’s just because I don’t understand the intersection of rules, ethics, and morals. I’m just confused.

Have a nice life.

An interesting peculiarity of the speedrunning community is that there is also a large component of "the community vs the game" mattering more than than "runner vs runner".

A lot of games have community members who are known more as researchers than as competitive runners. Even if you don't have the reflexes or time to get on the leaderboard, you might be able to devise strats for the people who do.

That is very accurate, whenever I was dethroned from a position (legitimately) I was happy for that person and challenged me to find a better way to complete the run.

Although the games I've done are very niche and have small moderation teams.

So the e-sports version of track and field basically, with similar attitudes that arise from the similar nature

Just to add a bit more context.

For a given game there are often multiple categories. With rules for each. Some forbid some exploits, some complete game as fast as possible some 100% it.

When a new tech gets discovered there might be a debate if it belongs to certain categories or not.

Yes. All of human culture is like this.

When you do something nobody did before or are faced with a moral dilemma you've no prior experience with it's often unclear whether what's "Good" and what's "Bad" in some general sense and so the reaction may be based on "vibes".

Dick Fosbury's weird jumping style? No rule against that, but equally the committee could have seen it and said "No, that's not OK" and forbidden it by the next event. They did not, Dick seems like an athlete, this is a new technique, fine by us - and today everybody serious uses this style (the "Fosbury Flop") or one based on it for jumping.

Modern Contract Law mostly comes back to "Carlill v Carbolic Smokeball Co" in the 19th century. This is about a quack medicine (Carbolic Smokeballs don't prevent Influenza) but the legal question was: If you specifically advertise that if people do a thing (use your Carbolic Smokeballs) and an event happens (a customer catches Influenza, "flu") you will pay them a lot of money (£100 in the 1890s) - well can the advertiser say they didn't mean it when asked for the money? Mrs Carlill seems like a nice lady, everybody hates people selling quack medicine, so obvious Carlill wins - but setting out explicitly why she wins forms the basis of an important part of modern civil law. That advert is an Offer, the choice to buy and use the Carbolic Smokeballs was Acceptance, she caught flu, therefore now Carbolic Smokeball Co. owe Mrs Carlill £100.

If you've ever heard about why people would buy a seemingly worthless thing for $1, or about the peppercorn rents, or wondered why you're told you "agreed" to a bunch of legal stuff you don't care about and haven't actually read - that all comes back to Carlill v Carbolic Smokeball Co. Maybe if she'd been an awful smug Karen trying to get paid for moaning and they were selling a pretty good (but not 100% effective) cure for flu, judges would have instead figured out why she does not get paid and our case law would have turned out very differently.

[Edited to fix typo]

It's a good story but I think you oversell it. Carbolic Smoke Ball was heard in 1892, peppercorn rents (literal and figurative) predate that case by hundreds of years.

To elaborate on your points some more: the basic building blocks of contract law were already well established by the time Carlill v Carbolic Smoke Ball came about. The main question at hand was whether these could apply when the offer was made to the public at large rather than to any specific person or group.

That's fair. Contract law was not invented from scratch to give Mrs Carlill the win, but much of the modern formalisation around the ingredients for a legal contract does date back to that case.

Also this models what we were discussing. What exactly the rules were for contracts drifted over time as people's intuitions and experiences changed, things that everybody just accepted as normal in 1825 seem insane in 2025 - when I was born there wasn't yet an Unfair Contract Terms Act for example - if you didn't read carefully maybe you're trapped in a deal that any fool could see was abusive, but the courts can't fix it.

You make a worthwhile point, and I think that we're talking about the same thing from different perspectives.

For example I'm glad the Unfair Contract Terms Act (and its successors exist), but I would have considered it a formalisation of existing, inconsistently applied, principles. As I see it, the magic of common law is that actual decisions can depend on which way the wind is blowing at the time, while keeping vague long-term ideals.

The concept clearly had some support in the Doctrine of Fundamental Breach. Perhaps you were already born in time for e.g. Canada Steamship Lines Ltd v The King (1952) which limited the ability to include exclusions for liability in a contract, in a way that that wasn't codified until the Unfair Contracts Terms Act.

Anyway I think we don't substantially disagree, and I think it's valuable to have a range of reasonable conceptualizations of the same history.

No, I think you are misunderstanding. There really isn't an "ethics" of what exploits are allowed or disallowed.

Speed running communities generally don't care what exploits you use, as long as you are up-front and honest about it. The idea is to have apples-to-apples comparisons. You did a 100% run with no exploits? Cool, let's compare that to other people who also ran that category. Your friend did an any% run with save file manipulation? Also cool, let's compare that to others in the category.

If you modified your save file mid run, but tell everyone else that your run should be compared against other runs that did not modify save files, that's clearly dishonest. The problem isn't the part about what exploit was used; it's the part where he lied to the community about which category it should be classified.

Also, the core aspect of speed running is speed: the amount of time it takes you to complete the game. If you are modifying save files outside the game after you start a run, you need to record that time.

> Speed running communities generally don't care what exploits you use, as long as you are up-front and honest about it.

That is, precisely, a set of ethics!

> There really isn't an "ethics" of what exploits are allowed or disallowed.

It sounds like there is: disclosed exploits are allowed, while non-disclosed exploits are disallowed. This is very clearly a set of ethics. It is different than that of industry, where generally speaking trade-secrets and non-disclosure of methodology is often considered critical to business success, short of establishing protected IP; in academia, disclosure is putatively the norm but there is plenty of partial disclosure of methodology rather than complete… etc.

> The problem isn't the part about what exploit was used; it's the part where he lied to the community about which category it should be classified.

That puts it very precisely, and also highlights his unethical behavior in the context of speedrunning’s norms around ethical representation of achievements.

I see. Maybe we're getting too hung up on a prescribed meaning of the word "ethics" rather than the larger meaning of what we're actually saying to each other.

Your original comment talks about the distinction between "legitimate" and "illegitimate" exploits, and the juxtaposition of ethics and exploits. My point is that this framing is a misunderstanding of speed running norms - there isn't actually a distinction between "legitimate" and "illegitimate" exploits. And this undermines the poignancy of the juxtaposition. I even refute your assertion that speed running is fundamentally about exploiting - some of the most fun categories or glitchless.

I assumed you meant the original comment in the scope of behaviors that could be triggered by the game's code. So it seemed to me that there was a misunderstanding: "illegitimate exploits" simply isn't a thing in this scope, given honesty around the recording.

But now I see you make the distinction "disclosed exploits are allowed, while non-disclosed exploits are disallowed". Yes, lying is a exploit, in a larger sense. It wasn't clear to me that this was the intended original meaning. So sure, in this scope it is valid to talk about illegitimate exploits.

Frankly, I'm still not sure this actually was your original intended meaning, and it feels like I got strawmanned into an argument about the semantics of the words "ethics" and "legitimacy", when my original intent was to add clarity around the culture of speed running. Any further debate about the philosophy of language is getting too far off topic.

Oh, and your edit about "children" is rude.

> Maybe we're getting too hung up on a prescribed meaning of the word "ethics" rather than the larger meaning of what we're actually saying to each other.

Huh, this reminds me of speedrunners and speedrunning being called “cheaters” and “cheating” by new-to-speedrunning viewers on speedrun streams. (Really, they’re just interested in the glitchless categories.) It seems to be a fairly common first reaction and this thread helps put that in perspective.

> Oh, and your edit about "children" is rude.

That’s presumably not how they meant it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43060190

> That’s presumably not how they meant it.

Hah, I have made a misunderstanding again! I guess the philosophy of language _is_ on topic for this thread :P

Whether someone was honest or lied in competition isn’t a unique set of ethics anywhere. Yes they use ethics, and those ethics are shared with society’s notion of ethics. You’re failing to make a case that speed running has their own norms.

You’re framing this in a very funny way.

This is not at all the same thing as the Astros scandal. Astros didn’t break the agreed upon rules (edit: I’m wrong - human sign stealing was allowed, but electronic sign stealing was not). Groobo did break the agreed upon rules.

There is no “own notion” of ethics here, and it’s presumptuous and incorrect to suggest that exploiting games during a game exploit competition somehow reflects on ethics and makes the cheating “interesting”. Cheating and ethics in a competition is defined by what the agreed upon rules are. Perhaps ironically, your comment is developing it’s own notion of ethics.

> Astros didn’t break the agreed upon rules.

They did. Using electronic devices to communicate during a game (I guess besides the dugout phone) is banned. They were watching the video feed in the clubhouse. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houston_Astros_sign_stealing...

Ah, you’re right, thanks. I read that sign stealing was allowed, and missed the parts about devices being banned.

Runners on 2B are allowed to try to steal signs if they can crack whatever set the pitcher and catcher have switched to (well they use pitch com now); the astros used live video feeds to pick up the signs even with no one on base as well as computer assisted methods to crack the codes, and then related the pitches to the batter via the dugout.

> This is not at all the same thing as the Astros scandal. Astros didn’t break the agreed upon rules.

Sheesh, didn’t expect to re-litigate WS‘17 on HN today… I concede that there was at least some gray area in the codified official rules and the 2001 directive around electronic transmission, but it very clearly was a violation of the norms, IMO, and the Giants-Dodgers binocular incident in the 50s and its reception is good precedent.

> There is no “own notion” of ethics here, and it’s presumptuous and incorrect to suggest that exploiting games during a game exploit competition somehow reflects on ethics and makes the cheating “interesting”.

That’s not what I was suggesting was interesting to me. What interests me is the social phenomenon that is what the actual members of the community deem to be acceptable or in this case unacceptable, how the the community works to identify violations of norms, and then handle with the fallout.

> That’s not what I was suggesting was interesting to me. What interests me is the social phenomenon that is what the actual members of the community deem to be acceptable or in this case unacceptable, how the the community works to identify violations of norms, and then handle with the fallout.

You cited the exploiting as the one and only reason that cheating is interesting here, and explicitly implied that it’s somehow different from other kinds of competition. After this new comment, I don’t see how to interpret your top comment any differently.

This community competition didn’t do anything differently than any other competition. Someone entered the competition claiming to be adhering to the rules (https://kb.speeddemosarchive.com/Rules), they flagrantly broke the competition rules, tried to hide their cheating, and people got upset when it was uncovered. No different than any competition cheating, I don’t see what you’re implying about what people deem to be acceptable, or norms. The norms here are no different than anywhere else.

> You cited the exploiting as the one and only reason that cheating is interesting here

As far as I can tell, I did not… this is what I said:

> it’s very interesting to see how a practice that is fundamentally about exploiting generally unintended mechanisms within a system design still develops its own notion of ethics, legitimate and illegitimate exploits, etc

Removing extra clauses:

> it’s very interesting to see how a practice […] develops its own notion of ethics, legitimate and illegitimate exploits, etc

> Removing extra clauses

Oh, “fundamentally about exploiting” is just a “extra clause”? Hahaha.

Your sentence intentionally juxtaposed game exploits with ethics. If you disagree with that, you’re contradicting yourself and not me.

What’s left over is still the part I’m objecting to. Nobody developed their own notion of ethics, the community has the same competition ethics that practically any competition anywhere uses.

Note this is what categories are for. The category sets the rules. There are glitchless categories (which define glitching, see Ocarina of Time which has restricted & unrestricted glitchless categories since the game is so broken: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2ebZ94KGlVw or how glitched categories include no-SRM & no-ACE)

>> a practice that is fundamentally about exploiting generally unintended mechanisms within a system design

That is true of all racing. From NASCAR and F1 to the Olympic 100m, everyone operates on the bleeding edge of "the rules" ... at least that's where winners play.

I have your same knowledge but what you mention seems pretty normal and even human, no? You exploit some difficult to exploit bugs and you don't want easy tricks to be used instead.

Although following this logic I don't fully understand why TAS are allowed.

TASes aren't allowed in regular categories (I'm sure they are somewhere), they're used to find the fastest way possible then human players try to reproduce it.

I think of TAS as a code competition, almost like demoscene, whereas tool-free speedrunning is more e-athletics.

What do you mean by allowed?

TAS runs aren't put on leaderboards against RTA runs

Everything is allowed as long as you cat honestly. Some present no challenge (like idspispopd and run to exit makes no sense) so nobody runs it.

Aha! Doom noclip so you can run through walls.

(the first google result I got for idspispopd did not say _which_ cheat code it was, so figured I'd mention)

No idea, I'm no expert at all in the scene :) it's just how TFA closes its story.

TAS can often be used as proof of concepts on upper bounds of what's possible / fastest

Things can often start TAS only & then progress makes it possible for human execution, like OOT Max Child% guay hover: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULodSWYC8TI (which then is executed in the actual run 4 hours into 5 & a half hour run: https://youtu.be/NyCklbB0ok0?t=15034)

Route's will often first be shown with LOTAD (low optimization tool assisted demo), before others start trying to execute it in RTA conditions

You're equating deviating from the intended way to play a computer game you own with lying to entire communities of people. I do not understand it. One of those things has nothing to do with "ethics".

Speedruns aren't only about exploiting glitches.

For example, I only watch glitchless speedruns. That's what I'm interested in.

People who are interested in speedruns including glitches want all of them to be disclosed though.

I think this notion of ethics is: "Don't lie."

> Edit: children have helped point out the precise notion of ethics - no exploit is unethical on its face, so long as it is disclosed

(Edit: I know I goofed here) Calling people children for correcting your assumptions breaks HN guidelines, please review: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Whether video game exploits are ethical was never a question.

Children comments to theirs, not childish commenters. For what it’s worth, I thought the same thing on first read before I realized another interpretation.

Sorry! You’re right. My bad assumption, I’m embarrassed. Apologies to parent @szvsw.

FWIW, I completely misinterpreted their comment too. I thought they were talking about actual young people and the intersection of innocence and ethics or something. Never would have connected it to "child comments."

> Calling people children for correcting your assumptions

I'm pretty sure that's an abbreviation for “children comments”.

Yep, my bad.

This kind of "ethics" is common in many different areas.

For example in rock climbing there's no cheating, only lying.

There's nothing wrong with hangdogging a route (relying on the rope/gear to rest while ascending a route) but if you then tell people that you redpointed the route (climbed the route start to finish without relying on the rope/gear) then you're a liar.

What’s being described in this article is separate from regular exploits, though. Hacking invalid seeds and items into your game are clearly not even speed running. It’s like riding a bike round the London Marathon and declaring victory.

Honestly, I really can't stand speedrunning because it is so focused on glitches most of the time. No glitch categories exist, but are by far in the minority. I don't find it interesting to watch people exploit programming bugs, I want to watch people play the game as intended at a high level of skill.

This really isn't true. One of the most famous speedrunning games is Super Metroid, and its two glitchless categories are the most actively competitive ones. Ocarina of Time glitchless had a new world record a few months back. Glitched speedruns tend to get more coverage in gaming media (because "runner completely breaks game" is clickier than "runner plays game 0:01 faster than previous runner"), and they tend to show up a lot at marathons (because they're faster), but generally speaking if you don't like seeing glitches there is plenty of content out there for you.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com