It’s time to push ‘start’ on India’s growing movement of speedrun gaming, where players race to finish a single mission or a whole title. We speak to some gaming content creators about the skill and creativity needed to perfect this high-adrenalin esport
Sporting an ear-to-ear smile, Anshu Bisht settles at his PC gaming station at home in Haldwani, Uttarakhand. He picks up his controller and puts on his headset as his livestream kicks off. Anshu, better known as GamerFleet, says into the mic — as the audience numbers tick upwards into the thousands — he has something special planned: a speedrun for the popular world-building game Minecraft.
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Speedrunning, as its name suggests, sees the playing of a video game, or a section of it, with the intent of completing it as fast as possible, be it for entertainment or competition. Geared towards the completionist among gamers, it has garnered quite a cult following over the past two decades. Speedrunning, done both in a solo environment or a more competitive e-sports space, can be done on a mobile device like a smartphone or a tablet, as well as the typical console and PC setups.
Speedrun gaming picked up pace globally around two years ago amongst the Gen-Z and Gen-alpha communities after US-based Minecraft YouTuber Dream ventured into it. His most viewed speedrun video has more than 100 million views, and this is where Indian gamers, including Anshu, found a space for gaming content to grow in the last year.
As Anshu kicks off his speedrun, he dashes through a pixellated forest, stopping here and there to build a couple of shelters to ward off some monsters in the night. In a stream of rushed Hindi, he shares his in-game coordinates with his audiences who may want to ‘meet’ up with him.
Uttarakhand-based Anshu Bisht AKA GamerFleet
Anshu, who broke a personal record of 40 minutes in mid-August for a Minecraft speedrun, shares he was inspired to start speedrunning after seeing international creators having a go. “Normally I complete Minecraft in 15 to 30 days, building everything with the best armour and resources. But when speedrunning, I only tend to make important upgrades as my current record in beating Minecraft is 45 minutes and I’m trying to get better at it every day. Anyone can play the game but only a few can speedrun a game within a limited time; it does require some practice and skill.”
Head in the game
Respected in India’s speedrun circles, Noida-based Rudraansh AKA TheRealCCV points out, “Speedrunning isn’t about direct competition like player-versus-player (PvP) games such as Dota, League of Legends, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.”
Popular speedrun games include nostalgic ones such as Super Mario 64 (1996) and Legend of Zelda (1998) which kicked off the movement, as well as recent next-gen releases such as Returnal (2021), Control (2020) and Resident Evil Village (2020); Minecraft, however, has stayed a go-to favourite for speedrun gamers over the years, peaking among Gen-Z and Gen-Alpha after iconic Minecraft YouTuber Dream ventured into it.
Screenshot from video game ‘Control’ | Photo Credit: Remedy Entertainment
Anshu’s YouTube channel GamerFleet is nearing 1.5 million subscribers. He chooses his speedrun games carefully, explaining, “The qualities I look at in video games that make it ideal for speedrunning are: the game should be interesting enough to play it over and over again, the cinematics in between should be skippable, and there should be enough shortcuts to skip the grinding parts of the game.”
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Known for his outrageous comedy during his streams, Wales-based Pammi AKA Chapati Hindustani Gamer — whose YouTube channel has more than 7.2 million subscribers — has a strong connection with his Indian audiences, often playing Roblox and Minecraft. He advises new speedrunners, “Pick a game that you are passionate about and that also challenges you; that would not frustrate or irritate you. This will help you create more engaging content. Many pros finish Minecraft speedruns in under 30 minutes.”
Wales-based Pammi AKA Chapati Hindustani Gamer
He sheepishly admits that the fastest he could complete Minecraft was in four hours about three months ago in August, adding, “Embarrassing, but I loved it!”
Keep up with tech
Over the last year, with next-generation consoles such as the Xbox Series X and S (review here) and the PlayStation 5 and more powerful PCs, speedrunning has been given a fresh spotlight so that gamers and developers can show off the experience of racing through a game. Pammi says that it is important to speedrun a game that has fast loading times.
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Pranav Panpalia, the founder of Delhi-based gaming influencer agency Opraahfx, explains, “The hardware, like the console, is created keeping heavy-duty gaming in mind, and most of the leading gaming equipment brands offer highly durable products designed for the pros. Few brands even involve pro-gamers to test their products before launching them to the larger public/audiences.”
He also says there is an important software aspect to it; a few speedrun games come with some tech limitations; for example, a few Japanese versions of video games are a bit faster as they have less text and load faster. Therefore, gamers of that geography have an unfair advantage over others.
The India status quo
Speed-running games — driven by high adrenalin — have created a niche and engaging community since the 1990s across the world. Large-scale worldwide events like Games Done Quick amass hundreds of thousands of viewers and have raked in millions of dollars for charity. However, Pranav claims the community is larger and more active in the West than in India, thanks to Twitch. Despite its rather nascent status in India, speedrunning has become so popular that large-scale worldwide events like Games Done Quick amass hundreds of thousands of viewers and have raked in millions of dollars for charity.
Sindhuja Poorni K S, Coimbatore-born and Bengaluru-based gamer known as NewtSP
Coimbatore-born streamer Sindhuja Poorni KS — whose Tamil-language YouTube channel NewtSP has more than 4,60,000 subscribers — elaborates that India’s game streaming audience mostly prefers mobile battle-royale gaming. She has not yet dipped into the speedrun world because of this, adding, “Not every Indian household has the resources for PC gaming; so PC gamers are fewer in number, compared to mobile gamers. If I go with speedruns, my audience would get bored, as most of them are new to PC gaming.”
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The online hub for all things to do with the gaming style, Speedrun.com has currently amassed a database of more than 2.5 million runs in more than 25,000 games from 9,24,944 users. The site has leaderboards, community moderation of games, marathons and schedules as well as helpful resources for other gamers.
Screenshot from video game ‘Minecraft’ | Photo Credit: Minecraft
Keen to get more Indian games into speedruns, Rudraansh has been an organiser and a caster in the smaller-scale tri-monthly tournament Getting Over It Duos. He, along with four other people, organise the tournament. To date, the organisation has accumulated a prize pool of around $2,350 throughout the first four tournaments and registrations from over 63 India-based teams and counting.
A potential future?
Streamys-winning Mithilesh Patankar AKA Mythpat in Mumbai — who is nearing 11 million subscribers on YouTube — agrees and is more optimistic, “Almost everything that is currently happening in YouTube India has already happened in the West a few years ago. Likewise, global trends like speedrunning will eventually make their way to India in a while as gaming and gaming content just started booming in 2020.”
Rohit Naresh Jagarsia, founder and CEO, Revenant Esports speaks on the “lucrative” potential of this gaming category, “I think this will mainly be lucrative from a content point-of-view or a casual gaming point-of-view. In India, there’s a big audience behind mobile titles which are multiplayer games that cannot be speedrun by the book.”
The Revenant eSports team | Photo Credit: Nikhil More
He adds, “However, people generally speedrun games like Battlegrounds Mobile India, Call Of Duty Mobile and Free Fire by pushing ranks and competing with other leaderboard players. If pushing ranks and grinding leaderboards also counts as speedrunning a multiplayer game, then I think India has a massive appetite for this space within gaming.”
It sure looks like the future is bright and monied for speedrunning in India. Mumbai-based Ronodeep Dasgupta — known for his YouTube channel The RawKnee Games that has more than 3.1 million subscribers — agrees, “The Internet has moved away from long-form content with Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts, so a speedrun would be an interesting event to watch since it would take about 20 minutes. It might take between 40 and 45 minutes for games like Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and PUBG to finish. A speedrun might be the YouTube Shorts of esports.” In March, Ronodeep was elated to beat his Minecraft speedrun record in under 20 minutes.
He elaborates, “However, the Indian speed-running community is seeing steady growth on YouTube in the past year, but the actual potential of these games is yet to be explored in the country.”
Looking forward to this growing content wave for gamers , Pammi sums it up, “There is a sense of thrill, drama, suspense, euphoria, and disappointment in speedrun gaming content. It is a complete entertainment package.”
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