DOOM speedrunning. Definitely something I never thought I would be doing. I always saw speedrunning as something inaccessible to me because of my propensity to take my time with everything, and particularly in video games, to explore cautiously and make sure I am managing my resources properly (side note: I used to have difficulty with RTS games in that I tried to save my resources rather than spend them). Despite my aversion to the practice itself, I found this week’s project rather exciting and, while frustrating, relatively relaxing. The satisfaction of restarting a level over and over, yelling expletives at times and slamming my hands down onto the keys harder each time actually inspired a sort of catharsis in the face of other looming projects and a piling workload. Speedrunning offers a situating into the work space that I do not experience in any other metagame. Repetition, triumph, competition, all of these factors contribute to the appeal of speedrunning. It turns the game into a completely different space in which the player relies less on the tools granted by the game and more on their own reaction ability. It embodies the “man versus machine” dynamic better than any other playstyle, as the player battles both the images on screen and the hardware that is meant to help them get through the game as quickly as possible. I would recommend at least trying speedrunning to anyone at least interested in games just to understand how it changes your perception of design and game mechanics.