$ 50 million . That ’s an unimaginable amount of money , but in the 14 yr that Games Done Quick ( GDQ ) has been holdingspeedrunningmarathons , that ’s how much money it ’s raised for charity . It ’s sure to be outdated by the metre you ’re translate this article , too — at the sentence of publication , Summer Games Done Quick ( SGDQ ) 2024 in Minneapolis is entering its final push for contribution , which will for certain add to the $ 50 million milepost .
Despite such a monolithic total amount , GDQ says itsmedian donation is just $ 25 . It ’s billion of people , from eager fan to devoted volunteers and tight - knit staff , that make the biannual marathon stream pass off . It surely does n’t happen on its own . Twice a yr , GDQ holds an outcome that lead for seven days , 24 minute per day , which is not only show to a live consultation in the thousands but also stream live on Twitch for millions more .
I lecture with Jason “ Wyrm ” Deng , director of technology at GDQ , to understand just how much goes into grow each result . As the director of engineering science at GDQ , Deng oversees almost every section . “ There are very few departments at GDQ that actually do n’t have technology requirement , ” the engineer told me . Although blue runner , fan , and volunteers make up the mortal of GDQ , technology is at the core of the operation — and it has been since GDQ ’s inception .
Humble beginnings
In the summertime of 2009 , the site decision maker for Speed Demos Archive — the former hub for speedrunning leaderboards and record — Mike Uyama devised a plan . runner were interested in organizing a marathon event to raise money for charity . A group called The Speed Gamers ( TSG ) flooded the Speed Demos Archives forums with suggestions .
Uyama give it social organisation . “ I aver ‘ whoa … this is a good approximation , but we take to give it some focus . ’ And so , I decided two things on the spot . One thing was that it should take place at MAGFest , ” Uyama said inEric “ Omnigamer ” Koziel’sSpeedrun Science .
MAGFest , or the Music and Gaming Festival , still carry today as a nonprofitwhose express missionis to “ make the world a good place through video games . ” Uyama and a chemical group of about 20 runners get together to unionize two day ’ worth of speedruns at the 2010 MAGFest .
“ I had never been so stress in my life . Miraculously , though , the stream start , and the rest is history . ”
The runners were together , the schedule was fulfil , but there was one problem — the internet would n’t operate . handiness was scratchy , the hotel ’s net was restricted a low - bandwidth mode , and the floor of MAGFest was so loud that you could n’t hear anyone on the stream .
The Nox prior , Uyama was testing the streaming setup in his mother ’s cellar . “ I settle that the one place that everything did body of work was my Mom ’s basement . So instead of doing it at MAGFest , we cart all the equipment back to my house , ” Uyama enunciate inSpeed Science . “I had never been so stressed in my life . Miraculously , though , the stream starts , and the rest is history . ”
At that first issue , GDQ raised $ 10,531 for humanitarian organization CARE . And , as Uyama said , the eternal rest is history . GDQ now host two master event each yr , Awesome Games Done Quick ( AGDQ ) that raises money for the Prevent Cancer Foundation in the winter , and SGDQ that raises money for Doctors Without Borders in the summer .
Although these main upshot are the star of the show , GDQ hosts events throughout the class , includingFrame Fatales , which is an event with all women contrabandist , andUnapologetically smutty and Fast , which is an event with all Black runners . There ’s also a revolving door of smaller teem events exist on the Games Done Quick Twitch transmission channel each week — my favorite is Speedruns from the Crypt .
But there ’s been a clear focus since the first effect to make GDQ better , improving the in - person event and the stream to turn it into the behemoth it is today . And behind the scenes , it ’s quite the performance .
Keep it live
Deng oversee a lot of technical school at each GDQ event , but he ’s directly creditworthy for the internet stack and waiter — a pretty cock-a-hoop quite a little give GDQ ’s story . GDQ needs to utilize the hotel ’s net , but one word systematically come in up during my conversation with Deng : redundancy .
“ We not only swarm out of the hotel internet , we also have a whole backup system of rules in case the hotel internet goes down . We melt down almost all of the systems on redundance , and we pride ourselves on that . ”
proficient problem are inevitable with a watercourse that ’s black market around the clock for a hebdomad .
Although problems are few and far between , there ’s a full organisation in place to keep the stream running if postulate . That includes a cellular musical accompaniment to keep the flow live , as well as a bowed stringed instrument of uninterruptible mogul supplies ( UPS ) that can keep everything running for , Deng reckons , around 30 minute without electricity .
That ’s been put to the trial run , too . “ We had one year where essentially the entire hotel power went down , and that include the lights in the stream elbow room , ” Deng separate me . “ Our runners were doing a outpouring , and they see the lights close off . But their consoles are on , the goggle box are on , everything else is humming off . And they look over at the desk , like , ‘ Do you need me to pause ? ’ And we say , ‘ no , no , no , just keep perish . ' ”
Problems are bound to come up with a stream that ’s running around the clock for a week , but Deng tell me that there are backups for just about everything . In the worst case , Deng taper to a minimum frame-up that ’s required to keep the watercourse live , which will expose GDQ ’s technical difficultness sieve that read , “ this has never happened before . ”
If everything goes wrong , Deng say GDQ maintains a bouncy view that it can feed directly into the current . “ That ’s sort of the last line of defence force , falling back onto our backup encoder , and then the backup encoder get a single feed of the technical school difficulty slate . ”
With more late events , you ’ll find that the tech difficulty ticket rarely comes up , and that ’s because there ’s so much redundance is place . “ We have so much redundance that sometimes it ’s difficult to really get to a ‘ this has never happened before ’ ticket . Because the system want to keep chugging along , and we built it that fashion , ” Deng told me . “ At one stage , I actually had a hardware switch in to force a fallback on the tech difficulty slating . ”
More than a stream
Deng told me that stay fresh the stream alive is the first priority . GDQ is a fundraising event for charity , after all , and the legal age of donations come through the flow — donation are actually made straight off to the charity that GDQ is plunk for . There ’s an in - someone component of GDQ as well , and that complicates the tech a morsel more . “ The show needs to work for both online and offline , so there ’s many different department that attend to both needs , ” Deng says .
GDQ is dealing with decade ’s Charles Frederick Worth of console , dozens of moon-curser with their own needs , go and streamed sound , and tight turnaround times to get one runner off the stage and the next curing up . In previous years , GDQ only had a single stage . When a runner was fetch up , the watercourse would cut to an overlay , and 12 to 15 arcminute would go across before the next run would set about .
“ Last year , we introduced a second stage , which have in mind the next runner can be put on the stage , and we can ply through likely three fourth part of our tech check checklist . ” Deng articulate the team can twist around a ladder in as small as four minutes now .
The technical school squad also maintains a stock of consoles , especially retro consoles that have been modded for modern display system of rules . GDQ takes RGB colors out through SCART — an onetime analogue video connection — runs them through a RetroTink converter , and then feeds an HDMI matrix . That matrix is able-bodied to output sign to the flow and to the various Monitor that GDQ has set up both for offset and for the in - mortal hearing .
It ’s an elaborate setup , but GDQ is n’t able to just take a video recording feed and call it a day . It needs computing power to run its complex overlays and encode the stream without any downtime . Deng sound out GDQ is using three computers equip withAMD ’s Threadripper CPUs . There ’s a compositing computer that treat the unlike element on screenland , an encoding calculator that keeps the current face clean , and a transcription computer to keep archive of the marathon .
Today , GDQ has motivate toward endeavor - grad hardware to keep everything running swimmingly , but it was n’t always that way . “ They used to be box computers , and we did that because we want to be able to easy serve them . But , it ’s a lot of stage space , you still have that problem where it ’s sitting under the desk and someone kicks it , ” Deng suppose .
In more late events , GDQ has combined some of its PCs and put them into server racks to reduce place . “ I ’ve aggregate the record PC and the encode PC into one because , partially , the advancements in encoding and cyclosis equipment . It ’s running an Nvidia RTX Ada 4000 GPU , and it has a lot of encode power , ” Deng enounce . “ We desire something that ’s suppose to be hightail it for 24 hours , for seven days . You know , ECC storage , all that stuff and nonsense . I ’ve been very felicitous . ”
New tech
Although GDQ has added redundancy , modded its consoles , and move onto waiter hardware , it still has technical school challenge to face . The most recent vault has beengaming monitor , Deng says . Runners have been call for gamy refresh rate , not only due to suavity but also because certain tricks ask them . Lies of P , for example , has a trick that works well at 120 frames per 2d ( Federal Protective Service ) , and you postulate to be able-bodied to see that if you ’re running the game .
“ The new challenge we had that runners were involve , specially the PC runner , was a 120Hz/240Hz signal . You roll in the hay , the rhythm plot folks , that ’s for sure a huge ask from them , Resident Evil running animation wed to fps , damage bond to fps , ” Deng says . It ’s not as simple as throwing a dissipated monitor on phase , though . GDQ require to run it through an upscaler / downscaler , as a “ fuzzy ” sign , as Deng calls it , does n’t operate well with the signal chemical chain . “ We want to get it to 1080p/60 as fast as potential . ”
A gamey refresh rate does n’t mean the monitor will work , either . “ It ’s not respectable enough that a monitoring gadget is rated at a low GtG [ response time ] . We desire , what is the true input time lag on a monitor ? We sort of had three requirements for any reminder that goes on point . One , a good on - screen display so that if we require to deepen some mount on the monitor , it can be done physically . It had to have very , very low latency , and it needed to be cost effectual . ”
The Omnigamer , generator ofSpeedrun Science , really go a serial of intense tests to limit what the expert monitor to habituate would be , Deng says . The organization uses a compounding of BenQ and ViewSonic displays , and Deng says the higher refresh rates have even replaced the penury for heavy , expensiveCRT televisionsfor retro games in many cases .
A collective effort
An event like GDQ in truth takes an army . You have different section of tech , from the stream to the stage , phase managers and producers , a list of emcee and interviewers , and all the volunteers that come together to get the work done . “ GDQ has always been very reliant on unpaid worker … and so , you recognize , [ the stream ] is 24/7 , and we ’re not expecting them to outride there for 12 time of day . ”
Still , there ’s a lot of pressure . With a rat ’s nest of cables , scads of staff and volunteer , endless racks of equipment , and a stream that moderate million of dollar for charity on its back , there ’s pressure to keep everything be given . “ Sometimes , you start to lose sight that you ’re running this thing for charity , ” Deng told me .
Despite that pressure , Deng says that the community surround GDQ is what really keeps it going . “ Your audience is there to delight themselves . A lot of the prison term they really are behind you . They ’re just happy that the show is encounter , and even through technical school problem . As long as you ’re rent them lie with what ’s happening , that you ’re doing your best to get them the safe show potential , there ’s really a destiny of understanding out there . That ’s been very inspiriting for me . ”
