The Need for Speed - Talking FFX and gaming with World Record-holder Camp4r

00:00:00Well, let's say hello to Spelfarsan med Vänner and another episode of this amazing show. Today is going to be something special because we will do a deep dive into speedrunning. And we have an amazing guest with us today. But before we invite Mr. Camper to the discussion, what do you say, Peter? Speedrunning, is that something for you? A little bit, but it's definitely something for our guest. And it'll be super fun to hear him talk about everything speedrunning for like an hour or so. Yeah. And with that, I will say that we will invite current world record holder in Final Fantasy X, speedrunning Annie Present and many others categories. Welcome Camper to the discussion. Hello, welcome. Well, welcome me, I guess. Yeah, for sure. Thanks for having me. Good time. Yeah. So please tell us a little bit about yourself and give our audience a little bit of background, who you are and what you do and so on. Sure. So I'm a recent college graduate. I actually graduated last year with a bachelor's in computer science.

00:01:22I currently work as an este, which basically means that I write software that tests applications. I started streaming on Twitch in 2018, and I've really built up my channel around speedrunning video games, particularly games from the Final Fantasy series. For those of you that may not know what speedrunning is, it's essentially completing a goal within a game as fast as possible. This typically means going from, like, let's say, a new game to the end, which is usually called any percent. However, there can be more than one goal or category, as we like to call them, that the community of the game kind of accepts on the leaderboards. How did you get into, like, because speedrunning RPGs are kind of tedious in that sense that they are often longer, several hours, if you compare to the more original sense of speedrunning like Metroid or Mega Man or something like that. Was that like, how did you make that choice? So I think that really stems from my kind of experience with video games in general.

00:02:35As a gamer, I leaned more towards JRPGs and, let's say, platformers. And so I really kind of found more comfort running, I guess, would be the longer games than the shorter ones. Yeah. I think also, especially with those games that doesn't have these kind of major skips for especially cutscenes like in Final Fantasy X that we will get into in more details, I think... that is kind of a performance art in itself to run like a 10 hour stream just to get through like a basic any percent run compared to many others that gives do run after run after run in the same but with the same game so so to speak so that's uh yeah i i think um the speed runners of rpgs are more like have a bit more stamina i guess i would call it other categories

00:03:33Yeah, especially for me. I started speedrunning Fall Fantasy 7 on PC, which was at the time roughly like a three-hour run. And then making the transition to Fall Fantasy 10, the first run I ever did of 10 was about 11 and a half hours. And it was definitely a struggle endurance-wise because in that amount of time, I could have done roughly four runs of 7. Yeah. But how do you do when you make a Final Fantasy X run? Do you ever reset the run? Or is it that even if you make a really big mistake five hours in, do you continue? Or do you have a certain point that after this, I will make sure to run through it anyhow, just make for the practice? So it really depends, in particular because it is indeed a long run. It depends on what I have to do the next day.

00:04:32So if I'm trying to get a run in between work days, normally there's a point where I just kill the run and go to bed. But if it's something where I may be running on the weekend, which I typically do even longer runs, mistakes in between aren't usually too bad. For example, just a couple of days ago, I finished something called a Nemesis percent, and that run... It took me just under 21 hours to finish. I was behind the halfway point by about six minutes, and because of the length of the run, it didn't really matter to me at the time. Yeah, I can imagine. But with these kind of marathon runs, is there a big competition, or are you kind of alone making these humongous runs? More players, so to speak. There's definitely far in between, let's say. I would say right now, as far as Nemesis goes, I would say there's three, quote-unquote, active runners. And it's really just because it's an endurance test, for sure. Yeah. So you mentioned there's four of you all together, then? Or roughly...

00:05:58a handful of people are you liking contact with each other and talking through runs and you know having a camaraderie or is it more like a friendly competition style in the community so to speak i would say it's more friendly um namely because um i'm good friends with one of the active runners named madayama who is actually a runner who is very good and actually got me into speed running okay cool and essentially recently he did a bit of a reroute And so we kind of talked to each other through some changes and then a few of the other runners ask us for our notes and we're happy to share it because, you know, why not? Yeah. So it's more like a good community trying to like explore the game in new ways and find new things and get better times and basically supporting each other to, to get there. Yeah. So it sounds like a really good community to be a part of. So is that a big part of it for you? Like being able to talk about your,

00:06:56uh passion hobby with other people that share your interest or is it just something that happened because you kind of got into this track i would say that it's a little bit of both so like i kind of mentioned before i started with fall fantasy 7 and at that time um we just kind of like a community discord um for fall fantasy speed runs in general so they've got different channels for each of the games and so at the time i was kind of new to pretty much everything. This is when I first started streaming. I was new to the whole Discord community, that kind of stuff. I was looking through the Seven channel and it wasn't, I would say, the best or most welcoming. Yeah, I can imagine that. It was kind of like, there's a certain point where it goes from friendly banter to being a little too toxic for me personally. And so transitioning over to Final Fantasy X, when I looked at

00:07:54the discord channel there it was much more welcoming and open right to me it didn't really matter too much because i was still kind of getting my foothold as a runner however as i kind of get got more involved in talking with the community that kind of pushed me more towards running 10 because it was you know open and i felt like i could actually help people and not get criticized for suggestions and such I guess that if we talk a little about the different disciplines through Final Fantasy X, I guess Any% is the most popular one because it's the shortest, or is it something else that people mostly run? I would say the length of it definitely helps. I think Any% is kind of like the popular one at the get-go because it's just from start to finish as fast as possible. Well, it really helped.

00:08:49me get into any percent was the guides i think that's a big one for learning a new speedrun is the availability of resources and so the fall fantasy 10 guide back when i started had pictures of um the sphere grid which essentially if you don't know what fall fantasy 10 is um yeah the jrpg and the sphere grid is how you essentially level up your characters in a sense. You get status buffs and abilities. And so it had images of the bosses, step-by-step how to go through the game. Essentially, with how well the guide was written, someone completely new to Final Fantasy X in general could just read the guide line by line and be able to make it from start to end. That's how very nice and detailed it was. Yeah, that sounds like a great starting step because I think that the first

00:09:44Commitment is probably the toughest when it comes to speedrunning, like getting the concept down and knowing how to proceed. And if you have that, it sounds like it's a much... It's still a large project, don't get me wrong, but it's slightly less big than it would have been if you had to figure all that stuff out. Exactly. Is there a reason why you run on multiple platforms or is it just for completionists or why not just running like PS2 platform? So... I think it's in part just the availability, because I just happen to have 10 on PS2, PS4, and PC. I wouldn't push it as far as to try and do, let's say, the fastest console, because, for example, in the more recent HD releases on Switch and Xbox One, there are some tutorials that you can skip, which you can't do on the PC or the PS4 version.

00:10:44But I just don't have an Xbox One, for example. So it's just because I had it, I already know the route. The route that I used is transferable between PS2 and HD, so it was just kind of, why not? Yeah. Would you say that there is more prestige in one of the platforms, or are the records equally good, so to speak? I would say that from a... A general public standpoint, I think maybe there's more prestige in PS2 because of the nostalgia factor. However, each platform kind of has their different nooks and crannies. So for example, on PS2, you know, there's longer loading times just because of the hardware and everything. However, the menus themselves actually go a lot faster, namely because on HD, there's a bit of an input protection.

00:11:42which doesn't let you mash through menus and such. And so there's that you kind of have to deal with. On PC, you're able to skip FMVs, which makes it a lot shorter. So you can't skip all the cutscenes. Cutscenes you can't skip, but it cuts down a good amount of time. And then on PS4, it was found out, I would say within the last maybe six months to a year, you could actually manipulate your... um game rng from changing your system clock oh that was also a mix namely because there is something about halfway into the game you can get called no encounter armor which essentially like sounds you equip it and you don't get into any encounters which we don't you know we don't find anything we run away from everything so that saves a good chunk of time there yeah i can imagine that that's like a big thing in a jrpg to be able to skip out on combat yeah yeah

00:12:40So that's pretty cool. Just to continue on this theme, is there like a difference between language versions as well? Or is it the same? Sometimes I've seen like people going specifically for like a Japanese version or like even like French versions or Korean versions or whatever, because they have shorter texts and stuff like that. So you can save a lot of time over a run. Is that the case here? Or is it pretty much the same? So it's definitely a case. For example, PC, we have a couple categories. There's PC 80%, and then there's PC 80% non-English, and that just kind of encapsulates everything else. So the different text language is definitely a thing because you can skip through the dialogue just that little bit faster. One particular difference, though, is when we go from English to Japanese on PS2, namely because it's a decision also just to kind of keep everything...

00:13:37one-to-one. Essentially, Japanese runs on PS2 use Japanese rulesets. So for the English ruleset, you start the timer when you hit a new game. But on the Japanese ruleset, you start the timer when you turn on the console, for example. And then the timing on Japanese ends after the credits, whereas the timing on English ends after the last hit on the boss, for example. That's pretty cool. So which one do you prefer, like, personally? Which one feels more, like, complete to you? For me, I can't honestly say because I haven't run PSU JP, as far as those go. However, I would kind of lean towards the Japanese set in particular because there's a few skips that we do on the English version, and those are actually banned.

00:14:33On the Japanese side. So you're not allowed to do those kinds of things. They're more strict then. In that sense. Is there a reason why they're banned? Or of course there's a reason. But why are they banned? I don't particularly know. That's just kind of how the Japanese rule set was founded. Which one is the oldest one of those two? Is the Japanese older than the English one? And those rules have been in there for a lot longer? Or is it just something that's happened? over time, and it just happened to be different. You know, I can't say as far as leaderboard creation. However, I've heard similar and seen similar things in terms of Japanese timing sets. Because it's the same for, I've seen Final Fantasy IX. Another run that I've done is Mega Man Battle Network 6. Oh, right, right, right. And essentially, because we, communities allow Japanese runners to submit times because, you know, why not? Competitive times are great all around.

00:15:33The old record on the Battle Network 6 run actually has two timers. And so there's one for Japanese timing and one for the English timing. That's a good little tidbit. I didn't know that. But it makes it even more fun, I guess, to be able to go for different versions, even while still doing the same game. I don't think, maybe we mentioned it or maybe not, but... Which run do you have as your own favorite? We've mentioned Any% but you also mentioned that there were others. Is there any one of those in particular that you have as your favorite? Like if you had any amount of time, which one would you pick to run if it was up to you? Oh boy, any amount of time. So I might be a little biased because I just completed a run but Nemesis is good and bad because

00:16:27And on one hand, I'm sat there for the PC run. I think I've brought it down to just below 17 hours. So let's just use that as a basis. So I'm preparing to sit there for roughly 17 hours and dedicating almost an entire day to do one run. Yeah, it's a big commitment. That in itself is a little, but at the same time. that just gives me more time to just interact with my chat and such so yeah i think that part uh could you go into a little bit about what the nemesis run is for people that don't know uh so it's not just a word like uh that we throw around sure yeah that's a that's a good point so nemesis is a super boss in fantasy 10. essentially there's a lot of steps to unlock it But the main thing is they threw in this little mini game for an area called the Monster Arena. Essentially, you talk to this NPC. He's like, hey, you know, I set this place up so, you know, people can train for bosses and whatnot. However, all the monsters got loose, so I need help catching them. So you do particular weapons so that you can actually catch the monsters and bring them back to the arena. In order to unlock Nemesis,

00:17:45you need to catch 10 of the fiends or the monsters in each area. So it's like if I go to the first area, there's three types of monsters. I need to catch a total of 30 things from there because I need to catch the same thing 10 times over. And you have to do that for each area in order to unlock big boy nemesis. I can see how that would take a lot of time. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And the main thing about that run is it's very RNG-based, whether or not you get the actual encounters that you need. So you could be drastically behind on one particular capture area, but bring it right back immediately after. So it's always that, okay, am I going to commit myself to this, or are we going to see what happens? Yes, you can have a late comeback, so to speak, at any point, really. That, I would imagine, makes it a lot more fun.

00:18:45when it feels like you have no shot of getting a good time it might just flip and not not ruin 17 hours of gaming you did mention a little bit uh and we were about to go into that anyhow but your interaction with your community firstly it would be kind of nice to know what is your community like is it like a lot of old faithful so to speak that show up every time or is there like an influx of new people maybe when there's been like a speed running event or some big event with final fantasy 10 and stuff like that or is it more like a living room for a lot of people to hang out in and talk with each other throughout the day almost when it's 17 hours uh just a short summary of what your community is like would be super fun to to get to hear about

00:19:36Sure. So I would say that I definitely got a little bit of an influx of viewership after my RPG limit break relay run last year, which I ran F of 10. People enjoyed the content that the rest of the team put out. So I got some more follows, people saying like, hey, I saw the run, just wanted to wish you luck. And so that always feels good. In general, I would say... I have a lot of regulars that stop by. They won't necessarily all kind of like stick around for the full one because I don't expect people to sit there for 17 hours with me. But as long as I just drop by and they say, hey, good luck, and I go to sleep, I'll see you in a little bit because you're still going to be running. Exactly. It'll also be good morning in the same stream. Yeah, exactly. I'm just starting my work day. I'll see you when I get off.

00:20:32Yeah, there's a lot of good regulars. I would say I get a lot of lurkers, which I appreciate. Just the fact that I can put out something that people feel comfortable just listening to while they get their work and business done and whatnot just feels really good. Yeah, I just feel like just one more question about do you talk throughout the entire run? Is it 17 hours of you talking about what you do? And if so, that must be really straining on your voice. Oh, yeah. There's a certain point where... So I kind of divide that particular run-up into two parts. So there's the quote any percent part where we kind of get from point A to a certain point, which is where any percent kind of overlaps with Nemesis. In the sense that things are similar, we just want to unlock the airship, which lets us travel to all the locations.

00:21:26So during that part, I feel I'm a lot more talkative because I can explain some strats and things for different bots. However, when it gets to the capturing, it's pretty much, all right, I'm in this new area and I have to catch Tedavich. Yes, it's like, you all know what I'll be doing for a couple of hours now. Or is it like if they have questions, do you have like moderators that ping you so that you know if there's something? that you need to address, or is it more like you've done this any number of times now, so you know when the questions usually creep in? So for, at least for Final Fantasy X in general, it's a pretty laid-back run, in particular because of the way the battle mechanics work. So in other Final Fantasy series, we have something called an active attack bar, I guess.

00:22:20just kind of like flows through you know the enemies can go whenever they have their turn up but for Final Fantasy 10 everything is already in a set order based off of some stats and numbers so even if I were to maybe put the controller down in a battle I could read chat and address any questions and be totally fine oh that's nice but a lot less yeah yeah What are the top three questions that you get most of the time that people are most curious to know, or is it really just random things? So I would say number one question I get for sure is, why is the main character's health so low? And I say main character because this is going to be a debate in itself. So, sorry, a little bit of a tangent, but growing up,

00:23:13um i definitely called the main character of 10 titus and after speedrunning the game for i think about a year at least i've grown more accustomed to saying titus right so i i get um people kind of bashing me for saying either or um yeah however my justification is that i've run the PC version with the Korean text. And his name there is Tida. And so I'm just like, that's my justification right there. It's a fair one, seeing as it's like what you're hearing. So it's not a long leap. I think that was brought up during the Limit Break run, that it was a bit of a goof around that. Yep. I won't bash anyone for saying either or, because I am personally someone who has done both. But it's like, if I'm going to be saying it like this, you're going to have to deal with it. So get that out of the way. So the main question I usually get with runs is, why is Tidus' health so low? And that's because we take advantage of an ability called Overdrive to AP, which essentially overdrives in Final Fantasy X are like,

00:24:38character's special ability like it's unique to only them and so what the armor piece does is that it transfers over any gains in that character getting their special ability over to them gaining essentially experience points right and the way that the formula works is essentially the more damage the character takes the more experience points that they get which is the reason we keep the main character at a low HP threshold, just so that we can capitalize on that. Yeah, because I can't imagine if I were to jump into one of your runs for the first time, that would probably make me nervous. Oh my god, he has such low HP. A bad fight could ruin everything, but it's all part of the planet. Yeah, and it's definitely one thing, just kind of like, it goes in that same area, like, why is his health low? I also get

00:25:36how are you doing so much damage when your character's health is low? And it's, well, I don't necessarily have to grid the health in order to grid or get the stat boost of, like, let's say strength, which is the character's attack. So it throws people off to see me hitting for max damage when my health is so low. Because you want to grab everything. It's weird. because in JRPGs you're not supposed to have the good stuff unless you grinded the living daylights out of the game. So that would probably throw a lot of people off. And I guess methods like the Tonberry AP trick is kind of too tedious to set up in order to save the time of the amount of AP you gain for doing those kind of stuff? Or is it...

00:26:27just enough to make this Overdrive AP gain to get you to the levels you need to be in order to finish the end game. So yeah, Don Tomberry, which is a monster creation in the arena that we kind of touched on before, he's a really good source for taking advantage of the Overdrive AP, namely because he has a counterattack called Karma, And that's based off of how many monsters that particular character has killed. So throughout the part where I'm catching things, I'm just having Tidus kill everything. So he's always increasing the amount of damage he'll be taking at the point where we actually go to Don Tomberry and get hit. So he's a really good source for that. It's just that when you first get access to the arena...

00:27:26He doesn't have any monsters in there. So we actually have to do some of the capturing first in order to block that monster. Because I could see like one of the runs you do is like the Penance run. And if I remember correctly, Penance has like 12 and a half million HP or something like that. So I guess there is a lot of damage needs to be done in order to take that kind of secret super boss down also. So you need kind of a high level, so to speak, in order to make that happen. So that is at least normally yes. However, we're getting into speedrun territory with Penance. So for those of you that may not know what Penance is, it's another super boss that wasn't actually on the original North American copy. It was on the Japanese and the PAL version, and it was introduced in the HD versions.

00:28:24So essentially, how you unlock Penance is throughout the rest of the world, there are dark versions of Aeons, which are essentially creatures that you can summon to help you. So there's dark versions of those that you have to go around and beat, and then you can fight Penance, which is more of a super boss than Nemesis, I would say, just because of the mechanics and how ridiculous his health is. However, on that note, there is an Aeon or a summon named Yojimbo. And Yojimbo has essentially just a one-shot kill move. And the way that Yojimbo's mechanics works is that you pay him some amount of money, and it's RNG from there, but if you can get him to use that one-shot kill, then Penance is just...

00:29:16Easy peasy. So basically you cheat with the Zenmato move or whatever it is called. Exactly. Yeah. And to touch on that, if I were to do a Japanese PS2 penance run, I wouldn't be able to take advantage of Zenmato, which is the one-shot kill thing, because it was actually buffed in the HD version. So if I were to compare the thresholds where we would normally recruit the Aeon Yojimbo and pay him out. It's a difference of roughly, I would say, like 66%. So on the PS2 version, I would have a 3% chance of getting it to hit. Whereas on the AC versions, we roughly have like a 70% chance. Oh, right. Okay. That's why we abuse it. Yeah, I can see why. I can see why. Yeah. On the topic of, as you had mentioned a little bit before, you were a guest at RPG Limit Break Festival, or what do you call it, Spear on Marathon. You could probably compare it to more famous stuff like Games Done Quick.

00:30:37and both the summer and the winter edition. How did you end up there? Were you invited? Did you have records? Or did you apply for it? Or how did you get on the stage, so to speak? Yeah, so essentially, I have a really good friend named Mutski, and he's partaken in a lot of RPG limit break and games and quick runs. And he had this brilliant idea of essentially setting up a relay, which is what we did at Limit Break, where we would have... Originally, it was planned where we would have 10 runners since it's Final Fantasy X. We'd have 10 runners take over 10 different parts and just kind of pass the controller between us just to kind of make it more interesting because, admittedly, the run itself isn't the most entertaining since it's about, I don't know, six hours of cutscenes.

00:31:34And so while also introducing the relay aspect, it was a good way to kind of keep the audience more engaged because we would switch between both the runners and the commentators. Oh, yeah, so keep a bit of a momentum going. So it was a really, really good idea. Yeah, yeah, it was a really good idea. And the staff at Lemon Break were kind enough to accept it, and that's just kind of how it happened. yeah i really enjoyed that run i i seen it both live when when it happened and then one more due to this upcoming talking so and i think it due to the share amount of time that run is it's really good performed so to speak that keeping this um keeping this going so um So to speak because like if you if you compare it There is like it is European speedrun assembly I think it's called they did like a 14 hour Final Fantasy 9 run for six months ago or something like that and that didn't at any point have them the the

00:32:40the pulse that this run had it was more like people almost slept on the chairs and so on and so forth so they did a great job just also taking you out for short interviews and so yeah that has to be I think when you do events you have to bring something extra to the table and that felt to me anyway like a very good way to do that because it's not something that you do in your own channels because you don't have 10 people around for it. Right. Yeah, it was a very good experience for me in particular because it was kind of like my first bigger marathon to be a part of. And so I was definitely feeling the pressure and sitting in the hot seat and playing. However, because I was part of a relay, you know, I had the rest of my team backing me and it was really...

00:33:38comfortable after, kind of like the nerves settled, and I just kind of got into the flow. Were there any kind of major skips that you were extra worried about that you would mess up, or was it more like a smooth sailing during your parts of the run? Yeah, during my part, there weren't any skips I had to worry about, so that was good. The only thing I could think of is just essentially missing an input and then dying to a boss. However, that's typically not too bad because as part of marathon safety preparation, we do a lot of extra saves. Yeah, I understand that. Do you think, because due to that I'm a bit into modding of lore when it comes to Final Fantasy, I saw there is, I think it's called Project X, that is a mod for Final Fantasy X that does a lot of stuff, but one thing it does is that it allows you to skip cutscenes.

00:34:37Do you think that would be a thing for making it more accessible, for making it basically run shorter if you were allowed to use that kind of a mod just to skip things? Or would that be something that would break the rules so that would never happen? So on the topic of using mods, generally in the speedrun sense, mods are more often than not banned. So if it was for, like, a leaderboard run, I wouldn't expect to see those kinds of runs on the leaderboard. However, in terms of if someone just wanted to sit down and practice, I would say go for it. There's also a mod for emulator that is called the BetterFX mod, which does the same thing. It skips through cutscene, that kind of stuff. So I would...

00:35:33highly recommend if anyone were to want to learn 10 to look for that kind of thing because it's it's much easier and in my opinion more efficient to get the practice in of doing a run without cutscenes than to kind of like so you could look upon it as maybe a sort of training wheels when you're learning and making your way through the game and learning the run and then you can take those off and just join the legit community so to speak Yeah, exactly. Expanding upon that, we mentioned GameStun Quick. Would it be possible to get this game into that venue, do you think? Or is it just too long of a run to fit it in comfortably so that we have to look at different events for the Final Fantasy X runs that can focus more on those type of runs that are a bit longer and maybe more demanding in some ways at least? Yeah.

00:36:31At least what I've kind of seen, and I'm highly biased towards Final Fantasy, by the way, just to throw that out there. What I've seen from at least the past few years that I've kind of like peeked into games done quick, there's usually one, if not none, Final Fantasy run selected for the entire event. And essentially, that run has to have like a lot of incentives and a good set of runners to do so. I think I wouldn't say that it's impossible to get 10 in games on quick, but I think it's highly unlikely just because of the length and the amount of content throughout that. I think also you need some kind of unique skips or something major that has happened that makes it a little bit extra cool, something that has been discovered, because they had Final Fantasy VII Remake run this last week, and that was about seven and a half hours, I think it was. So from a timing perspective, I think it's possible. It's more that it needs, I think, to bring something extra to the table.

00:37:42Yeah, I think in particular, at least in my opinion, the remake was a shoo-in just because, you know, it was released this year. And so it's like, hey, let's capitalize on that. Too hot of a topic not to just pick it up for this year. So we should be surprised if it's there again next year, I would imagine. Yeah, otherwise, I think long runs that has been done is Chrono Triggers is roughly around six hours. They usually put in a Zelda game, and now and again, like Wind Waker, I think they did. That's around six hours or something like that. So it's roughly half time, one of your runs. So, yeah. I mean, I would love to be able to see Final Fantasy games in a... on a more basic schedule basis on GameStun Quick. I mean, it's a huge franchise, and there's a lot of us out there that really, really enjoy those runs. Yeah, I would really prefer not to cast any Shadow of Final Fantasy X at all, because I really enjoy that game, but I would love to see Final Fantasy Tactics, because I think that is like a game that has not got the attention that it deserves.

00:38:56The dark horse of Final Fantasy franchise, I would kind of say. I mean, it's known within the community for sure, but if you're talking about general gaming, I would imagine a lot of people haven't heard of it at all, which is kind of weird considering what it has in it and the story it brings to the table. But yeah, I wouldn't mind that, but I would also not mind X, because I think any Final Fantasy run is good if you have... skilled and entertaining people running it, which I think should be the basis for games done quick. And quick within air quotes here, because it's quick, but it's not really quick. Yeah. Yeah, I think the touch on the tactics not being like, I guess, more general knowledge. I think it doesn't help that there might be a stigma for Final Fantasy games because there's a lot of them. And it's not...

00:39:50quote-unquote a main series title just because it doesn't have a number next to it. I don't think that helps. Yeah, that's probably a factor for sure. Yeah. One can dream, though. Especially due to that it has so much of a unique content that you can get characters from other games, like you can get Cloud into the game, and you can do so much different stuff that is... really unique to the franchise. Then, of course, there are a few titles on the DS and so on, but the Final Fantasy Tactics, the PlayStation original is like one of a kind in that regard. You mentioned that you were very biased towards the Final Fantasy franchise, and obviously you've done your homework on Final Fantasy VII and X. Are those also your favorite entries in the series, or is it just the ones that you decided to do speedrunning on?

00:40:47So, for me, on the topic of questions that I'm asked a lot on stream, I would say that maybe second or third, like, what's your favorite Final Fantasy game? And it's very hard to narrow it down to one, and usually people are like, top three, and I'm like, I'll give you top four. I have a right, it's in my name. So, for me, top four, not in a particular order. There is definitely Final Fantasy VII in particular because it's the first Final Fantasy game I remember playing. And I feel like that first one always just kind of like holds up a special place for you. Final Fantasy X, namely because I've replayed that game quite a lot. And I think it was essentially like groundbreaking because I believe it was the first Final Fantasy series on the PS2.

00:41:42updated graphics, there was voice acting, which I think was huge at the time. And one of the best battle mechanics. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there's that. And then the last two, I've gone back to Final Fantasy IX a numerous amount of times, as well as Final Fantasy VI. It warms my heart that VI is on the list. That's my absolute favorite in the series. And a lot of people never played it because it just was the last one in the generation before VII. I could, I would probably just change. Yeah, we all know that you don't like Nine. And me and Peter are not that really into the Nine for some reason, and that is, we know there's a lot of people that really likes Nine. My reason is that I've actually not played it. Oscar's reason is more that he...

00:42:35just didn't enjoy it for some reason it's not like because i think it has been timing and kind of how i interpreted final fantasy because like i started out with final fantasy 4 and then it was six and then it was because five were never released in yeah yeah it was translated to to english and later on and then seven and when seven and eight come out i think i was so into this kind of cyberpunk um the steampunk thing of different fantasies so when they turned into nine it shifted to pure fantasy and that was kind of one thing that i didn't really enjoyed but and then it was also that i and i think people will bash me for this, but I think there was not really that much of side quests and things to do that was like over the top that you did in, like, for example, I think in Final Fantasy VIII you made all of the draws and you could get the best weapon in the game on the first disc and there were a lot of stuff that you could do. But mainly I think it was the setting that put me off a little bit. I can imagine that because

00:43:53as i said i really loved uh final fantasy six so for me it was kind of getting back to that i don't mind steampunk any day of the week but i also like the full-on fantasy games in the final fantasy series so i will probably revisit nine at some point for sure especially now that they have the newer version of it out there where you can also do like quicker battles and stuff like that to save time uh because that's a very nice feature to have i think Yeah. I think in terms of 9 having side content, I would definitely agree. Especially if we're... Because I think one of the key parts of a JRPG is having optional super bosses. And as far as 9 goes, it's really just the Ozma, which is like this global one. Whereas, for example, in Final Fantasy 7, you have Ruby Weapon and Emerald Weapon and those kinds of things.

00:44:52And as with like FF6, I can't really remember the super bosses. However, 6 has the advantage, in my opinion, of the cast. Yeah, there's a lot of them. Yeah. And they provide a good amount to just the story in general, which I think is really what works for me. The basic super bosses of 6 is the dragons. So if you kill all 8 of the dragons, you get... the pre-desert two knights of the round that is the crusaders if i'm incorrect yeah and there's also like the hidden bosses uh odin and uh the upgraded version of him uh that you can get in the the sun castle yeah and also there's like a lot of hidden characters or a lot there's a couple of them and that was also a fun feature that i think they kind of lost in in the final fantasy series after

00:45:47I think VII is the last one that has secret characters in it, isn't it? Yeah. Which I really enjoyed. I can understand why they cut that stuff, because it's a lot of work for maybe not too many people to discover. But that was one of the things I really enjoyed with the vintage Final Fantasy games. There was a lot of stuff to find if you were in it to find stuff. To be picky, Final Fantasy Tactics was released after it had hidden characters. Then we're back again to it not being one of the standard games. So maybe for the Final Fantasy connoisseurs out there, it's one that's on the list, but for everyone else, maybe not so much. But if we go back to a little bit of an other topic, do you see the community around Final Fantasy X speedrunning in general? Has it grown? Is there new people showing up?

00:46:41Do you do something special in order to try them when they come up on Discord to help them get them into it? Or what kind of healing is it in the community overall? So, this is where things get spicy. I mentioned before there is a general Final Fantasy Speedrun Discord that has everything. Just recently, within the last year, Final Fantasy X actually got its own separate Discord, which encapsulates more focus on just X and having resources and such. And this kind of happened out of a major reroute that was done within the last year, year and a half. So essentially, the route used to be we would take advantage of a character named Riku. She has an overdrive or special ability that essentially lets us buff our characters to the point where they can do almost max damage, pretty much there. And we would abuse that for the end of the game. So this reroute, which was organized by a lot of good, knowledgeable people, essentially took that part out. And instead, we buff a character named Yuna.

00:48:02who is able to summon the Aeons that I mentioned prior. And essentially, we give her a lot of strength, amongst other stuff. But that actually transfers over to the summons themselves. And we essentially have her summon an Aeon called Bahamut, which does a lot of damage from the get-go. And it was around this time that there was a lot of discussions and such as far as the reroute that the Dispenser was made. And after it was showcased, it was separately from the main event at RPG Lemon Break, but it was just on the same channel. After that run was showcased, we had more of an influx of runners being curious about the run. And so I think now, at least on the PC board, we have over 100 runs. Originally, I think when I started, there was maybe 40. Right, so there's been a big influx fairly recently even. That must be pretty fun. To be passionate about stuff is usually fun in and of itself because it's your enjoyment, but getting new people in there must be like making it more fun, I would imagine, specifically if there's new people starting up and getting into it because then also I would imagine that the chances of...

00:49:22breakthroughs in the game also increases because a lot of new people try new different things and maybe you can get new routes and new tricks and new shortcuts popping up over the years so this doesn't stagnate in the same way as if it would be with the smaller community yeah it's always great to get new runners new faces especially if like I just feel good about being able to help someone in general so when a new runner didn't ask me questions while I'm doing a run I'm just so happy to help and on the topic of people finding new things um the one who really toyed with um setting the rng on ps4 um goes by odd mod i don't believe he ran 10 prior to that but without him being introduced we probably wouldn't even really know or dived into that yeah that's pretty cool would you say that the discord for final fantasy 10 is a very good place to start if you're

00:50:16interested in the speed gaming community side of it absolutely um in particular it's organized in a very nice way where there is a dedicated channel for resources and that channel has links to the guide or guides it has links to um essentially how to do some of the skips some other um guide notes so for other categories and it's a really good place There's also dedicated channels just for asking general questions like, how should I start? What platform should I start on? And everyone just has really good information. So you don't really have to be afraid to go in there. It's like a friendly community and you get to ask questions without there being some high horses answer. And you can just be curious and feel welcome.

00:51:00That's kind of what the vibe I got from you talking about it. So that sounds really good. Because I think that could probably be one of the most daunting things about speedrunning or maybe any sort of fan-based community when it comes to gaming that sometimes you step on people's toes just by being curious. And this sounds like a really friendly place. So that's really good to hear. Yeah, I think it helps that there was a separate channel kind of like created from the main one because it could be moderated. more efficiently, just because we're dealing with just one set of groups. Yeah, it's more centered. Whereas, if you're in the general one, you can just have someone who doesn't know anything about the run, but wants to start some drama, per se. And it's just a mess. They're always toxic people. But it is what it is. But we got trolls, and it's a good name for them for a reason. So, we have some questions. Not a lot.

00:51:57more time unfortunately because this has been super fun but we do have some questions concerning like general um well the general view on speed running so maybe we should go over that real quick so we were into like how you would recommend people starting speed running and i would imagine that the answer is just to visit the discord channels and talk to people and look over stuff and maybe also visit your your channels when you're live to ask questions uh maybe that's the general good starting point if you want to break into speed running yeah i would say definitely those things if you kind of have a game picked out if you are kind of like thinking of a game i would definitely recommend something that you enjoyed casually because if you're going to be there grinding for times it should at least be something you enjoy playing yeah that's good advice that aspect but yeah if if someone is there kind of like chose a game you're like okay where should i go from here definitely check out the leaderboards

00:52:53Most often than not, they usually have a link to a Discord if it's been set up. Otherwise, I would say maybe just if you're trying to see people run on Twitch, I would say look out for runners and pop in and just say, hey, I'm thinking about learning this game. Do you have any pointers or resources? And more often than not, people are happy. I don't think we've broadcasted your Twitch channel name. It would be fun to get it out there so people can find you when they're browsing Twitch. Yes, so my Twitch channel, so it's just twitch.tv slash camp4r. And yep, that's pretty much it. And they also find like a schedule for when you're live and such. I know they have that feature on now that you can browse a schedule. Yeah, because prior to a particular Twitch update, I had an actual schedule extension. However, they added their own schedule, which...

00:53:48isn't necessarily how it sounds. It's less of a schedule, more of recently broadcasted. Yeah. Because it essentially marks your latest stream on the weekly basis. That's a bit odd. As far as my streams go, at the very least, I try to get one long run done on Sundays. But that is also U.S. Western time. So it might be Mondays for you folks. Yep, yep. Well, that's good to know so that if people want to find you, Sunday is a good day. And considering how long of a run it is, there's a good chance that you'll be on there. And to wrap things up a little bit, what do you see in the future then regarding like, would you aim for like trying to be a full-time? streamer doing this will you see that you maybe will branch out doing more games in order to gain more viewers or will this be just like your the hobby of yours that is like a part-time thing or what do you see in in the near future so for me personally you caught me at a good time with this so um recently i took maybe like a two week long vacation from work

00:55:07Originally, it was planned to have a family trip to visit other places of the world. However, with COVID and everything, that kind of shut down. But I already had the request in, so I decided, you know, let's try streaming and see how this goes. And I saw a lot of good things, a lot of progress made as far as growing my channel. And so I was able to apply for Twitch partnership. It was shut down because it was kind of just like a... a peak all of a sudden so i totally understand yeah they've had a lot of influx due to covid so yeah yeah and um one thing that i kind of got out of it is that i really enjoy and feel a bit more fulfillment out of streaming than i do with my current job and so ideally for me if i could take up full-time streaming and be able to make you know i don't expect to make

00:56:02millions from streaming. Make ends meet. Then that would be spot on. It's just hard to justify right now the whole switch from working a full-time, I'd say steady job because I get a steady income, whereas Twitch would be a little more volatile, at least starting out, because you can't... expect everyone to always say subscribe or donate the same amount every month yeah and even if you have like a good community you never really know how twitch might change uh considering like the ownership and what amazon wants to do with it and such things so i can definitely see that it's an it's a new reality to um i don't know get to know like what what are the facts of my new life if you want to be like a full-time streamer

00:56:53And then many people also that I've talked to said that if we will do this at full time, it could be that the main reason why you stream is because you love the game. And if you stream it too much, then the love for the game will go away and then it would be not that fun to stream anymore also. So that could be those kind of things also that could be a consideration when you go full time. Yeah, I think one of the... one of the main things um being a speedrunner or at least having a channel known for speedruns is i definitely see my viewership be consistent when i'm doing speedruns and then seeing my viewership tank when i'm just doing casual games so i'm kind of caught in like okay do i want to aim for partner right now keep with up with the speedruns like when can i go so there's definitely like a balance i would like to kind of like get yeah because i i would

00:57:52like to play some casual games on stream yeah you might have like a casual day of the week or something like that so the people know that you haven't changed on them and then i guess you need to perhaps go into like final fantasy 7 a bit again due to that is more popular also i guess yeah i think definitely the popularity of the speedrun in general that helps with viewership um because there was one time where i was just learning this was um a couple years ago when I was first starting out I was just learning the run and all of a sudden I went from having an average of maybe like 20 viewers and I checked at some point when I was learning and I was up to 56 without any reason I was like I'm not even doing it yeah that's that's a even so I mean that's a cool thing to realize that what I'm doing is entertaining to people and people find something on my channel that they want to come back and visit and look at again

00:58:46Yeah, and I think also that RPGs have got a bit more popularity because, like, go for a famous streamer and speedrunner named Cableheart. He was going through being mainly Mega Man to switch to Final Fantasy VII for some reason, and that has worked out pretty well for him, at least. So I think that RPGs have more of an upcoming popularity also at this point. general streamer you can always find that niche crowd that likes a specific thing and if you get them to find your channel you're usually set for a good base crowd and it seems like that is exactly what speedrunners are doing yeah it's a big but still small section of the viewership so people know what they get when they visit the channels that do that so I think that's a strength in itself so yeah super cool that it's a growing

00:59:45uh community and that people find it more often than they used a couple of years to go that's that's fun to hear and especially for final fantasy i would think because it's it's not an easy game to sell like a short game like you want to see me speed run this genre with super huge games it's probably a mouthful for a lot of people one last question just of curiosity how does it feel to be the best player in the world for a kind of a game that has a major franchise and most people know at least people that is into fire 2g rpgs in general so for me personally i don't i don't particularly think that i'm the best like the leaderboard may say otherwise however in terms of like let's say like general knowledge or routing i'm just following a guy and i just happen to have a really good time

01:00:43So for me personally, while it feels nice to have like world records, I always kind of like have to take a step back and be like, who helped me get these? You know, like who was my competition? Who did I get resources from? And so I think me being the best is more a collective of the community just being the way that it is. So it's like a standing on the shoulder of giants kind of thing. yeah yeah it's like it's definitely not a singular effort because i didn't i didn't route anything i had maybe some little additions but overall i think it's more important to for me at least to be able to say like hey this is what our community has done like how good the times can be and you know my runs far from perfect so there's much room for improvement which has to be like a good thing to keep you

01:01:35going and having a momentum and something to strive for. That perfect run is still out there. Yeah, I think for me, I'm less happy about having world record, more happy about being able to represent a community that was just so open and giving. That's very nice. Are there any special names that you would like to give a shout out, or is it just, as you said, a community effort? I would say definitely community effort, although I do have some names for sure. So like I mentioned prior, Madiyama, he's the one who first encouraged me to run Final Fantasy X, and he's been a great friend and support in terms of resources, competition especially, and just being there for me whenever I had questions and such. Flubberworm4, he is the author of the guide that I mentioned earlier that had the images, sphere grid stuff. That guide really was a game changer because prior to that,

01:02:32for Final Fantasy VII was just a Google Docs, which, nothing wrong with that. However, comparatively, it was much nicer. There is a streamer named Sarith, who is very knowledgeable about Final Fantasy X. He knows a lot of things about the AI and such. It's crazy. Roosta helped a lot with the routing. Mies Baker actually came up with the idea of introducing Bahamut, so that's a huge change. And Campbell Steve is a... friend of mine, and we've been, we actually started speedrunning Final Fantasy X roughly the same time, and so we encourage each other to do that. Do all of these people have their own channels, if people want to look them up, or is there any? All of them have, at the very least, Twitch channels. I don't think they're necessarily all actively streaming, however they do have Twitch channels. That's good to know. We've got a lot of good people who want to shake up different styles and different runs.

01:03:29generally broaden the knowledge about the community. Is there anything else you want to bring up before we kind of call it a night? If there's anything that you think that we haven't talked about, or if there's anything you would just like to mention because you feel that it would be good to get it out there. I think one topic that I kind of wanted to talk about, I know we ran out of time. No worries. But there was one topic you brought up about the future of speedrunning. And so, for me personally, I think it would be great if somehow we got speedrunning more in the foothold of an esports sense. Like, you know, it's really hard to justify competition between runners versus genres that are re-established, like MOBAs or Battle Royales. But in the future, who knows? Like, maybe there's a stage of maybe, like, a few teams doing relay style for a particular game. I just think that could be really good.

01:04:28you could definitely see that be a thing if you have like a rule set that everyone can agree on and you get like a big community so that it's good competition which would in itself make it much more enjoyable to watch so that's a cool vision would you say that would be like the races to do in like games done quick when they establish like any percent makeman x run for example and then you have four runners that applies to the same rules or Would you see it would be more like a traditional where you have like a group play and then you go to finals and have a league, for example, or say that for this time, the best time would be or what kind of level are you thinking that this will play out? I would say it would be great to see the ladder where it's kind of like elimination style. However.

01:05:20As far as just getting a foot in the door, I think best chance would be how you mentioned where, you know, I guess there's like a bounty run and then people sign up and then just take out of whoever signs up. Anyway, that sounds super cool. I would definitely watch an eSports event like that. Just because it's so different to what most eSports events are like now. Especially due to that the eSport has... in my opinion at least has grown from being like this small private things to this humongous super corporate things with all these sponsors and rigged big arenas and all what it is I think something like this would be something to make that core love for actual game and execution that speedrunning is in its core i think that will be appealing to a new audience and it would be like a renaissance of the um the esports i think it's a really cool idea actually maybe appealing to an old audience the one that thought it got too corporate and too slick and too i don't know yeah maybe too much of a structure

01:06:40than it used to be when it was more about passion and the love of the game to use an old catchphrase but yeah that would be i think that would be super fun and also mixing it up a little bit can never hurt yeah and i think it also would make uh post the possibilities for more people to actually live on doing what they love so if you get a little bit more money and then more people could skip and quit the jobs or whatever and get into it doing it full time Yeah. I mean, we talked about this topic in a lot of shows, but hopefully this whole gaming thing that people still look upon as like a hobby in many ways will mature so that it will become as acceptable as to doing, in our case, IT work. Like, yeah, I'm into gaming. That's what I'm passionate about. I bring a good value to people's lives and it's good entertainment.

01:07:35you could be working in tv but you could also be doing gaming and esports and stuff so that would in my world that would be like a as a legitimate work as anything else uh and when that day comes i'll be a very happy camper for sure yeah agreed so game stunt quick uh competition edition that would be something yeah yeah fingers crossed will happen in a near future for sure yeah i think we probably Not run out of stuff to talk about, because that would probably never happen, but we kind of got into Rhodes' end for this episode, if there isn't just any other heart-throbbing topic you want to mention real fast. Other than that, I think it's kind of time to wrap things up. Don't you agree, Oscar? Yeah, I think so. So, if there's nothing else, we'll first of all thank you for joining the show. It was a great privilege to talk about...

01:08:32you uh about all things final fantasy 10 and speed running as such uh always nice to talk to knowledgeable people and get to hear what makes them tick when it comes to their uh specific game so super nice yeah well big thanks for having me it's crazy i think that an hour's already gone yeah that's got really that's usually the case when you get into the stuff and it's an hour well spent sure at least in my opinion yeah definitely so with that said a super big thank you to camper and with that we say good night and we look forward to hear you back in the next episode thank you and good luck