As my loyal Riders know, I spend a lot of time writing about “gaming culture,” and not just because it is what I was hired by Gamer Transit to do, but it’s also something I’m really interested in exploring. PAX itself is a large-scale demonstration of our codes of manners, dress, language, rituals and norms of behavior. Critics and Scolds would say that was ridiculous, that we’re all just disaffected, isolated and potentially dangerous anoraks that are wasting our lives for something of no value. But they couldn’t be more wrong, since a small event at the convention provided all the rebuttal that would ever be needed.

At the same time that Wil Wheaton was knocking ‘em dead in the Main Theater, the Speed Run Showcase was being presented in the convention center’s atrium. It consisted primarily of a thirty-minute video of ‘speed runs,’ segments from popular and vintage games completed in record times and under strict conditions from the unofficial headquarters of such actions, the website Speed Demos Archive.

At the site, you can watch Mario move untouched through his world first NES adventure in less time then a commercial break, or see a level in Quake completed in less then a minute by the masochistic use of one’s own a rocket launcher’s knockback. However, at the presentation at PAX, I saw something remarkable that definitively proves the critics wrong, and it wasn’t on the screen, it was in the crowd.

When the player controlling Mario ran full tilt at a pipe and leapt over it, clearing its emerging Piranha Plant by what must have been a pixel’s height, the crowd “oooo-ed” in unison. When Mario knocked off a hammer brother on the bricks above him, and came down to ‘bop’ the other in the same motion, the crowd laughed, and when he effortlessly and recklessly leapt through Bowser’s final attacks in the last stage to end the game, the crowd cheered.

What’s strange about that, you say? Nothing, if you’re a gamer. Nevertheless, imagine that you had wandered into PAX thinking it was for Latin enthusiasts, you’d have no idea how remarkable what you were seeing was. It would be like watching the day’s highlights from some obscure foreign sport like jai-alai or soccer, and not knowing what you’re supposed to be seeing.

That’s a barrier to understanding: Everyone knows that playing the saxophone is not just blowing air through a tube, but only we know how amazing a good speed run can be, because we’ve played that game, and we know that’s it’s not a simple as can be made to look by an expert. The public’s unawareness of this fact is a detriment, events like PAX, and televised programs like the WSVG help, but it’s only the beginning.

We know the amount of time and effort that must have been needed to perfect a speed run is akin to the mastery of a musical instrument, but it doesn’t mean that they can’t be both enjoyed by people by all skill levels. The path to acceptance leads through understanding and educating the world about our culture is the first step.

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Back of the Bus is © 2007 by Seth “4:10” Robison, used with exclusive permission by gamertransit.com. Reproduction without permission is prohibited.

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