Is there community value to anyone about tool assisted speedruns? I was thinking about doing a tool assisted run but not really caring about speed. Would the project still be entertaining to some audience? I was thinking about having fun with Zelda OoT or something. I have never done anything off consul before so this whole thing seams a bit strange to me.[/s]
Hey there. To answer your question, we've had playarounds in the past, such as Genisto's Super Mario Bros 3 Glitchfest (1035) or those two Gradius runs: (711), (1116)
Generally, if you can make a game interesting, exciting and entertaining to watch without going for maximum speed, feel free to have a go at it. If there already exists a speed-oriented run for a game, you should make sure to show off as many tricks and glitches as possible, especially those that aren't shown in the main run.
Here's a list of all playarounds on the site: http://tasvideos.org/Movies-C1001Y.html
They disregard speed in favor of entertainment purposes; however, they still aim to do everything precisely and efficiently, showcasing as much as possible within the self-imposed time limits. There is no room for runs that are imprecise or inefficient for no good purpose; wasting viewer's time is never an option. Keep that in mind if you want to make a playaround.
My first dual game movie consisted of a decent amount of fooling around.
If it's entertaining enough the whole way through, there's nothing wrong with trying to submit it. Lots of people have succeeded. But the technical merits of a TAS must still hold up.
The idea of having different sections in the site for different types of videos (such as separate pure speed and machinima sections) has been tossed around, but the idea never caught.
On the other hand, perhaps it's good that the site keeps focused on doing one thing well, rather than becoming simply a dump bin for any kind of tool-assisted "let's play" videos. We have youtube for that, so there's no need for this site to become one.
An exception to this is usually made for games where speed is inconsequential and there's other aspect that's way more interesting (1-on-1 fighting games are usually like this, especially the ones that have tons of glitches to exploit). However, in general speed should be at the very least the secondary goal of any run.
I agree that let's plays probably don't belong on tasvideos even if we make our category system more flexible. But I think there are many kinds of TASes which are being routinely rejected now, which would be better served being published if we improved our category system. The main examples of this is probably runs which are rejected for "bad game choice" or "wrong language", but playarounds also suffer from this. In this cases, improving tasvideos is a better solution than pushing people to youtube. The problem with youtube is that it is
Not organized - hard to know what is current and what is obsolete, what is precise and what is sloppy.
Does not ensure that the actual movie file is posted, meaning that the TAS itself is usually lost to posterity.
Does not encourage detailed descriptions of how and why which tricks were used.
The thing is, without a concrete measurement of "better", how do we determine if a new submission of an existing tool-assisted "let's play" should obsolete the existing one or not? It might easily go to a system where movies are obsoleted by new ones mainly because they are newer ones, not necessarily better ones (because "better" is extremely subjective in this case).
I think there's definitely value in using tool assistance for things other than superplays of games (whether they go for speed, or some other category); tool assisted Let's Plays, etc, can be fun to watch. (I seem to remember tool assisted Let's Players asking people on this site for advice on the past.) I don't think it'd be appropriate to publish them here, though; probably best for sites to stick to what they're good at. (It'd be fun to have an offtopic thread that links to a best of tool-assisted non-superplays, though.)