Super Mario 'Speed Runners' Are Setting New World Records (fivethirtyeight.com) 62
Virginia software engineer Brad Myers has played Super Mario 22,000 times, and just set a new speed record earlier this month -- 4 minutes and 56.878 seconds. An anonymous Slashdot reader summarizes a new article at FiveThirtyEight:
"In this 31-year-old video game, there is a full-on, high-speed assault on Bowser's castle under way right now..." writes Oliver Roeder, describing a collaborative community of both theorists and experimentalists "who test the theories in game after callus-creating game... 'Everything in my run, so many people contributed so much knowledge at various points in the game's history,' Myers told me. 'Now someone can come along and use that as their starting point.'"
Online broadcasts form a kind of peer-review system, with an ever-expanding canon of tricks -- for example, intentionally bumping into objects for a slight increase in speed. But the success rate for the maneuver is estimated at 3%, meaning speed runners spend most of their time stating over. "On average, about 1 out of 1,000 times does a record-setting campaign continue beyond its halfway point..."
Online broadcasts form a kind of peer-review system, with an ever-expanding canon of tricks -- for example, intentionally bumping into objects for a slight increase in speed. But the success rate for the maneuver is estimated at 3%, meaning speed runners spend most of their time stating over. "On average, about 1 out of 1,000 times does a record-setting campaign continue beyond its halfway point..."
Compare to sports (Score:3)
Why do people care about sports at all? Why do the Olympic Games exist?
One possible angle that I might accept is that unlike well-known ball sports, notable video games are proprietary. A video game's publisher has state-backed power to dictate whether, how, and by whom its game shall be played in public.
Not all baseball matches are MLB matches (Score:3)
Don't challenge MLB if you know what's good for you.
I don't know what you're getting at because "challenge MLB" can have any of several meanings. If you start your own league unaffiliated with MLB [wikipedia.org], do you "challenge MLB"?
Major League Baseball has copyright over broadcasts of matches between MLB clubs or between clubs in MLB-affiliated minor leagues. It does not have copyright over broadcasts of baseball matches in other leagues. Video game publishers, on the other hand, control which leagues are even allowed to exist.
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World record time to beat Super Mario. Who gives a shit?! Why would you spend time on this?!
I agree with you, but let me be the devil's advocate anyway
TFA also plots recent advances in "time to assemble Rubik's cube" and "time to run 100m dash".
So why do people care and spend time on that? Because there are more spectators?
Re: Exhibit A (Score:1)
It's for the same reason people like you and I waste time posting to slashdot.
The same reason people climb mountains, or play football, or paint, or make music, or collect stamps, or watch tv shows and go to movies, or have and play with pets.
Pretty much anything you've ever done that doesn't involve keeping your body healthy and alive, or attempting to procreate, is equally "worthless" time spent that doesn't further the goal of living.
It's no different for being entertained by playing video games, or bein
How do you know this guy's a millenial? (Score:1)
How do you know this guy's a millenial? TFA doesn't say he is.
Or did you just want an excuse to sob about something? That seems to play well on Slashdot.
(Disclaimer: I'm not a millenial. But I'm not a whiny Professional Victim that likes to complain about random things, either.)
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Just pull the trigger already - snuff out your cowardly existence in a fitting manner.
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Nope, just pissed by trolling. It adds noise. But I also added noise and in a very bad form too. Can't take it back though :/
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And here is Exhibit B, human nature [nature.com] and Exhibit C, the reason people are refusing to work [thinkprogress.org]
Paywall warning (Score:3)
Exhibit B, human nature
From the linked page:
I guess it's human nature to charge for human nature.
Re: Exhibit A (Score:1)
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They're still up there between Iceland and Norway.
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Yeah I know. god forbid anyone have any fun in life. It should all be about work work work work work.
Re:Exhibit A (Score:5, Funny)
I present to you, Exhibit A for "why Millennials never accomplish anything."
I know right! I mean they only broke 65 Olympic records and 19 world records this year alone!
Though I have to hand it to you, you may have just broken a record of your own for stupidest comment on the internet.
CONGRATULATIONS!!
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Now, this is just a guess so there is a chance that I am wrong, but hear me out.
Here goes.
The point of this pastime, according to my own thoughts and beliefs, is ... ...
To have fun.
I know, MIND BLOWN. But how is this more pointless than, say, building model aircraft or watching NASCAR?
If you like this stuff (Score:5, Interesting)
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Is that for real? I think I got RSI just from watching the video.
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Oh. They're literally invisible.
I thought you meant that they're so fast that you cannot see them on the video.
Crazy stuff.
Re:If you like this stuff (Score:4, Funny)
Trump will hire him to build The Wall.
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He don't seem like a good man for the job, after all, the blocks disappears as soon the finishes doing a line.
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I suspect "callus-creating" is where you're stumbling? It functions as an adjective, describing [the second instance of] "game".
A callus is like a hardened bit of skin caused by repeated wear. Manual labourers & athletes often get them.
Is "game after game" grammatical? (Score:2)
To help you understand, we will first need to understand your English proficiency. Of the following phrases, which is the first to sound ungrammatical to you? That'll help me craft an explanation.
A. Researchers "who test the theories"
B. Researchers "who test the theories in games"
C. Researchers "who test the theories in game after game"
D. Researchers "who test the theories in game after callus-creating game"
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That was how I read it first time. It didn't help that there was a line break immediately after "in game".
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Bit of a garden path sentence there. It's not "the horse raced past the barn fell down", but it could be worded more clearly.
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The intent of this semi-famous sentence is that the horse was what fell, after it was raced past the barn...
From the "Garden path sentence" entry in Wikipedia:
This sentence relies on the ambiguity in English between the passive participle and past tense. Since raced is usually encountered as an active verb, the initial parsing of this sentence is the horse (noun phrase and subject) raced (active past-tense verb) past the barn (prepositional phrase), but this parsing cannot make sense of the word fell at the
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It's meant to be read as "the horse (raced past the barn) fell down", but no one is going to parse it properly on first reading. Pernicious grammar.
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I know it is. I was trying to find the best point to start my explanation of why it is.
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It takes a lot of parsing but it is English.
I got stuck on that, and on:
"On average, about 1 out of 1,000 times does a record-setting campaign continue beyond its halfway point..."
If you have to re-read sentences multiple times, it's NOT good writing, even if it uses all English words.
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A proper (i.e. not Indian) English speaker would write it as "On average, a record-setting campaign continues beyond its halfway point about 1 out of 1,000 times ..."
Not noticing errors doesn't mean you're cleverer than those who do. Quite the opposite, in fact.
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Leaving aside the racism in that comment, why change the word order but not the bigger problem of the choice of words? A record-setting attempt may be more likely than not to be abandoned, but a record-setting campaign is surely a campaign which sets a record, and it can't do that if it isn't completed.
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That's like saying you were only in a presidential campaign if you won. A campaign is an attempt to do something, with more than just "I felt like trying" behind it.
s/ia / / (Score:1)
n/c
I was planning on survival running it lately (Score:2)
Crap. (Score:2)
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But was your time anywhere close to this, or was it like high school kids doing the hundred meter dash in about 20 seconds?