Any% No Sketch Glitch: Speedrunning the Unwell Play of Final Fantasy VI Lucas Cook, Sean Duncan
This paper seeks to look at a form of “unwell play” where a community gathers around a game and redefines the goals of the game for themselves in competition. Focusing specifically on Final Fantasy VI (FFVI), we can see that the practice of speedrunning reflects deep gaming literacies, the commitment to community goals and norms, and the creation of new games out of the elements of existing ones. Speedrunning FFVI reflects redefinitions of the boundaries of what we consider the games we put under study, as well as the role of “well play” in our understanding of them.