Maybreak

Maybreak

The Pokémon Speedrunner's Guide to Ranked Choice Voting

Ranked Choice Voting (RCV for short) is an alternative voting method to "traditional" first-past-the-post voting. We use it for major votes in the Switch Pokémon Speedrunning community, so here's a short-ish explainer on how it works.

Why can't we just do normal voting?

In first-past-the-post (FPTP) voting, voters select their preferred option, and whichever gets the most votes is selected as the winner. This is the "default" voting system for most people, and what you see whenever there's a Discord
Published by May on Mar 7, 2022 at 2:52 PM.
Filed under Speedrunning, Pokemon, Guide.
About 3 minutes of content.

2022 Speedrun Goals

alright I'll do one of these for real calm down

Let's Go Pikachu Any% but Good This Time

Last year I realised that I'd been running Let's Go off the SD card the entire time, which if you don't know, is slow and bad. My 3:10 run has way better execution than my current 3:08 PB, but the PB is on digital and had a better Starmie so it won out. Let's Go is really frustrating to me
Published by May on Jan 3, 2022 at 10:42 AM.
Filed under Speedrun Goals, Speedrunning.
About 2 minutes of content.

The Corvimae Awards for Gamesiest Games of 2021

In the past, I've written long-winded reviews of my favorite games of the year under the guise of ranking them as a top ten list. That took a lot of time and I don't feel like doing it again, so in lieu of that, please enjoy these categories I made up off the top of my head and the award winners for each one.

The Hollow Knight Award for Best Metroidvania with a Major Glaring Flaw

Metroid Dread

Samus Returns
Published by May on Dec 24, 2021 at 12:51 PM.
Filed under Game of the Year, Games.
About 7 minutes of content.

Failing to Find a Way to Get People to Understand the Paradox of Tolerance

This is a direct response to Exarion's pastebin, which you should read first to get the full context. You can find it here.

Update (2021-08-21): I clarify a bit in this Twitter thread, which you can read if you're interested. I'm not gonna transpose it here because today has been very long and I'm tired.

Last September, I wrote an essay about my issues with the Pokemon speedrunning community, and since then, things have gotten a bit better! I talked

Published by May on Aug 21, 2021 at 12:47 PM.
Filed under Essays, Speedrunning, Pokemon.
About 3 minutes of content.

Alpha Sapphire Any% FAQ

Is this on emulator?

Nope, I'm running on an New 3DS with an internal capture card from Delfino Customs.

Why Mudkip over Treeko or Torchic?

Mudkip can learn four HMs that we need to complete the game, and generally wrecks house once we get Bulldoze in Mauville City.

Why do you keep resetting on Rival 1?

Most Mudkips don't have high enough IVs to survive the route. At level 6, we need at least the following stats:

14 Attack
10

Published by May on Nov 30, 2020 at 12:26 PM.
Filed under Pokemon, Speedrunning, ORAS, FAQ.
About 6 minutes of content.

November 2020 Speedrun Goals

I haven't done one of these, and I change my mind about my long-term goals like three times a week, but I'm gonna write these down so that in the future I can look back at them and laugh at them.

Alpha Sapphire Any%

I'd really like to hit sub-3:12 in AS. That's 10 minutes off my current PB, but my current PB is also pretty bad, thanks to two Archie 2 deaths plus a ton of rust on
Published by May on Nov 2, 2020 at 11:09 PM.
Filed under Speedrunning, Speedrun Goals.
About 2 minutes of content.

Questions and Nidoranswers

It's been five days since I published my essay on diversity in PSR, and in that time a lot has happened. Overnight, the PSR Discord was broken up into smaller Discords by console with the explicit goal of restoring power authority to those invested in that community. I want to commend the PSR admins for their quick and decisive response; I originally wrote that I didn't think the admins created an exclusionary space on purpose, and I'm happy I can

Published by May on Sep 30, 2020 at 2:51 PM.
Filed under Speedrunning, Pokemon.
About 3 minutes of content.

Failing to Find a Blue Nidoran

CW: References to instances of abuse, sexism

The names of some individuals have been removed to place focus on systematic issues rather than individual actions. I've kept the names of others that I quote directly.

Yesterday, PSR, the central community for Pokemon speedrunning, reinstated an admin who stepped down in July after being accused of abuse. This is the statement posted by the PSR admin team announcing the reinstatement:

As a result of the investigation that started back in July,
Published by May on Sep 25, 2020 at 10:32 AM.
Filed under Speedrunning, Essays, Pokemon.
About 10 minutes of content.

Player Interfaces: Destiny 2 (Part 1)

This is the first of what might become a series of essays on user interface design in video games. If you enjoyed the article and would like to see more, please let me know!

1. Introduction to Bad Design

If you've been around the online Destiny community long enough, you've surely seen your fair share of posts like this:

Pictured: Someone who legitimately deleted the game.

(If you're not familiar with Destiny, think of this as accidentally throwing away a

Published by May on Jan 20, 2020 at 5:25 PM.
Filed under .
About 8 minutes of content.

The Games of the Year of 2019

In 2019, I played a couple of games. Some of them were good, and some of them were Anthem. In keeping with the tradition of classical games journalism dating back to Socrates himself, here are my ranked listing of the Good Games of 2019.

You might read through this and think, "wow, you really hated these games, jeez." I enjoyed every game on this list enough to include it, faults aside. I think there's a lot to learn from the
Published by May on Jan 3, 2020 at 6:09 PM.
Filed under Game of the Year, Games.
About 31 minutes of content.
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