Womenize – Inspiring Stories is our weekly series featuring inspirational women from games and tech. For this edition we talked to Claire Lynn, who speedruns video games. Read more about Claire in this interview:
 
Hi Claire, thanks for taking the time to talk to us! You have participated in several Games Done Quick events, speedrunning “The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask”, and are also holding the current world record for “The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Master Quest” 100%. How and why did you start speedrunning video games?

I started speedrunning around 7 years ago when I happened to stumble upon old tool assisted speedruns of “Ocarina of Time”. I wanted to try out the stuff they were doing in those videos because it looked like literal magic, and after I started being able to do some of the things I saw it was like an addiction. I quickly tried to learn a speedrun route that I made up myself to see how fast I could beat the game with the glitches I knew. Soon after I learned about the amazing community that surrounds both “Majora’s Mask” and “Ocarina of Time” and that only further incentivized me to get good at it.

 
Regularly showcasing your skills on Twitch and at GDQs, as well as holding a world record… I can only imagine how many hours of training are necessary to achieve this, and how many moments of frustration are happening in the process. Do you have any advice on how to cope with those moments and how to stay determined?

Learning to cope with failure is a huge part of getting good at anything, especially speedrunning. A lot of people may not realize it from just watching the personal bests of speedrunners but speedrunning really is just a constant exercise in failure. So I think my best advice is to not get discouraged when things don’t go your way and remember that the goal is not to get down on yourself if you don’t see the results you want right away, you just need to keep trying.

From a viewer’s perspective, speedrunning seems to be quite a male-driven field. Why do you think so few women do professional speedrunning, and have you noticed any developments within the last couple of years?

I think that women traditionally haven’t gotten into speedrunning in the past for the same reason women haven’t gotten much into many esports and that is that for a very long time gaming in general has been a hobby advertised primarily to men and boys. I think as time has gone on though, I personally have seen women get more and more involved with speedrunning and esports in general in recent years. I think that one of the most important things that women who have been in the scene for a while need to do is to make them feel included and that they belong. GDQ and Frame Fatales in general have been great about being more inclusive and I think the results of that are only going to get better as time goes on.

Thanks for giving us an insight into the world of speedrunning, Claire!

Claire’s Links: Twitch Channel │ Youtube Channel │ Twitter

Womenize! – Inspiring Stories Feature by Jessica Hackenbroch