Guinness World Records Should Stay Out Of Gaming

hello you absolute legends oh how the mighty have fallen i distinctly remember growing up in the early 90s as a kid and every family had a bookshelf full of books this was just before technology took over our lives and made computers and mobile phones the dominant way to retrieve information my family's bookshelf was filled with these standards that i'd assume most households had we had a wide selection of stephen king novels we had one of those huge encyclopedias that spanned an entire shelf and of course we had a guinness book of world records i'm sure the book was already filled with a bunch of useless crap by this time but the section that always interested me the most was the human being section i read about the tallest shortest fattest smartest people along with the weird oddities like longest fingernails or smallest waist even at a young age i was already fascinated by the limits of human existence before the age of the internet guinness was a respected book in total it has sold over 100 million copies and is a brand everyone can identify but these days people don't seem to view guinness in the same light as they may have 20 or 30 years ago somewhere along the line guinness started to become a joke a parody of itself something that people no longer viewed with ore but rather a mocking disdain for many people guinness have even managed to foster anger and bitterness when i made a video recently about how guinness was falsely copyright striking speed runs it was obvious from the comments that there was a serious undercurrent of distaste for the brand why did things change so dramatically well there are plenty of reasons plenty of good reasons in fact there are too many reasons to do them all justice in this video one thing is for certain though guinness has earned its reputation as being a horrible money-hungry leech that exists only for profit its original mission of being a reliable source for settling disputes over world records has long been buried guinness is almost unrecognizable from its former self a zombie being sustained only by the crumbs of good favor owned in years prior and also the deep pockets of narcissistic vultures looking to buy superficial recognition for meaningless endeavors guinness attempts to sink its claws into every competitive niche but the one that irks me the most is gaming for quite a few years there has existed a peaceful symbiotic relationship between guinness and the fields of speedrunning and competitive high scores but it seems like this is about to come to an end the hubris and greed of guinness has become too large resulting in a decision that spits in the face of gamers who work tirelessly to maintain records in their respective communities in this video we will take a look at this decision and why it is so devastating to guinness existence in the gaming world guinness needs to leave and in this video i will tell you why now before we go on this video is sponsored by nordvpn and i'm going to quickly 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to nordvpn.com or clicking the link in the description nord has a 30-day money-back guarantee so there is absolutely no reason not to try them out the first thing you need to understand about guinness is that despite what they claim they are an authority on nothing any meaningful venture already has established governing bodies that dictate and manage records in their own fields for example if you wanted to know what the world record was for the 100 meter sprint you wouldn't go to guinness you would go to world athletics which is the organization that manages and adjudicates athletic competitions on the world scale world athletics is the authority on athletic records and they have been for over a hundred years if you wanted to know the world records for swimming again you wouldn't look to guinness you would check with fina which adjudicates and manages swimming competitions at the highest level at the olympic games it's not guinness officials that line the pool checking to make sure the stroke is correct and that swim is turn correctly no it's fina officials as they are the experts when it comes to swimming in the niche of gaming guinness once again relied on established authorities to provide data on existing world records in the early gamer editions they relied heavily on twin galaxies to provide high scores in fact the book itself appeared to be a joint venture likely piggybacking off the success and popularity of the king of kong documentary allowing twin galaxies to negotiate a deal with guinness but even this caused issues guinness don't have enough experience to really understand exactly who is the authority for a particular competition for example in the 2014 gamers edition guinness stated that the faster super metroid run was 41 minutes by brandon moore set in 2010. they believed this because this was what was listed on twin galaxies however twin galaxies has never been on authority on speedrunning and the reality is that the actual world record was over 10 minutes faster as verified by the official rankings guinness aren't nor have they ever been experts in any field for most of their existence they were simply a repository of records that were verified by third parties they may have researched or been provided records but they weren't adjudicators and they didn't need to be the guinness book of world records was profitable enough simply from the sale of the book and records its source were sufficient enough to make the book an interesting and worthwhile purchase if not entirely accurate this business model was never destined to last long though when the internet exploded in popularity in the 90s a new way to retrieve information became available now if you wanted to know who the tallest man was you didn't need to find a copy of guinness all you needed was access to the internet and a search engine the entire purpose of the book a way to retrieve information about records became completely redundant actual authorities could now create their own websites and provide up-to-date official records themselves without relying on a middleman to deliver information the sales of the guinness book of world records plummeted and a huge chunk of their profits vanished over the span of just a few years guinness needed a new way to make money have you ever wondered why guinness keeps track of so many useless and seemingly bizarre records no one can deny that they highlight extremely strange and questionable records but most people probably don't consider the real reason basically it all boils down to money while the sales of the physical book were declining guinness had already amassed a huge amount of prestige and many people dreamt of being featured people were clamoring to break records so they could see their name in print guinness found a way to capitalize on this by taking advantage of their eagerness and charging them a fee for guinness to adjudicate their record attempts this fee wouldn't be cheap either sometimes costing hundreds of thousands of dollars for guinness to witness and validate a record however guinness can't validate any record as i mentioned earlier highly contested and popular records already have established governing bodies that manage and oversee records guinness can't compete with them as they lack the expertise or functionality for example guinness would not be able to adjudicate a new world record in the 100 meter sprint they don't have the authority nor do they have the capability as there are many things that go into it that aren't obvious such as strict drug testing regulations if guinness were to try to challenge and compete with world athletics it would not only be delusional but it would also be incredibly disrespectful it would make it obvious that guinness do not believe world athletics could do a sufficient job and would make this statement that they believe they know how to run things better it is for this reason that guinness cannot make money from the fastest 100 meter sprint but they can make money from the fastest 100 meter sprint wearing clogs or the fastest 100 meter sprint with a football balance on the head these records may seem ridiculous and they are there are tons of records that have only been attempted by a handful of people at most but there are people that are so obsessed with getting a guinness world record that they will pay thousands of dollars to have an adjudicator come out and verify their pointless achievement it doesn't seem to matter how strange the record is all they care about is getting a guinness world record guinness can make an unlimited amount of money by creating brand new records that literally no one has ever competed for they simply add some inane criteria that makes it barely unique then gullible susceptible people will then pay guinness thousands of dollars for the privilege of letting them compete for it just to be clear i don't have any problem with people competing for useless records many people would argue that speedrunning is useless however speed running organizations aren't run for profit speed runners can compete for free all they need to do is meet certain proof requirements competing for a guinness world record is a different story entirely i've talked about this a few times before but earlier in the year the speedrunner cheese broke the 120 star world record in super mario 64 at a live event called break the record live before the event the organizers esa reached out to guinness to inquire about having them validate any potential records that may happen guinness quoted a price of 15 000 pounds plus travel for one of their adjudicators to be present at the event bear in mind this person would have absolutely no idea about speedrunning or how to validate anything they would serve literally no purpose being there guinness are fully aware of this yet they are still happy to charge exorbitant amounts of money to show up and stand there with a clipboard guinness world records is a scam but people are starting to catch on fast their reputation and credibility is being diluted with each new bizarre world record they promote lately things have gotten much worse and a couple of terrible decisions have essentially destroyed their relationship with most gamers the worst of which being the reinstatement of world records of a proven cheater in 2007 the documentary king of kong was released which chronicled the battle for the world record in the arcade game donkey kong it prominently featured the players steve wiebe and billy mitchell both of whom i had no idea existed until they watched the film the documentary was a huge success and led to a resurgent in interest in high school competition as well as gaining a huge following for the two featured players as part of that film billy mitchell supposedly achieved the first 1 million point score an achievement that was highly contentious for many reasons i won't go into detail in this video as i plan to do a full video on billy mitchell after this one long story short though billy mitchell ended up with a guinness world record for this accomplishment mitchell also held numerous other guinness records including the first donkey kong kill screen and the first perfect pac-man guinness never adjudicated any of these records they relied entirely on information given to them by twin galaxies which as i've already mentioned is the authority for high scores in 2018 twin galaxies stripped mitchell of all of his records after it was shown that his donkey kong scores were not performed on a donkey kong arcade following this decision guinness also removed mitchell's records after receiving this advice from twin galaxies however in a bizarre turn of events guinness decided to reinstate mitchell's records last month going against the ruling of twin galaxies this is a crazy decision as guinness are not experts in high scores and are in no position to make judgments regardless of what your opinion of twin galaxies is as it stands today they are the authority on high scores they have a fairly bad reputation among gamers but this is generally due to the corrupt nature of twin galaxies before it was sold to its current owner jace hall in 2014 nowadays twin galaxies relies on verifiable evidence to validate records which includes video proof this evidence is then made available to all members who can then analyze it to make sure it's legitimate but this never used to be the case previously all you needed to have a record verified was the word of a referee and has been shown time and time again that many of the referees that worked for twin galaxies were compulsive liars who would say and claim anything for attention honestly we are lucky to have any footage at all of mitchell's donkey kong records but thankfully we do as it was this footage that enabled players to uncover the truth years later guinness decision to reinstate mitchell's records is a slap in the face to every gaming community that works hard to maintain records a couple of videos ago i asked you to try and spot the fake speed run i purposely included blemishes and the faked runs but even still unless you had expertise you know how hard it is to tell which is fake this is after you already know that one of the examples was fake if i didn't tell you this you would have no idea in order to catch cheaters you need a team of dedicated gamers who have devoted a large portion of their lives to studying a game they need to know an extraordinary amount of details if they are to be confident in weeding out players looking to gain an unfair advantage in speedrunning each separate game has its own set of moderators this is because it would be impossible for one person to adequately know enough about every different game so they can only moderate the games that they specialize in these moderators aren't paid they do it because they love the game and they love the competition the same applies to twin galaxies while their verification method is different in practice it still ends up being lifelong gamers who specialize in high scores that end up giving the green light or in the case of mitchell it was many people sharing many different areas of expertise that enabled twin galaxies to confidently conclude that he had falsified his records experts that aren't paid and have no motivation besides making sure only legitimate records are acknowledged for guinness a for-profit organization that only cares about money to think they can do a better job is a disgrace they have no expertise no authority no clue what they are doing and they have been nothing but a leech for years they have profited greatly from the hard work of dedicated gamers and are nothing but a middleman that parrots records verified by real organizations this latest decision confirms as has always been the case that guinness does not care about gaming or gamers and will make whatever decision it thinks will bring in the most dollars whether it's because they fear a lawsuit from mitchell or they were sufficiently paid off it's obvious all that matters to them is the bottom line they are a business and their only motivation is money guinness needs to stay out of gaming and trust me gamers everywhere now hate them if guinness continues to post records from either twin galaxies or speedrun.com their disrespect would reach another all-time high those relationships are over and guinness is not welcome now on a more positive note there is a huge dream eternal speedrunning event coming up this weekend and in celebration of this we are giving away some free switches so check the pinned comment which will have a link where you can enter thank you so much for watching you legends i hope you are having a fantastic day and i will see you in the next video [Music]

Channel: Karl Jobst

Views: 973,836

Rating: 4.9002557 out of 5

Keywords: guinness world records, guinness gamer's edition, billy mitchell, karl jobst, guinness, video game cheating, biggest cheater, donkey kong, king of kong, steve weibe, twin galaxies, jace hall, arcade high scores

Id: HIbeF0bf1Gk

Length: 15min 35sec (935 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 23 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/D_Winds]

They are no longer the source to bring gaming milestones to light.

[u/jojoman7]

GWR is not a scientific or historical organization. They're glorified pub quiz makers. They don't care about accuracy, they care about you paying them thousands of dollars for a piece of paper. Anyone who references or cites them is a moron.

[u/Kelyaan]

Guinness, Just like SRL or other Speedrun websites only have the power to make a run "official" if people give them the power to. But if you have to pay then is there any integrity to the record and not just you buying some paper

[u/confirmSuspicions]

Speedrun.com should really answer for why they are still affiliated with them: https://www.speedrun.com/gwr

source: https://www.reddit.com/r/speedrun/comments/hgclgq/why_speedruncom_should_disassociate_themselves/

[u/IHaveNoNipples]

They are a just plain corrupt organization. They also do publicity stunts for authoritarians and dictators. Last Week Tonight has a segment on it.

[u/[deleted]]

GWR is so stupid that they listed zoast's country as "Palau" in a recent gaming edition because he chose that flag on speedrun.com just because it looked cool.

[u/Datlossit]

They are also nothing but scum that they are willing to let a full blown cheater in the form of Billy Mitchell run rampant who had numinous claims of evidence against him proving he cheated his high scores in Donkey Kong.

Then when that was backlashed against, they made all attempts to silence the matter by making their videos private and refusing to answer. Literal cancel culture against our community and was the final nail they gave no fingers about us.

I full on agree GWR should not be allowed ever again to take stuff from the Speedrunning community, let alone gaming itself. It is likely all their other coverings of gaming world records are also made up nonsense, they simply cannot be trusted.

[u/ersatz_cats]

Great video as always!

It's worth pointing out that, while the Twin Galaxies forum thread was the most publicized aspect of the Billy dispute, and while TG did come to a transparent and accountable ruling based on published evidence, the true experts in competitive DK high scoring are at the website Donkey Kong Forum. They're the ones who assembled and published the MAME evidence presentation in the first place (which was then copied into the TG dispute thread). Guinness didn't just thumb their nose at Twin Galaxies (which as Karl explains was bad enough), they thumbed their nose directly at the volunteer expert moderators dedicated specifically to the classic DK arcade series, who were finally able to conclusively prove something which had long been an open secret within the DK community.

[u/RuinedFaith]

Nazis and nazi sympathizers should stay out of gaming, too stares at Karl Jobst