There is nothing to play...

Casuals took over the entire gaming industry and now hardcore gamers are a minority. If you think you belong to the latter group, you probably don't. Most of /v/ is casuals hence why anons spend more time bitching about games than playing them. Almost all youtubers, streamers and content creators on the Internet are casuals, because nothing is more appealing to normalfags than watching someone who sucks at games even more than they do. This is also why nostalgiafags are so profitable, because all they want is a casualized version of the game they played as a kid.

For every 100 self-proclaimed videogame enjoyers there is only 1 person deserving the title of hardcore gamer. But because gaming is such a casualized hobby chances are he wouldn't want to even refer to himself as a gamer, lest he be lumped in with shitters.

The lone hardcore gamer also has to contend with the ever-increasing flood of compfags and metaslaves, who aren't gamers so much as narcissists and accountants, respectively. Being good at a competitve game has little to do with skill level in any modern context and following a guide has not, nor will it ever, make you good at real games instead of glorified skinner boxes. That hardcore gaming includes these two subsets of gamer is a disgrace. While they aren't necessarily casuals, they might as well be.

Note also how anytime someone takes even the slightest pride in hardcore gaming, the common response is to say it doesn't matter, no one cares, blah blah blah. This is because casuals love to project their insecurity and the only thing they can do consistently well is show up to their job and appeal to the status quo. Hardcore gaming is basically incompatible with them and so they lash out at anybody who dares suggest that they might be a casual.

Trans rights apart, speedrunning in general has just become really uninteresting
maybe it's a case of people just having more tool to find exploits and strats or something I don't really know, I'm sure part of it is a byproducts of speedrunning becoming a "community" over time and not as much just dudes that really like this one specific game they're really good at

For most of the runs, it doesn't even feel like the runner are particularly skilled or anything, feels like they're just following a memorized script that they memorized
At least to me it was a lot more interesting back then when guys like werster and cosmo were running and it was mesmerizing just watching these dudes know a game so deeply and adapt on the fly, it doesn't feel like anyone running at gdq is anywhere near that level, if they are it doesn't feel like it anyway