I am writing this topic here, because frankly I thought this would be the best place for this.
Svenne* is currently researching the possiblity of having an 'official' Games Done Quick event in Europe.
He already breached the subject with the people running GDQ (Mike Uyama & co) while we were in Washington and is now trying to feel if there is enough of a platform within Europe to get this going. What we would REALLY like is the direct involvement and support of the French speedrunning community. From what we know, the French speedrunning community is massive and completely self sustaining (with their own websites, events, etc.), but since we don't really speak French it is hard for us outsiders to tap into that source. Now I know for a fact that people like Neo, Mario & KartSeven have direct contacts with people within the French speedrunning core (actually you are probably part of that core, correct?
). If some of you can discuss the idea to have a European Games Done Quick (EGDQ) with people that you think can make stuff happen (like the organisers of Stunfest or whatever) that would be great. All I know is that Svenne will be in touch with Mike Uyama & co again once he has established enough support in Europe to get this off the ground. If you encounter enthusiastic responses from within the French community regarding this idea, they can directly contact @DonSvenne on Twitter.
As some of you may know, Svenne is the founder of ESA (the European Speedster Assembly). However he does not like the direction that the ESA event has developed into. I'd say that compared to the GDQs, ESA has more of a focus on enjoyment of the runners themselves (it's starting to feel more like a speedrunners meeting, less a speedrunning show) and less focus on the charity aspect and involvement of the Twitch viewerbase.There is nothing wrong with that if that is the target of the event, but probably partly because of this viewer counts and donation totals of ESA are stagnating for the past years, while they are still far away from what the GDQ events accomplish (viewerbase 100k+ vs 10k+, donations 1 million+ vs 10k+). Anyway, to cut a long story short, there are some disagreements regarding the vision of ESA. For the record, personally I love both of these events. ESA for being what it is, and GDQ for what it is.
All of that is besides the point though, the point being that it would be fucking great to have a GDQ event in Europe anyway, that's obvious!
*who Neo dubbed Terrence Svenner while we were @ AGDQ