Gaming’s marathon of sprints is back. Yes, Games Done Quick (GDQ) 2023 starts today and will run through Saturday 14th January culminating in a final stream in the early hours of Sunday 15th January.
Games Done Quick, now in its 14th year, is widely regarded as the gold standard for speedrunning events. Every year, dozens of gamers host a series of charity streams where they race through video games as fast as possible. (Over the years, GDQ raised more than $40 million for charity.) This year the donations go to Cancer Prevention Foundation.
For 2023, the GDQ was initially planned as a face-to-face convention in Florida. But in September 2022 the organizers canceled the physical component, quote the state’s “continued disregard for the dangers of COVID-19” and “increased aggression towards LGBTQ+ people‘, in addition to the costs associated with cancellation at the intended venue. “We don’t think it’s a safe place for our community right now,” organizers said.
Instead, the GDQ 2023 will be an online-only affair.
How to watch the GDQ 2023
You can stream the event directly the Games Done Quick website or about his twitch channel. If you miss the event live, past runs are usually uploaded to The GDQ YouTube page.
Here is the full GDQ 2023 schedule. This year is packed with some seriously insane sounding runs, including a red-hot breakthrough neon whitea first-person platformer designed in the truest sense of the word to speed running. Here are a handful of runs to put on your radar:
- A 29-minute Any% run (i.e. the only goal is to hit the credits as fast as possible) through The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wildfrom player 5 (Sunday, January 8 at 1:30 p.m. ET)
- A consecutive 40-minute sprint through each and every level of neon white level, through Bledan (Wednesday, January 11 at 10:49 p.m. ET)
- A 23-minute race through each track of Kirby Airridethe Kirby game most in need of a sequel, by 1David (Friday, January 13 at 3:06 p.m. ET)
- A three hour co-op run through randomized versions of Metroid Prime and its continuation, from Uncle Reggie and BashPrime (Friday, January 13 at 10:35 am ET)
