Awesome Games Done Quick, the ongoing speedrun charity marathon event, is up to its usual shenanigans. Every year there are one or several moments from the marathon that deserves to be widely shared online. These moments are often world records being broken, close speedrunning races, or controversial situations. In this case, however, the moment was entirely manufactured by the speedrunner and his friends, much to the chagrin of the audience and over 100,000 online viewers.
BioShock is the game being speedrun and BloodThunder is the speedrunner. He's just over 30 minutes into the game when he reaches a point in the game where he uses a key to override a self-destruct sequence. Doing this is supposed to trigger a cutscene in-game, but something surprising happens instead. When BloodThunder uses the key, a Windows blue screen of death pops up, causing everyone in the room to suddenly hold their breath.
BloodThunder, after performing a gasp for dramatic effect, quickly tells everyone watching that it's actually okay. A shocked audience quickly shifts to confusion regarding the situation. That's when the trick behind BloodThunder's joke becomes clear. The blue screen turns to black and then a video of the beginning of The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim plays. BloodThunder just caught over 100,000 viewers with the Skyrim cart meme.
As would later be explained, the situation was manufactured by the BioShock speedrunning team. The game's files were hacked so that instead of playing the standard BioShock cutscene, a different one would be played instead. The blue screen of death, the cut to black, and the fade-in to Skyrim's cart scene were all just a part of this video. It may make the speedrun unofficial since the game has been modified, but it made for a fun and memorable moment for AGDQ. Hopefully, it also led to a few extra donations.
Today, Saturday, is the final day of AGDQ's week-long marathon. Speedrunners have been playing games 24 hours a day for the past 6 days and now only so many hours remain. Going by AGDQ's schedule, there are just 8 games left to play in the next 14 hours. So far AGDQ has raised over $1.6 million, but that's likely to grow significantly higher in the final hours of the event. Altogether, it's been an incredible week as video game fans come together to help support the Prevent Cancer Foundation.
AGDQ can be watched on the event's official Games Done Quick Twitch channel.