People who began comparing each others ' playing skills through videos exchanged over the Internet started speedruns . People want verifiability to see whether a person followed the rules and thus see whether the run counts as a valid attempt to beat the record . Entertainment has traditionally been the reason for the creation of speedruns , as the phenomenon was originally devised by enthusiasts who began comparing each others ' playing skills via movies exchanged over the Internet , while verifiability stems from the necessity to provide evidence that one 's playthrough went by the typical or game-specific speedrun rules and thus counts as a valid attempt to beat the record .