Games Done Quick, the premiere speedrunning event where speedrunners gather together to run games for charity, attempts to diversify with Frame Fatales. The Keyword here is “attempts”.

Frame Fatales will be hosted from May 12 to May 16, promising to showcase 50 hours of speedrunning content by women speedrunners. It is a side event that will run before Summer Games Done Quick, which will run in June. The main organizer of the event is Muffins, GDQ’s Hotfix Production/Programming Manager and Head Volunteer Coordinator.

“This is not the only time we will be doing this, just the first. It will be more open in the future!” Muffins said to Twitter user 1UpGirlXaltis, a Mario Party speedrunner. “This one has been a personal project in the works, but now that it is free and in the open, in the future I hope to have submissions.”

The event highlights and can be seen as a response to a lack of gender equality in Games Done Quick. While there have been a few prominent women runners like Beckski93, they’re in the extreme minority of GDQ runs. The lack of visibility of women runners creates a false image that women are not into speedrunning and can be discouraging to female speedrunning enthusiasts.

“This will help visibility for women in speedrunning as a side event. GDQ side events in general have increased popularity of the event and speedrunning overall,” Phantessma, a participant who planned to do a run of Banjo-Kazooie and Super Mario 64, said.

However, some have taken issue with the event. “Feature women in a side event so that you can ignore cries of sexism when your main event is still more than 95% male,” said Twitter user princessproto, a former speedrunner. “Classy, GDQ, classy.”

The core criticism is that by creating a separate, women-only event, Games Done Quick does not actually solve the problem of the lack of gender equality in its main event. It essentially shunts women off to the side, which creates this image that female speedrunners aren’t viewed to be as important.”This doesn’t solve any problems. This only boosts GDQ’s reputation at the expense of the effort of the women who are a part of it,” princessproto said.

The schedule for Frame Fatales has been announced. Frame Fatales will kick off with an All Memories/All Beads run of Sekiro by Sayvi and end with an any percent, no sketch run of Final Fantasy VI by Essentia. A hope for the event is that it could increase demand for more women to be featured in main GDQ events, which could address these criticisms in the long-term.”This event being popular/successful has a good chance of improving the likelihood of seeing more female runners in GDQ events. GDQ runs are chosen out of hundreds of apps; this allows women the confidence to apply since they’ve run the format before/be noticed as entertainers,” Phantessma added.

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