Since my writing career began in 2004, I’ve published over 40 books about how games are made. That number includes Shacknews long reads such as Rocket Jump and Bet on Black, which we do consider books. When your “feature article” grows so large that it pushes up against and then bursts through the limits of a website’s internal content system, forcing engineers to expand it, you’ve got a book on your hands.

Despite what I said above, I don’t consider my nonfiction books to be about video games. They’re about people driven to create things. Technology and video games combine to form a stage on which developers of all stripes entertain us and, if we’re lucky, give us something to think about. Just lately, I’ve rethought my approach to these books. Rocket Jump, Stay Awhile and Listen books 1 and 2, Beneath a Starless Sky—these books put you in the trenches of game development to bring you into the experience of the exertion and creativity that goes into making a game. With 2022’s Long Live Mortal Kombat: Round 1, I switched things up. I wrote about how the first four MK titles of the arcade era were made, yes; that information is important, but I went further. The rhythm of each of the book’s four sections starts with an insider’s look at development, and then we look at what happens when a fan picks up a game. What is it about that game that fostered a strong enough connection to invest time, energy, and money into it? And, arguably more importantly, how has it changed the lives of some of its biggest fans?

Take Andrey Stefanov, a young man who grew up in Bulgaria. He wanted to play Mortal Kombat in his local arcade, but the area had been commandeered by drug dealers who held their turf in an iron grip. At the age of 10, Stefanov stepped to one of the dealers and ripped off his head… in Mortal Kombat. His temerity earned him a beating, but it also earned him respect. From that moment on, he could play in the arcade, provided he shared his wisdom with his overlords. Stefanov went on to work in information technology. That’s no coincidence: He drew a direct connection between his fascination with MK and his growing interest in technology. Mortal Kombat literally changed his life.

That brings us to Perfect Run and CarcinogenSDA. Carci, as he’s known, is my favorite video game streamer. Although he loves video games and will play almost anything, he specializes in Resident Evil, at least for the moment. (More on that in the story.) He’s performed at multiple Games Done Quick events, mostly by playing Resident Evil. That experience pushed him to challenge himself. In 2023, he submitted a run proposal to GDQ’s organizers—a full playthrough of 2019’s remake of Resident Evil 2 without taking so much as a scratch of damage.

I caught wind of Carci’s run on Twitter and was immediately captivated. At the time Carci pitched his run, no player had completed a no damage playthrough of a Resident Evil game, or any game, live on stage at either Awesome Games Done Quick (AGDQ) or Summer Games Done Quick (SGDQ). To me, this was more than a bold attempt at putting his hands in the perpetually wet cement of video game history. It was an attempt to change his life, and I had to see if and how he could pull it off.

Also, yes, I love Resident Evil. But that was only one appealing factor. I’ve had my sights set on writing about streamers, their careers and lives and how they dismantle games the rest of us take weeks or months or years to beat, for a while. I just needed an angle and a deep understanding of a streamer’s game of choice. I haven’t finished RE2 Remake more times than Carci, but I’ve done it more times than I can count. (Mostly because I’ve never counted.)

The stage was set. I set out to learn more about Carci’s background, his training regimen leading up to AGDQ 2024, the run itself, whether he was successful and, from there, what went right, and what went wrong. Would he triumph and gain hundreds or thousands of new followers during the week-long livestream extravaganzas? Or would he fail and suffer a hit to his reputation as a challenge run god? What goes into preparing to play in front of thousands of people? Why Resident Evil 2 Remake instead of RE7, the subject of one of his most famous GDQ streams, or his favorite, 2002’s remake of the original Resident Evil?

Find out for yourself.

-David L. Craddock
13 February 2024