[JoshTriplett]

It's intended to be a collaborative endeavor, often played with people who are on a live call with each other. In the kinds of games that work well with randomizers, you usually have multiple different options for how to proceed, and you have to figure out how to check as many item locations as possible to unlock things for yourself and (in the case of Archipelago) for other players.

It doesn't work as well with linear or mostly linear games.

And as another reply noted, sometimes you get stuck ("BKed"). Sometimes each person has more than one game in the randomizer, so they have a couple of options to play further. Sometimes people go watch someone else play until they're unblocked again.