I doubt that the IFComp is responsible for the rarity of long-form IF – if you look at the list of finalists for the best game XYZZY, over the past few years you’ll see several long-form non-IFComp games, which I’d hardly expect if the norm were that a good game was an IFComp-style game. Doesn’t inherent difficulty seem like a more plausible explanation? The IFComp may be drawing people who otherwise wouldn’t write games to write shorter games rather than longer ones, but I suspect such people are more likely to write shorter games anyway. If anyone wants to write a long game for a comp, there’s always the Spring Thing.
But if comp rules do de facto express community ideals, then I think Hannes’s proposal would be disastrous. If we are to permit only downloadable games, and frown on locally executable games that aren’t run on interpreters – well, then we’re stuck with the formats supported by the interpreters that you can compile yourself, forevermore. And those of us who can’t verify the interpreters for ourselves will be left trusting that the authors of the interpreters aren’t malicious, anyway.
This thread is pretty long, but I think Hannes’ proposal was just that the games should be downloadable, not that we should frown on executables. As I understand it, all three of the games in IFComp 2012 that didn’t provide files for download could easily have done so, just by shipping the HTML+JS in a zip. They wouldn’t be playable in Gargoyle, but they would be playable in a web browser by double-clicking, which I think satisfies the goal of archivability, within reason.
Wayyy back at the beginning of this thread, it seems like most people agreed with this:
Anyway, the time is upon us. There are three games in IFComp 2012 that provided no downloadable files (“Howling Dogs,” “Living Will,” “Gilded Youth”) and three games that are not playable online (“The Island”, “Irvine Quik & the Search for the Fish of Traglea”, “The Sealed Room”).
As I understand it, it should be straightforward for all of the web-only games to fix their problem in an in-comp update by just uploading their HTML+JS to the archive. And for the TADS/ADRIFT games, they each have an easy-to-use web-export tool that the authors can use to make their games playable online.
Am I right in thinking that our tiny minority of people who care about such things should: 1) email the authors, asking them to provide additional files in a subsequent update, and 2) give them a low score until/unless they update?
(Maybe the ALAN game should get an exception, because there’s no convenient way to webbify it?)
Is this the right thing to do, or am I just being a jerk? (I’m definitely going to write the authors; I mean the voting part.)
That’s up to you to decide. There are a number of ways that you can punish games that do stuff you disapprove of; in descending order of severity:
Give them a 1. (Personally, I don’t like to do this except for games that are utterly broken or unambiguously trolly. But protest-votes are definitely an important part of the Comp ecosystem. It’s sort of jerky, yes, but jerkitude can serve valuable functions. Up to your conscience.)
Don’t play or score them. One of the big reasons to enter the Comp is to get more people to play your game, so getting fewer players is a disincentive. (This only really works if there are lots of people who follow suit.)
Play and score them, but don’t write reviews. (Only works if you’re writing reviews. This is the MO of a number of reviewers for games that don’t credit any betatesters, for instance.) You can do this the classy way (never mention their existence) or the passive-aggressive way (in your game list, strikethrough the game’s name. Make a review post for the game, but say ‘SINCE THIS GAME IS WEB-BASED SCUM I SHALL NOT BE REVIEWING IT.’ The one-line review ‘Not IF.’ is the minimalist equivalent.)
Actually, Sargent argues precisely the opposite in The Evolution of Short Works: From Sprawling Cave Crawls to Tiny Experiments, an article in the IF Theory Reader. Shorter Evolution of Short Works: making shorter games on an annual cycle was primarily driven by the Comp. You may not agree, but the comp’s organiser is definitely of the opinion that the Comp is, if not precisely a manifesto about how IF should be made, then practically speaking a very major influence on it.
I take it that this means that, if you’re concerned with spyware and malware, you don’t want to play local executables either, unless they’re sandboxed files that run in interpreters. In fact, in at least one case that I can think of a homebrewed downloadable game had some malware issues.
Downloading the HTML + JS so the game can run in your browser wouldn’t address this issue, would it? The JS could still run scripts you might not want. I don’t really understand the technical aspects of it (for instance, I don’t really know whether I used “sandboxed” correctly in the previous paragraph).
I was under the impression that this is not the case – TADS games have to be specially compiled for web play, and online play only exists for games in ADRIFT 5, not ADRIFT 4.
One difference is that everyone would be able to check the source code, and though everyone wouldn’t do that, chances are at least one person would, and so any problems could be spotted.
But there’s little such a page could do, other than open up popup windows to porn or rick roll you or something.
Personally, I’ve written the authors of Guilded Youth (comment on his blog) and Living Will (e-mail), asking them for offline versions. I intend to take no further action (like voting 1 - that feels extreme).
Theoretically, if enough people who care about it do the same thing (at this time a grand total of two) then the authors would realise the demand for it and agree to release an offline version. Insofar as that’s even possible in the case of Guilded Youth.
WebRunner can play ADRIFT 4 games. The only caveat is that it converts them on the fly to ADRIFT 5 format, and there are possibly a few slight differences between the two (I’m trying to eliminate all of these, so if anyone finds any, please let me know). If you are curious, you can play Duncan’s game online here. Please note though, that games played using a v5 interpreter should not be used as a basis for voting in this competition in case there are any differences that would make a material difference.
Thanks for the clarifications, Campbell and Dave. I think this still means that the authors of ADRIFT and TADS games have good excuses for not providing web-playable versions, since the web players might not work as intended out of the box. Also, howling dogs has submitted the downloadable files as I understand it, and Guilded Youth is in Vorple which currently can’t play offline, so The Living Will seems like the only game that has an easy fix for online/offline play and hasn’t provided it.
Given that interpreters for Glulx, Z-Code, Tads, Alan, Hugo, Adrift 4 and probably many more are available as portable source code, I don’t see the harm in that, personally. To make matters completely clear, though, I’m not asking for a rule to ban proprietary formats. I’m asking, in specific, for all games to be publicly archived and, in extension, for a modern-day interpretation of the rule #3:
I am willing to give authors the benefit of the doubt as far as they should be allowed to enter games in strange formats. I will not play them myself (and, for the record, that means “not rated” from me, not “1”), but as long as their is no indication of their software attempting any foul play, fine. If there is, however, and that includes collection of personal information about the players, for example, I think they should be banned from the competition – because this is really the new breed of commercial products. Actually a much more evil breed, because most players will not even know what they’re getting into.
I supplied my zipped file of my Undum for “Living Will” when it was originally requested by the IFComp. Not sure why it is not accessible, but I was surprised to get the email from Peter. Is there somewhere else I need to send it?
I disagree, Matt. This tells me I could use a simple link to allow someone to run an ADRIFT game I made years ago, with no changes. It might have issues, but certainly it could be tested.
Second, I could import said game into ADRIFT 5 and make changes if I found bugs. I am impressed with Campbell’s progress on this.
Nothing against Campbell’s progress; all I was saying is that enabling web play for an ADRIFT 4 game would require an additional round of testing and possibly bug-squashing, so I don’t think Duncan is to blame for not doing it. I wouldn’t want to release a game to the comp in a format that might not play the way I wanted it to. As Campbell said, we shouldn’t vote on Duncan’s game if we’ve only played it in an ADRIFT 5 interpreter.
My IFComp entry of last year was written in ADRIFT 4 but got auto-converted to ADRIFT 5 if played via the WebRunner. This caused a few bugs - nothing that stopped the game being finished, but commands which worked fine in ADRIFT 4 didn’t work as well via the WebRunner. So yes, it’s best to avoid playing ADRIFT 4 games via the WebRunner, at least for the time being.