I was wondering that myself. I’ve already played three of them (spot checked most of the others just for an initial impression). I’ve been making notes/mini-reviews on the judging form, but not assigning any scores. I’m kind of thinking I won’t vote, even if we can, and I probably won’t even give out scores. I think every game is likely to be a little rough and buggy, just given the restrictions of the competition, and I kind of don’t want to score low based on brevity and bugs or score high based on an allowance for the time limit.
I saw your title and was wondering if we’d hit on the same idea. I haven’t played yours yet, or anyone’s – work is a nightmare today.
If the entrants can’t vote, are there any eligible voters left?
Because anonymous proxies account for the bulk of it. This is a hobby for all of us, after all. I can tell you exactly what the result would be of lifting these restrictions. The board would be inundated with spam, making it impossible to find the signal through the noise, and people would either become unable to use the board or simply unwilling to do so. Just lifting IP bans and relying on post pre-approval would probably mean a full-time job for somebody just constantly removing the bulk of what gets posted, looking for that rare gem among the garbage. By blocking the bulk of it by IP and then handling the rest manually, it’s at least manageable for the few volunteers that do it.
I understand your point, and I don’t entirely disagree. But I’d rather we have a forum that’s moderated and actually usable, than a free-for-all that’s of no use to most, even though it means some inconvenience from time to time. When the board was launched, it was with the intention of having no moderation whatsoever. I’ve come to realize how naive that was.
If I’m able to vote, I think I will; all of the entries are gonna be a certain level of unpolished, and so my scoring criteria would be about how fun and/or creepy the experience is [emote]:)[/emote]
Amen.
Not very many! Everyone is entitled to score, but obviously not for their own game. A mean average is taken for the scores of each game, so you won’t damage your own game’s chances by leaving the score blank. If people do score their own games, such as the person a couple of years ago who gave himself a million out of ten, it will be ignored!
Not exactly… but, um, relatedly.
Basically the same here, with a caveat that I like games I can figure out how to finish more than games I can’t figure out how to finish.
Pre-writing your Ectocomp story would tend to diminish your glory.
… anyway, my compulsive need to acknowledge a reference made a week ago aside, what’s the deadline for judging the Ectocomp games? (Sorry if it’s mentioned somewhere in this thread and I’ve just missed it, but I’m not seeing it.)
There’s a judging.txt file in the zip which states:
The judging period ends at midnight GMT on 30th November 2013.
Maybe we should have a review collection thread?
I wasn’t sure whether there’s a no-chat rule like there used to be in IFComp. I guess there isn’t?
My reviews are just a few sentences of thoughts about the game. Nothing like I’ve done in the past for IFComp. I was thinking about holding on them until the end, but I don’t know. Might be worth posting sooner, or at least passing along to any specific authors who want to know what one person though.
I’d love to get feedback, good or bad, as I’m in the process of revising and expanding my entry even now so that I can put out another, hopefully more polished and complete, release after the comp’s over. If there is not a rule about no discussion, I’m all for hearing others thoughts on the games.
It might be because I haven’t been around much in a long time, but I’m having a tough time matching up real names to forum aliases. Some of that might be intentional. But as it stands, there are only a couple so far where I actually know which person here wrote the game – or, for that matter, whether it’s from somebody not here at all.
I was thinking the same thing this morning…then realized, my handle wasn’t real clear either…so I just changed mine to my name as I’m fine with people knowing who I am. [emote]:)[/emote]
Ah, then yours is the game I just played. I’ll send you my notes in a PM here, although I might end up posting them if a review thread does get started up.
For anybody who wasn’t around way back in 2004 when I came up with “Sidney Merk” as a pseudonym for an IFComp entry, it’s an anagram of my real name, Mike Snyder. I go by “Wyndo” most everywhere else, but kept “Merk” as a shortened version for IF purposes.
I’m Colin Sandel, the mysterious 2nd author of Chemistry & Physics. Also co-authored One Eye Open, sometimes credited as ‘guy’ as in “Carolyn VanEseltine and guy.” This is what I get for not being as prolific.
I’m Marius Müller and totally not also Slat Leering.
Hi everyone! I’ve updated the .zip file which can still be found via the same link:
www.jjguest.com/ectocomp_2013.zip
This includes “Headless, Hapless” and a new copy of “Personality Rights” that unzips correctly, as well as corrections to the names on the score sheet.
Happy Hallowe’en!