Just to clarify, the rule is thus:
If I could read all their comments about their games on their forum, then it must be a public discussion.
They need to be disqualified.
I think a thread was rather unnecessary. A discreet email could have brought this to the competition organizer’s attention.
EDIT: Revised the above to remove my statement of opinion about whether the entrants should be disqualified.
Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I’ll look into it.
Marshal, I would appreciate it if you and any other entrants will refrain from any more public discussion of this matter. Please e-mail me privately if you’d like to respond to something in this thread or elsewhere.
Understood. Sorry about that.
Wow. That sentinel penguin must have a contract out on me.
As far as I can separate the rambling from the actual content, I think he’s mad that I’m vocally against internet-only games.
He might also have an issue with my tone. That’s fine, I have an issue with his. Mostly I find it hysterically funny, but there you go.
EDIT - Whoo-hooo, cross-communication with two communities! We’ve linked to them and they’ve linked to us. [emote]:)[/emote]
Seriously, though, it’s a bit sad it had to happen this way. I hope no hard feelings will come of it. We’re all united in love for IF, after all.
ISentinelPenguin, if you’re reading this, and if you care in the least, my pre-EDIT message was my first reaction to your post. Everything else on your own forum followed and reflects my present stance. Just saying, in case you find this post somehow offensive.
It has to be said, trollish comments and flaming aside, they certainly have a lot of discussion about games on there. That one thread stretches for pages and pages - when was the last time we had a discussion that long about a game here? I even find myself agreeing with a lot of what they say, particularly Briar Rose’s comment that
I think the discussion here tend to be a bit more, if you’ll excuse me for my choice of words, “nerdy” instead of “fanboyish” (no offense). For example, my first post here (<a class=“postlink-local” href="Open source IF format) was met with atleast a indifferent helpfulness which inspired me to try to code a new authoring system. If I would have made the same post over there, there’s a good chance it might have been flamed to ashes. And discarded in Mount Doom.
Update: I’ve contacted the authors involved, and it seems their participation in the forum stems from a conflation of the rule that says JUDGES can talk about games during voting, and the rule that says AUTHORS cannot. These are all first-time entrants from a community that doesn’t have rules limiting author discussion (like Spring Thing and IF Comp), so I think it was an honest mistake. I’ve asked the authors to refrain from any more public discussion of their work or competitors’ works during the competition. (As per the Spring Thing rules, “the organizer reserves the right to decide whether to warn the person or kick them out of the competition.”)
In general, anyone who suspects someone is violating a rule, especially if that person is also an entrant, should contact me privately rather than posting in public or engaging with other entrants directly.
Yes, I had a bad day and behaved unsportsmanlike. I’ve apologized to those involved and give a general apology to all. I should’ve just emailed Aaron, but I wasn’t myself and made some mistakes.
I haven’t seen any discussion here at all…
Honestly, I’m pretty surprised the site hosting the competition would seemingly have such apathy towards it. The biggest Spring Thing ever, while also introducing a brand new platform to the competition, yet no one seems to care. Is this competition just dwarfed by other ones or something?
If you say so. You’re the expert on the site after all lol.
No call for that, methinks. Naman’s right in the sense that we are different communities and do things differently, and that’s all there is to it.
Our activity just takes place in other ways. Personally, I get a lot of it from PlanetIF blog posts, which gets reviews of games. Reviews are also made in IFDB, and commented on. A lot of it also happens in the IF MUD. It would probably be quite nice to have more active discussions, especially about games and comps, but we just mostly say what we have to say when we have to say it, and that’s that.
ShuffleComp, now, THAT sparked the interest of a lot of people. And the halloween one.
I used to be interested in discussing IF, and then I realised that reams and reams and reams of virtual paper, written in electronic ink, had already been done on almost every possible subject. I recently had a rant about multiple puzzle solutions, of the sort where a heavily simulated world could provide sensible solutions even the authors weren’t expecting… and apart from finding out I was mixing concepts and getting all tangled up, I also soon realised that the most important things I had to say had already been said, much much better, by Emily Short in a blog post of hers.
It’s possible that all the discussing and theorising is done (and the IF Theory book is fascinating), and all that’s left is simply for some of us to make games, and some of us who can’t make games (raises hand) enjoy the heck out of them.
EDIT - Also, the authors of the games are presumably on this forum regularly, and they can’t talk about the games. That already somewhat limits the number of people who’re going to do the talking.
I’m disappointed there has been a lack of discussion, but then, as someone noted, there is also ShuffleComp, and perhaps the way of the future is new comp ideas rather than an annual schedule. SpeedIF feels too slapdash, but perhaps basing things on a theme helps.
Spring Thing, I think, deserves more attention than it gets, and I hope that this is a good transition year for more people to say, hey, it wasn’t just 3 games last year.
As a relative newcomer to the community I find myself wishing there was more discussion, if only to point me towards games that oldtimers have seen more of. I know I’m part of a private community where people discuss individual works. And I think there’s inherent value to people asking questions that’ve already been answered–I mean, for the more technical ones, there’s documentation. I’d like more of that question-asking, because we shouldn’t have to fear being That Guy Who Raises His Hand Too Much in Class.
There’s so much people who’ve been playing games like this took for granted that I didn’t know about & while it’s good to have archives of posts dealing with things, I share your disappointment there isn’t more public discussion. Even if it’s something people have said before, or they suspect others have said before them, a lot of the discussions are worth having again, over new stories and story systems. I’m finding myself answering or knowing things I would not have a few years ago.
I wouldn’t be surprised if people are unwilling to say something they’re pretty sure has already been said. I’ve never seen anyone actively discouraging it, but still, it’s a shame there aren’t more new people asking the basic questions somewhere, or even throwing out reviews or criticisms. I don’t have a solution to this. But I was pleasantly surprised to see what I would guess is a relatively young group of people submitting games, and I don’t want Posterity, or the fear of Posterity, to get in the way of them doing so.
This seems like a good time to mention again the monthly discussions on ifMUD ( emshort.wordpress.com/if-discussion-club/ has the details on that). The next one is this Saturday; everyone is welcome, and you can talk as much or little as you’re moved to.
To the broader points: even if something’s been discussed before, discussions now have the benefit of new information (all the games that have been written since it was last discussed) and new participants (all the people who have shown up since then) and even, for lack of a better term, new fashions in games (some approaches that were popular ten years ago aren’t so much now). So it’s worth bringing things up.
Maybe in future years there could be an easing up on the no author discussion rule. Outright slagging off other authors’ games in an attempt to make your own game seem better should still be off limits, but I don’t think the competition would really be harmed if authors were able to discuss the games and / or write reviews during the voting period.
This gets really slippery-slope, I think. There is no bright line between ‘slagging off other authors’ games to make your own game seem better’ and constructive criticism. Relax the rule and I guarantee that you’ll see authors arguing with reviewers, which is bad news for everyone. Save that energy for updates.
Most authors seem professional enough to not be reduced to that state. At least based off of the way everyone is speaking here.
Personally I think the way I interpreted the rule originally, where you can talk about any game but your own, would work fine. It’s usually pretty obvious what a fair review is vs someone trying to put a game down.
Obvious to everyone, yes. But usually with different conclusions.
Two cents: The more seriously I take a competition, the less comfortable I am when competitors discuss the entries in public. And (despite how quiet this year has been), Spring Thing is the IF community’s second-most important competition. The potential for bad blood to erupt seems really high, and that seems like a bad thing.
On the subject of there being more discussion about the games, I’ve noticed that several people have written reviews of the Spring Thing entries, but no one seems to have posted those reviews here or even linked to them. Some I only found via Google searches, others when I thought to check the IFWiki page, but here - the single biggest IF forum on the internet - there are no reviews at all or even any indication of where those reviews might be found. So discussion is being had, but it’s being had all over the place and as such it’s hard to keep track of it all.
Maybe for the Spring Thing 2015, one of the mods could pin a thread to the forum with links to all reviews and / or discussions going on, or even get permission from the review-writers to post their reviews on the forum, in the hope of generating a bit of discussion.
Great idea! Out of (vested) interest, could you link any you’ve found that aren’t on IFWiki?