I realize we are just throwing out ideas here so I’m not trying to sound snarky.
I like the idea of “Outstanding Debut” being just that: an outstanding debut work. Changing it to “Outstanding IFDB Debut” is certainly within the prerogative of the organizers, but that, as we’ve seen, could be a significantly different award.
Changing it to “Outstanding Work by an Author Who Might Have Been In Contention For But Never Won an IFDB Award” would not be particularly interesting to me. (Maybe we could have a separate “Always a Bridesmaid…” award.)
And if we keep the current system, I’m not worried about policing it heavily. Most people I’ve seen that already had IF games don’t want to get the award, because it feels like their previous work was neglected (I’ve had people speak up for this reason before). So you have a point
Hello! Author of The Witch Girls here. If it matters, I’m more than happy for my game to be removed from the debut awards. It was my first entry to IFComp and my first twine game that wasn’t a messy draft, but I’d released a few visual novels before this that were intended to be played as finished products.
That’s good to hear, I sent you a message with some thoughts.
After conversation with the author, Witch Girls has been withdrawn from Debut but is still entered in all other applicable categories. Thanks to everyone who has expressed support for this and other great games of 2025!
The awards are more than halfway over now, so make sure to get in your votes!
The wording of the rules is ambiguous. Right now it says ‘the first weekend after Feb 15th’. I put that in there originally so I’d be sure to have time to post the results. But the 15th is the weekend. I’m going to have them finish on the 15th itself rather than extend it to the 22nd. I’ll propose a rule change in the future that it always ends on the 15th; someone pointed out that the rules allow for a couple of days for processing the results, (and they’re public anyway, with only very rare malicious voting getting removed, something that I think only happened once years ago), so even if I’m too busy on the 15th itself to tabulate results, we can still close voting then.
Most of the polls have either reached the ‘5 vote for top game’ threshold or surpassed it. Those that don’t might not have a prize awarded.
This is totally fine; if a poll is unpopular one year, it can simply be removed the next year. There is no need to artificially pump up a poll if it’s just not a good fit for the competition.
Popping in to say that Ren’py, Godot, and Adventuron have made it out of the weeds and will result in awards. The other retro games, the spanish games, custom games and espionage games each need just one vote to qualify. Most of the others seem unlikely to qualify at this point. I’ll try to post on the Choicescript forum to see if I can drum support for that poll.
There were several TADS games this year but they do not have so high ratings. TADS could make a comeback next year. I also hope that ADRIFT will get a renaissance when ADRIFT 5 interpreters are integrated in multi-interpreters, especially web playable. Oh, and Quest is being developed again…
Popular systems like ADRIFT, Adventuron, Inform 6, PunyInform and TADS don’t have very many votes. I’m guessing that’s because of one or more of:
These awards weren’t promoted outside this community.
Only a small number of users of those systems hang out in this community.
Only a small number of users of those systems know about IFDB or have IFDB accounts.
The existing votes are dominated by IF Comp and Spring Thing entries and very few (if any) of those systems were used for games in those comps.
The majority of users of those systems are also authors of games using those systems, so can’t vote, as you can’t vote for your own games and votes for (possibly worse) games will bias the votes against your own games.
Aren’t the majority of users of most systems authors of games using those systems? I was under the impression that the expectation is to vote for games that aren’t yours, and with everyone doing so, the better games will rise to the top. Not voting for a category because votes for others are not votes for yourself seems strange to me.
Sorry, that didn’t come out quite right. What I meant is that you can’t “rate” a game. It’s an all or nothing vote. I found that I had tested quite a few games that weren’t mine, but hadn’t played the final versions, so I can’t vote for those. There were also games that I hadn’t played at all, so I can’t vote for those. Of the one or two games that were left, I didn’t particularly like them, so I can’t vote for those. So, if there’s nothing left, then I can’t vote for anything. It’s best to let others decide the outcome.