As a player and reviewer, I really like to hear from authors about what they thought they were doing and why they thought it was interesting. It helps me appreciate aspects of a work that I wouldn’t otherwise know about, or alerts me to things I should be sure to try.
Obviously authors can do author notes as part of their game, but sometimes people don’t, or don’t realize that there’s a thing they want to talk about until well after the game has shipped.
As long as the update rule is in place, the game having shipped is not an obstacle.
If the game fails to encourage you to try something, why should the author step in and tell you to? Are we rating games or authors?
I can’t imagine, in a singing competition, going to the judges and explain why I decided to make that pianissimo instead of the fortissimo that is traditional. Either the judges will have gotten it or they won’t, if they even noticed. In a singing competition, I present my arias - and that’s it; they’ll speak for themselves. Is an IF game not capable of standing up for itself? Does it need the author trailing behind to go “Did you see what I did? Wasn’t it awesome? I plan to develop it further, you know. Hey, did you try…”
…whereas AFTER the comp period, all of this makes sense.
EDIT - If an author provides me with a branching game, and in one of the paths there’s a groundbreaking revelation which turns the game into something extraordinary…
…and then I choose the OTHER path and never realised there was an alternative, never realised I had a choice…
…the game failed. It failed to transmit that I chose a sub-optimal path, it did not encourage me to replay, and so that groundbreaking revelation, for me, did not exist. That should be how I judge the game. Not have the author come to me and say “You know, that was horribly unfair. You didn’t see the real point of the game; you only saw half of it, and the least interesting half at that”.
(come to think of it, this pretty much sums up my experience with Howling Dogs)
do you actually have a concrete for/against stance on the issue? i’ve read all your replies and i honestly can’t tell where you stand on this?
Heh. Fair question! I wavered a lot, didn’t I?
I didn’t start with a stance at all, but as I started thinking about it, and as I replied to people, I think I definitely formed the stance where I think the rule makes sense.
Although, I don’t really argue “for” the rule; I argue “against” some of the things people are saying would be changed if the rule wasn’t there.
There is a very good reason to do away with the rule: it may not make sense in today’s community the way that it made sense at first.
But I’m also seeing a number of comments like “If we didn’t have the rule, we could promote our own games (authors), or have more authorial input (players), or discuss the competition while the judges are watching”. And I really, really don’t think those are good things. That’s mostly what I’m arguing - not so much the rule, but the things that people want to do which are, I believe, anathema to a judging situation, and which they look forward to doing as soon as the rule gets lifted.
I’ve been sort of skimming the conversation so far, so apologies if this has already been brought up, but I think the main problem isn’t that there’s been less discussion this year overall, it’s that there are more than fifty friggin’ games this year, so we’ve all been drinking from the fire hose, so to speak. Naturally everyone’s attention has been divided by such an awesome number of games (and I mean this in both senses of the word), and the fact that the IF community is so scattered these days surely contributes to a sense that fewer people are talking about it overall. But look, the IF Comp reviews thread this year isn’t any smaller this year than it was at around this time last year, and all the usual suspects are still posting reviews (though again, at a slower pace because there’s so many games this year). Take a look at it another (albeit anecdotal) way: I’m posting IF Comp reviews this year, and I hardly ever do that! I’ve only written ten reviews so far, but compared to Comps past that is an incredibly high number. If I decide tomorrow, “Screw it, I’m done” and spend the rest of the voting period, I dunno, watching Lupin III movies on Youtube, I still will have written about more games than I have in any other Comp year.
Anyway, I’ve got kind of a dumb idea about this: let’s have a IF Comp-Mini (or Nano, minicomps are kind of their own special thing) with about the same rules as the IF Comp, only authors are allowed to talk as much about their or any other games as they want. Then, we do some statistical analysis on the results from that (did the games that were most promoted get more votes? higher scores?) and use that to decide if we want to get rid of the author gag rule from the main IF Comp. I don’t know how feasible this will be, I’m just spitballing right now.
I get what you’re saying, but I feel like with IF, it’s also a bit as if the author has written a score and then I come along and perform it. Then I decide on the basis of my performance whether the score was any good. Meanwhile the author might be sitting in the corner thinking, YOU FOOL! Can’t you READ MUSIC?? Authorial notes are a little like letting the author write… um… whatever one calls those little annotations on a score. (I should not attempt musical analogies. I know nothing about music.)
This is part of the reason I keep nattering on about giving players as much information as possible in the blurbs. I want to experience the games I’m trying in the best way possible. And the more I know about the length and difficulty and emotional tone and general requirements of a game, the more likely I am to be able to play it under favorable conditions.
Here we go on a tangent, I suppose, but one other thing that’s been particularly challenging this year: not only are there a lot of games, not only are a lot of those games good enough and complex enough to deserve thoughtful consideration, but quite a few are long. And I’m not just talking about parser puzzle games that take a while to solve. Some of the puzzleless choice games still represent a good solid hour or more of reading. So even if I can play to the end once, I’m not going to have time to replay several times before the comp time limit sets in, and that means I can’t explore all the angles the way I might try to do with a game that I was reviewing under other circumstances; so it’s helpful to have some clues about what I’m missing to offset the limits of my own experience.
Authorial notes are good. Authorial notes make sense in every game. But they can still exist regardless of the muzzle rule. [emote]:)[/emote] Authorial input that is currently strangled due to the muzzle rule may not be the good kind of authorial input.
EDIT - Hang on, I don’t get your analogy. It would make sense if the judges were rating a transcript that someone else played through.
I know this is unintentional, but y’all are just dialing up the guilt.
I might actually post another one, um, tomorrow?
Unfortunately in addition to a baby in the house I am getting paid a fairly substantial commission to work on a project; neither condition happened last year. Nothing to do with the volume of games.
(unrelated note to lighten things up - is it accidental that your screen name sounds a lot like Jebediah? [emote]:D[/emote] )
(if you pick and choose the accent, natch)
The thread is the same length maybe but overall fewer reviews are being written. If the number of games in the comp was the culprit why would the total volume of reviews being go down? Wouldn’t we have the same amount, just spread thinner between all the games? I think it’s just an individual circumstances thing, you know? Not everyone’s going to be able to post as much every year. But if authors were allowed to talk we could at least be counterbalancing it somewhat.
The problem with waiting for post-comp is that it’s six weeks after release, and as the saying goes you only get one launch day. The rule as it stands means we have to have a very, very soft first six weeks, since we’re essentially confining our audience to the tiny fraction of IF players that follow the comp. That’s probably going to hurt the long term success of the game. Like right now Birdland’s first month is on track to just edge out Bell Park’s first month, but that still puts it a mile below any of my non-comp games. Like literally an order of magnitude lower. That’s kind of a disincentive to submitting really good work, you know?
EDIT: And like lower readership numbers aren’t always necessarily a bad thing because the responses from the ifcomp crowd are usually much more useful and in depth than the responses from the general audience. And I want to make it clear I’m super super grateful to everyone here who’s ever played either of those games. But still I always want to reach as many people as I can and I hate to see the comp working at cross-purposes with that, especially since the whole point of it is to be a showcase for interactive fiction.
I don’t think anyone’s intent is to scream at the reviewers and other members of the community saying, “why aren’t YOU doing more to promote the comp” or “why aren’t you reviewing more games/reviewing games faster.” I think the overall sentiment from (most) authors is, “why can’t we do more to promote the comp?”
Yeah to be clear that’s my exact angle with this thread. I want to help make this thing as big as possible.
But what’s stopping you? What’s stopping you from promoting the comp? You’re not allowed to speak about your games, and apparently, other people’s games. But what’s stopping you from saying “Hey, there are tons of cool things in this comp! One person even did ________!”. EDIT - Ok, don’t do that. That’s against the rule. And that’s if you want to get specific; you don’t have to be specific to promote anything.
“Counterbalance” implies there is a problem right now. Again, look, 6 weeks. 50 games. You can’t have prolonged excitement over that period. People need time to play the games - that’s “play”, not “rush through them”.
Why? This is what I don’t get. Why are you confining your audience to that tiny fraction? To quote from the rule,
If you want people who know you to play your game, you can encourage them to check out the website, which is very friendly and accessible and a definite plus for this year’s comp - and, since they know you, it’s natural for them to want to try your game out.
Anyway, this is not about launching a game into the whole wide world. I think I spoke about this earlier. It’s only about launching the game into the Comp. You do get a second launch, if you want to, and with a post-comp polished version no less. This is not your only release. You do not have the burden of marketing and distribution all on your shoulders. You will, later, when the comp is over. But right now, you’re not expected to.
I honestly don’t see a problem; nothing in the muzzle rule that prevents promotion in general; and nothing to “counterbalance”. 6 weeks, man, and 50 games. Plus our own life. And not all the games are playable on mobile devices, and not all of us have mobile devices capable of playing them anyway (I do, though. [emote]:)[/emote] ). A slack period is expected. It would only not happen if everyone were high on coke all the time.
I get that. But that’s not a problem with the rule. That’s a problem with promotion in general and people voting in specific. Also, 50 games. [emote]:P[/emote] 50 games and no set order to play them in, there’s no telling what’ll happen. And maybe some people skip your game altogether because the blurb or cover image doesn’t appeal to them, and that’s unfair but it’s the voter’s prerogative, and it’s all part of any comp, sadly.
If you could promote your game publicly to remedy this and get more people to your game… your game would be at an advantage over people who don’t have as many contacts, or who have just been away and didn’t even notice you were doing that. And we’d probably be innundated by authors going “Check out my game! Hey, everybody!”.
The tough part of any comp is the wait. And this is the tough part of this comp.
That’s the point, we can’t get specific. Unless you’re asking us to specifically toe the line and try to skirt the rules? It seems perverse that we’d have to do that!
I have no idea if it’s true or not that there are fewer reviewers this year. But it’s true that, unlike the previous years, I didn’t do much work to add review links to the IFWiki page about the comp (my motivation to work on the IFWiki has lowered recently, I’m afraid… [emote]:oops:[/emote] ): I hope this didn’t make people believe there are fewer reviewers than there actually are! I’ve just added three more reviewers I’ve found after a quick search (Michael Martin, Ben Dixon, Jake Wildstrom); maybe there are still others.
Thanks to the IFWiki contributors who did add links to that IFWiki page, by the way; in particular, many thanks to Bg! [emote]:D[/emote]
You don’t have to try and skirt the rules. You’re allowed to promote, and you’re not allowed to be specific. Fine, don’t be specific. But you do have information that you can share about the comp, like how many CYOA games there are this year. I can’t see it being against the rules if you go to a CYOA community and say “Hey, check out this year’s IFComp, xx% of the entries are CYOA!”, whether or not your own game is CYOA.
The rules say you’re allowed to promote the comp. The sentiment here is that you’re not allowed to promote the comp. And I’m going, what the?
I’m not even sure whether people are talking about promoting the COMP or promoting their GAMES individually. Because if it’s the latter, well, that’s unfair and sounds like a very reason for the rule to exist.
We cannot actually say “one person did _____.” We cannot say anybody did anything. There’s no way to effectively promote something when you can’t say WHY it’s good. I could post “Hey check out ifcomp” all day but no one’s going to care if I can’t give them a reason to. I would like very much to talk about why, say, Laid Off from the Synesthesia Factory is special, but I am fairly certain that even this completely unspecific post technically violates the rules. (Please don’t report me.)
Are you suggesting we’re witnessing the maximum possible level of IF Comp activity right now? I find that hard to believe. We could have much more excitement if there was a larger audience. We could have a larger audience if we could pitch to them. We could pitch to them if we were allowed to say anything specific about any game in the comp. We are not.
I did in fact do this. But the people who know me are an even smaller fraction of the IF playing community. What I would like to do is promote to other people who might be interested in the games of the comp but don’t know me well enough to follow a completely blind recommendation.
Can you see why “here is a list of around 25 cyoa games which I literally cannot say a single thing about” might be a somewhat uncompelling sales pitch?
I realised that later and did a small edit to my post. Sorry about that. I realise what you mean about the difficulties of not being able to be specific.
Compared to what? Compared to everyone setting their lives aside and being 100% in the comp for the whole 6 weeks?
Anyway, the maximum level of activity during the comp is, by definition, playing and judging. That’s the meat and bones of it, and that is invisible. Don’t you mean “Are you suggesting we’re witnessing the maximum possible level of IF Comp author feedback and game discussion right now”? I get that you want that, but it’s not really what this period is about, unless a player actively wishes to give feedback in the form of, say, a review. That’s entirely voluntary, and not a given part of the comp. We could have zero reviews during the comp and have everybody play and rate every game, and discussions start appearing after the comp. Wouldn’t that be even better?
Well, you can point them towards past IFComp winners, and THERE you can get specific and even promote the games that you feel will best represent IF for these people. Give them online-playable links.
I would disadvise you of going into a sales career, because if that’s the pitch you’re going with…
Try something like “Half of the entries in this year’s IFComp are CYOA games! Isn’t it exciting? They’re in the run alongside the best works of parser IF”.
I mean, if you don’t WANT to sell, sure, you’re not going to sell…
A thought: possibly the rule could be slightly altered so that you COULD be specific about games, as long as you used information that anyone would see in the page. Like, information that’s right on the blurb (genre, non-human player), or obvious to anyone loading the game (like, “It’s an Inform game but using a CYOA format”).
Would this help?
(I’m not just interested in batting back and forth, though it may seem that way. Since I got myself into this, I’d like to see a solution that most people were happy with. I thought, maybe just alleviating the rule would do)