Growing number of comp entries and reviewer selection bias

[BitterlyIndifferent (Peter M.J. Gross)]

These discussions always look weird to me because the arguments assume that the judges are frail creatures who cannot apply the kind of advanced reasoning that the participants bring to the issue.

@adventuron

Judges need to know what they should be judging on. Art or entertainment?

Judges know that both types of games are here, and I’m willing to believe that they take that into account when assigning ratings.

@cartr

these games will get rated by two almost entirely separate groups of people with very different ideas of how to score games

And the overall results will reflect the preferences of the larger group of people. That sounds like direct democracy.

The following concern seems weird to me:

@cartr

if a blurb is a little vague about the contents of a game or who its target audience is, that could cause it to place lower just because more people outside the target audience are playing it

I’m reading that as “a game with strong niche appeal might place poorly if it’s considered by a broader audience,” which does not sound like a bad thing.

@nilsf

The thing with IFComp is that it is fundamentally a popularity contest. The game that wins is the one that is the most liked by the most people. It doesn’t matter why they like it.

I am okay with this. It means that developers are encouraged to create entries that appeal to the largest number of people, which seems more likely to grow the audience of people who notice Interactive Fiction.

Why are people uncomfortable with the idea that the IFcomp results may not reflect their personal preferences? Its okay to like games that don’t win, and it’s okay to disagree with the final results.