Congratulations to Sean M. Shore, whose “Hunger Daemon” took first place in the 20th annual Interactive Fiction Competition!
Full results for this year are now online: ifcomp.org/comp/2014
I’ll be posting some more thoughts in the near future to the IFComp blog (blog.ifcomp.org). Until then, thank you to all – authors, judges and prize-donors – who helped make this happen. I could not have asked for a better first year at this post.
Congratulations! Thanks for holding the comp, organizing the new features, and keeping us authors informed along the way (and responding to our complaints.) It was a success. In particular, the real-time updating.
Congratulations to the winners, and thanks to everyone who devoted their time to preparing an entry for us to enjoy.
Congratulations to Sean! I’m happy to see such a thoroughly enjoyable title win.
Thanks everybody! I’ll post a postmortem soon.
Wonderful work, everyone involved. It’s been seven years (???) since the last time I entered, and it’s incredible how much has changed. I had a much richer experience this time round – partly due to my own interests changing, but partly thanks to the diversity of reviewers and the author community – and am delighted that I landed in such a diverse crop of games. Jason, I think you did an absolutely brilliant job in your first year as lead organiser: thank you very much indeed.
Yes, congratulations and thanks to everyone involved – thanks especially to Jason for his unflappable and efficient organisation: I thought the Comp was a great advertisement for the breadth and depth of IF.
One piece of bureaucracy: Ade has won one of my special prizes, but the entries list does not give any contact information. If you are Ade, please get in touch with me (via PM, or email to evouga@gmail) so that I may disburse your prize.
Thanks ALL for everything. JMac, you rocked.
Also: sorry for slacking in reviewing. I always promise a lot, then end up delivering nothing [emote]:)[/emote]
Huge up to everyone involved, all the authors, and especially to Jason who, with incredibly patience, answered any and all questions!
Thank God I didn’t win. Congrats! Very happy for you and Hunger Daemon! [emote]:)[/emote]
This year’s comp was great! Congrats to the winner, and really, to all the participants on releasing such wonderful games.
Congratulations and hooray for the winners!
Also, congratulations for Jmac on taking the reins this year and pulling off IFComp with flying colors!
Wheee! It’s OVER! HUGS ALL ROUND!
I’m simultaneously really happy for everyone in the top ten (including me! omg!) and full of indignation for everyone I think should have placed higher. (Seriously, Building the Right Stuff was one of my absolute favourites, but seems like hardly anyone else appreciated it!)
Thank you to everyone who played and reviewed Krypteia, especially Emily and maga, whose in-depth responses made me so happy, and made insightful points about it I hadn’t even noticed myself, which is the best thing ever. (The fact that a leopardskin is a Dionysian symbol was a gloriously happy accident, but I will absolutely take it. And that the game is basically a “fuck you” to the Hero’s Journey, which wasn’t something I had consciously intended, but is definitely true.)
I’ll have a proper post-comp write up soon, and I’m enjoying reading everyone else’s.
Yay IFCOMP! THanks jmac - awesome platform, organisation, support for authors, and implementation.
Surprised how well Fifteen minutes did. 6th place. Well well. It very much exceeded my expectations – For a ‘first’ IF game (and a learning inform7 game) I was honestly expecting low to mid teens. Thanks to all reviewers, judges and voters. Congrats to Sean for Hunger Daemon - thoroughly well deserved. I have enjoyed being part of it all.
It’s certainly been an interesting experience. What has been really interesting is how the reviews for the competition and the ongoing discussion of IF ‘form’, the role of IF and what is ‘IF’ have really been indistinguishable.
It feels as if we are in a transitional period in IF, and the reviews for the competition have, to a certain extent been a continuation of the dialogue about this transformation. I thought Emily Short, Paul S and Jason Dyer’s summations were extremely apt – leading discussion on experimentation, critical theory and the dynamic nature of IF transformation. It appears that the competition this year is reflecting and being reflected by that debate – assessment from critics has often been as much about the game’s role in that discussion as it has about the game itself. This is a good thing. A competition of this kind should create a strong narrative about itself.
I’ve played all the entries. Honestly, given such a wide variation and such a diverse audience, it is difficult to see how, in the future, all these entries can live on the same playing field. How you would ‘rate’ the minimally interactive, beautifully written and moving Venus Meets Venus, against a silly little puzzlebox with minimal narrative like Fifteen Minutes. I don’t know. The audiences are different. It feels to me like there is a divergence that needs to be considered and whether a catch-all ‘Interactive Fiction’ competition can be in its current form.
Ade McT
Hugs for all. Thanks again to jmac for great organisation, the other authors for their support and the judges. A special mention to the judges who write reviews; feedback is useful.
A by-the-way, since it’s come up in another thread: The links from the IFDB were less complete than I realized this morning, so I’ve run down the list to make sure that every game’s “Play Online” link at least works (modulo the couple that are strictly download-only).
I’m now uploading the games’ final competition versions to the IF Archive, which already contains the full-comp ZIP file. After that’s all settled, we can re-aim games’ permanent IFDB links to the archive, as appropriate.
Authors may, of course, freely edit their own games’ IFDB entries to taste!