IF Comp 2013 predictions

Competitions IFComp
1

[i]Amidst the night fog of the city lies a quiet, almost abandoned Shop of Curiosities. If a traveler ever stopped to enter it, they might find, among aged grimoires and odds and ends of all shapes and sizes, a fortune teller machine of the kind that is usually found at fairs and penny arcades. The fortune teller itself looks like a blue, blobby jellyfish with yellow tentacles and is wearing a jeweled turban for full Wizardly effect. On the machine hangs a sign:

IF COMP PREDICTIONS
$2 $1 50 CENTS TWO BITS THEY’RE FREE – JUST PULL THE LEVER!

If that same traveler should pull the lever, this is what they might hear:[/i]

  • Expect a greater amount of CYOA IF this year than last. Most of these will be Twine, but there will be at least three from other languages (e.g., Undum, Blink, some other important CYOA engines I can’t remember now).

  • By that token, this will be the first year a CYOA IF takes first place.

  • There will be at least three authors who will enter more than one game. At least one of those authors are going for a Hat Mystery-type meta-puzzle.

  • Uh-oh! Controversy! Someone will release a rather tasteless political satire that will raise a huge ruckus. Surprisingly, the main point of contention about it won’t be whichever political targets it chooses to mock, but its treatment of people with disabilities. It will be a main contender for the golden banana, but lose to…

  • …someone’s boring but impressively implemented fishing simulator.

Preamble taken from last year’s thread. I have to go to work right now, so expect more predictions from me later.

2

I have a few:
There will be more than 30 games entered this year.
To be exact, there will be 35.
CYOA will outnumber traditional parsers.
A CYOA will NOT win the comp.
A CYOA will win the Golden Banana.
Six games will be horror games.
Three games will be horrible games. (Averaging less than a 3 in the voting).
The winning game will average an 8, and have the lowest standard deviation in votes.
Of the parser games, more than 75% will have a response for XYZZY.
The XYZZY response will be the best part of one game.
Genre breakdown: 1/6 horror, 1/3 sci-fi, 1/3 fantasy, 1/6 “drama/slice of life”
The title of one game will be generally decided to be “too long”.
The blurb of one game will have a grammar/spelling error.
Surprise themes of the comp: non-human PCs, social issues, and mazes make a much derided return to prominence. (edit: the mazes are derided, not non-humans and social issues)
Biggest surprise: the complete lack of squid, long rumored to be “this year’s zombies”.
Least surprising: zombies.

3

Lunch Break Predictions:

  • There will be a game which you must play by tweeting at some Twitterbot, a la PlayZork. There will be a huge discussion on these forums about whether or not it should have been entered in the Comp, the highlight of which is generally agreed to be Peter Pears’ liveblogging of his heart attack on pages 5-7.

  • One of this year’s weird, coincidental themes will be games that take their titles from songs. Will Joey Jones’ Welcome to the Working Week win the Comp, or should it go to Wade Clark’s Are You Gonna Be My Girl?

4
  • The winning game will have a score between 7.80 and 7.95.
  • The first three runners-up will all have scores within 0.10 of one another.
  • There will be two games whose titles are plays on howling dogs. Neither will place higher than howling dogs did.
  • The mean rank of parser games will slightly exceed the mean rank of CYOA games.
  • There will be six games that would reasonably take more than one hour to play.
  • Four different games will start with dream sequences.
  • Four games will have epigraphs. Two of these will be fictional quotations, and one will be a misquote or misattribution.
  • The ratio of male/female/ambiguous PCs will be 4/3/4.
  • There will be no zombies. (A chap’s got to have hope.)
  • The central mechanic of one game will be the ability to switch gender and race at will. It will be edged out for the Golden Banana by a single game.
  • The authors of the top ten games will comprise three USAnians, four Commonwealth, two from other nations and one unknown.
5

Was that a clever ploy from maga to have the only zombie game in the comp be his own?

6

I’m not a comp guy, myself, but I predict I’ll respond to at least one comp-related thread, and that I’ll open my comment by pointing out that I’m not, myself, a comp guy.

[ticks off this year’s required activity with satisfaction … 2013 was easier than usual!]

7

Thank goodness. We’d already crossed off David Whyld’s ritual objection to in-comp updates, but without The Rite Of Ghalev Not Being A Comp Guy, Himself… well, Compmas just wouldn’t feel like Compmas.

8

I predict I won’t have time to play as many entries as I wish I could.
I also predict SPAG will be late [emote]:([/emote]

9

There will be 30 games. There will be exactly one in each of these genres:

[]surreal[/]
[]office[/]
[]pastoral[/]
[]abstract[/]
[]autobiographical[/]
[]deliberately bad[/]
[]paranormal romance[/]
[]normal romance[/]
[]space opera[/]
[]space ballet[/]
[]space pirate[/]
[]sea pirate[/]
[]high fantasy[/]
[]low fantasy[/]
[]gonzo[/]
[]espionage[/]
[]military history[/]
[]mercantile[/]
[]horticultural[/]
[]sporting[/]
[]propaganda[/]
[]dadaist[/]
[]equine[/]
[]mafia[/]
[]apologetics[/]
[]hard-boiled detective[/]
[]soft-boiled detective[/]
[]epistolary[/]
[]rock and pop[/]
[]other[/]

10

My only prediction came to me as if in a dream. There will be a game that will be considered controversial but won’t live up to the hype because of way too much use of the word “throbbing”. [emote]:|[/emote]

11

Dammit.

12

Ask nicely and I’m sure I can summon up the enthusiasm for another round of Why Updates During The Comp Ruined The IfComp.

13

I’m not a comp guy, myself, but I would find the time to vote for that.

14

I predict at least two puzzles solved by chewing gum. And you will have to write the command, “Chew gum” to solve them.

15

Dammit.

16

You are in a bank. Several people are here.

wear sunglasses

You are in a bank. Several people and aliens are here.

chew gum

You chew some bubblegum.

chew gum

You chew some bubblegum.

chew gum

You chew some bubblegum.

chew gum

You’re all out of bubblegum.

kick ass

17

-An increase in queer-themed entries.
-A quest game will be one of the top 10 entries.
-Every game will have at least one beta-tester…
-Parser-based IF will still dominate.
-There will be a meta-game entered in the comp that is about the comp, yet despite all odds it will turn out to be somewhat enjoyable.
-There will be a slice of life game about political dissidents in Laos.
-In fact, there will be 7 slice of life games.
-And there will be 3 magical realism games.
-I should also mention that 4 of the games will discuss existentialism.
-And to put this all into perspective, there will be 28 entries.
-There will be a game without any words, and it still won’t be the dullest entry.
-The worst three games will all be by the same author.
-Fourth place will be awarded to a game that was authored under a crude euphemistic pseudonym.
-1/6 of the games shall use amnesia as a plot device; furthermore, only 1/6 of players will enjoy them.

If most of these predictions – especially the first six or seven – do occur, I will be so unbelievably jubilant.

18

“Gum”. Not “bubblegum”.

Hail to the king, baby!

19

The ghost of Paul Panks? Did we communally agree to take on his commonplace book?

20

Duke Nukem rehashes many great tropes, but is the source of relatively few of them. Obviously you need to see They Live, after which the rest of the post will make a lot more sense.