The average person doesn’t seem to get time to play many games during IFComp. Even reviewers, who on average I would expect to play more games than the average non-reviewer, only managed just under 12 games each (of which 2/3 were public). At which point:
Not all authors will necessarily have judged any games (it wasn’t allowed, except for Miss Congeniality purposes, prior to this year, and some people just don’t change habits that quickly) but it doesn’t mean they didn’t play.
I don’t know the general stat, but I can say I mostly played by the randomiser. There were exceptions:
if I detected a game had been updated that I’d played but not publically reviewed yet and I hadn’t hit the two-hour marker for, I played the update before going any further.
at one point, I had three “dud” games in a row. Rather than risk getting completely fed up with that situation, I got a generic randomisation (i.e. not logged in), went to the next game after that which I had not yet provisionally reviewed (which was a fun game), and then went back to my personalised randomisation and started from the next game after the fun game. Effectively, I semi-randomised my restart point.
in the last week, I went to games I hadn’t played yet but had heard good things about, knowing I wouldn’t have time to review them or even play them long enough to do them full justice by my own standards, but at least to get an idea of what was best in IFComp (rather than just the random sample).
In the end, I did public or provisional reviews of 27 games and introduced myself to another 3.
I very aggressively attacked the shorter games (or games by authors I knew) because I started reviewing late, and I just wanted to get my review count to a point where my average reviews per day meant I’d get through all the comp.
I think warming up with shorter games helped a lot. The old saying “quantity begets quality” applied–I hope! By the end of my review topic I think I was noticing more details, etc. But the thing was–at the start, I just didn’t want to get stuck. I know some years I tried random ordering and just got thrown a curveball by one game and never really got up and tried again.
Random ordering can be very frustrating if we follow it too rigorously. It feels dreadfully unfair to skip something, but there’s nothing wrong with deferring it for later. It’s a lot different from ignoring someone who is talking to you. I certainly wouldn’t want either of my entries derailing people from trying stuff they really wanted to.
Chipping in with my selection strategy. I knew going in I would have exceedingly little time to judge, because of my severely disabling neurological illness. I was also keen to play games initially that I could complete and happily score.
So I went through the initial list noting those that jumped out at me. Blurbs were key. To be honest I was rather intimidated by the number of 2 hour runtime ones, though I hoped to get to some. Then I started picking off those games in my initial list.
As it turned out I lost almost 3 weeks completely in mid/late October as my illness flared badly (albeit predictably). Even when I came back I had limited good time to play and judge more games. So I changed my strategy. I focused on some of the games that had fewer reviews. I also made extensive use of the filters to pull out especially shorter games compatible with my system that I could squeeze in.
I think it’s marvellous that some people managed many more games. But for many judges managing just the 5 minimum needed can be a challenge in itself. I think it’s great to get anyone playing any game. But I was pleased I could focus on some deserving a bit more attention. I was also pleased I could write reviews, which to be quite honest helped me settle on my final judging scores.
I stuck with parser games, because that’s what interests me the most.
Also, with the number of choice-based games in the comp, and that I’m returning to the community after a long hiatus, I assumed those would be the most popular games played. From the results, it appears it’s not so clear-cut.
As for ordering, I chose Ghosts Within first because it was the only TADS game in the bunch, and that’s the platform I write for. From there, I let the randomizer do most of the work. I wasn’t worried about game length.
I wish I could have played and reviewed more games within the voting time limit. I will redouble my efforts next comp!
I am on the opposite side this year.
Last comp I played before short games to provide a big amount of votes. This year I had several games that I couldn’t vote as I had betatested these games. Additionally I have played big parser games this IF comp.
The result: only 30% played and completed and 25% voted.