Also, I’m guessing a lot of authors didn’t put their reviews on IFDB during the competition and are submitting all of those now (I’m one of them!), so that might skew things a lot.
5 Likes
Miss Gosling is in my Top 3 entries this year. Regrettably I haven’t voted for it because I helped playtest it, and therefore (as per judges’ guidance) I recused myself from judging it. But I agree it should fare better than the model predicts. We’ll see.
4 Likes
First place. Clearly! 
Thanks for sharing this spreadsheet again this year, @cchennnn 
3 Likes
IFDB uses Evan Miller’s formula for sorting games by highest rating, which we call “starsort.”
(We used to sort by average rating, but this would tend to rank games with just one perfect 5-star rating above games with dozens of 5-star ratings and a few 4-star ratings. Evan Miller’s formula sorts by our confidence in the game, by adding five “fake” ratings to the average (one 1-star, one 2-star, one 3-star, one 4-star, and one 5-star rating) and subtracting the standard deviation from the result.)
I’d be curious to see if incorporating starsort into the model makes it more or less accurate. I just filed a PR to add starsort to the IFDB search API results so you can use it. (It’ll probably merge in a few days.)
6 Likes
I think if Saltcast came that high my eyebrows would eject themselves out into space. Don’t get me wrong, I’d be delighted, but I’m not expecting top thirty.
9 Likes
I’d have them prepare for launch, just in case. My game last year was off prediction by about a quarter of the pack. And if it wasn’t for two 1 votes, it’d be half the pack.
IF Comp voting is wild.
11 Likes
When I entered the IFComp for the first time, I had a peculiar feeling after seeing the results. It may sound strange, and I didn’t say it five years ago, but I’d like to tell it now.
I was absolutely happy that my game placed right next to For the Cats by Lei.
It’s not that I thought this game was the best of all. There were better games. There were really great games. This one wasn’t truly great (although I recommend playing it – several times, to find different endings with different PCs). It was small, it didn’t have some highly original concept (“Saving the cats? So cliché”), or clever puzzles, or spectacular writing. It had… sincerity, perhaps? But we don’t have a XYZZY for Sincerity. And it was kind-hearted without being sentimental. There was something in it which moved me – something which I can’t really describe.
And I was glad that my game (which also was nothing spectacular) will stay in the history of the competition with this one.
14 Likes
I am planning on doing a space-based sci fi for my next game. Maybe my eyebrows will get a cameo!
8 Likes
Ha! That’s great!
I’ve learned to expect the unexpected with IFComp results. That being said, there’s absolutely no way that Apothecary’s Assistant lands in 8th place! There are far more games than that which I consider “superior” (insofar as any piece of art can be considered superior to another at all). But I feel very honoured to have been considered. 
I also want to note that many of the games in the lower half of the predicted ranking are ones that I personally gave high or very high scores to.
That’s really lovely and I fully share the sentiment! 
I was very glad to have you with us this comp!
10 Likes
I had a similar experience in 2022 with A Matter of Heist Urgency, which placed 34th to my game’s 35th. It was my absolute favourite that year, so having my thing come immediately after it was quite a boost.
6 Likes
Starsort in the API is live now. You can view the XML for IFComp 2024 here. https://ifdb.org/search?searchbar=competitionid:4lxgmwam7owmbb9h&xml
(Note that it looks pretty ugly on Chrome, but you can download it and parse it normally, and it looks just fine in Firefox and Safari.)
6 Likes
I also think that Hebe and The Lost Artist: Prologue are good contenders for Golden Banana of Discord — the first due to divided opinions on AI-generated text, and the second due to mixed ideas on how to rank incomplete games.
I think everyone knows the central conceit of Rod McSchlong etc. now. I think it’s unlikely to “win” by getting ironically high or overly low scores, which its predecessor did.
4 Likes
I think The Den is the best game of IFComp 2024 and Uninteractive Fiction is the worst ← Has only played The Den and Uninteractive Fiction
11 Likes
I made some predictions back on October 3 which I’ll put here:
The bat
The den
Under the cognomen of Edgar
Winter-over
Forsaken denizen
Maze gallery
Dream of silence
Saltcast
Gosling
Maybe latex? Haven’t played it
Duckworthy
Eikas/You (edited)Maybe apothecary’s assistant somewhere
I would probably make different guesses now but those were my feelings right after I finished playing most games
11 Likes
Now that it’s been a few days, I have to say I think it’s really funny that no one questioned my mention of having prophetic* IFComp dreams.
[*] actual prophecy not guaranteed
9 Likes
Of course, it’s just taken as a given that the gods reveal prophetic truths to mortals through our dreams. What’s to question?
7 Likes
My own list is based on the reading of entrails, but to each his own I suppose.
8 Likes
Did you shave those entrails through the cheesegrater? Improves accuracy of kidney-prophesising, and apparently weirdly erotic…
4 Likes
Since we’re putting stakes in the ground, here’s mine:
As usual, the only thing I can claim is that yet AGAIN my top 5 are nowhere near the predicted! Forsaken Denizen, you appear to hold my credibility in your hands!
10 Likes
With one day left before the results come out, could we update the IFDB columns to reflect the authors now putting their reviews and ratings in?
10 Likes