Did the Art Show screen games?
The Art Show had fairly specific purposes: it was not particularly intended to produce complete, playable games (winnable, plot-driven, or puzzly), but rather went for experiential stuff.
Promoting a particular kind of attitude to IF, and particular kinds of game, was probably a more central purpose than producing an outreach showcase. The Art Show was to a great extent a salvo in the conflict between Old-School (big, puzzly, difficult, traditional themes) and New-School (smaller, easy or puzzle-free, experiential, literary themes), which I think the community has mostly progressed beyond.
My feeling is that it would be better to not release “rejected” games at all if we are going to be doing any rejecting. The reason being, a game that is privately submitted for consideration but rejected altogether could still be eligible for some other, later comp, being still unreleased. A game that’s released with the festival as “Here are the sucky games that were also submitted, but we recommend you not play them” is basically buried forever.
I was thinking that authors would have the option of whether to participate in the Annex or not, but fair enough.
That was more or less my thought also: “I’m sorry, but we don’t think that your game is suitable for this event: here are some brief, private recommendations about how it might be improved, and we wish you success in some other venue.”
The first idea I had about how to do this: some kind of supermajority vote from the judges to reject a game, held privately, according to some kind of loosely-worded standard (“the game is adequately implemented, appears written in good faith and fits the premise of the category”, say). Of course, that could lead to accusations of secret trials and hooded Old One cabals, but I for one don’t really give a toss.
Not as long as the author is provided with a substantive reason why it was rejected. From the author’s perspective it would be nice to get full feedback even if you’re rejected, but that puts the burden on the reviewers again, so some brief comments are probably the best compromise.
You guys haven’t even picked a theme (Cave People) and you’re already kicking people out?
We’re talking about the nature of the event. We haven’t even decided about whether we are going to have curation or entry restrictions: but in order to make that decision, we have to have some idea about how those restrictions might be put in place. (If, for example, there’s no good way to do it, that’s a pretty straightforward reason why we shouldn’t do it at all.)
I think that, if there isn’t any scoring, there ought to be some kind of screening, particularly if it’s an outreach event: You want to be able to pick any game and have a reasonably good experience and come away with a good opinion of IF; you don’t want people who are curious about the genre stumbling into someone’s half-implemented sandbox of their apartment and getting the impression that all IF is totally half-assed. Finishability, for instance, would be a good requirement.
I like the idea that a Festival could be something that other comps haven’t been before. We talk a good deal about innovation in IF games, how about changing up how comps have been done? To that point I think screening games, etc. isn’t a bad idea.
On the flip side, how many comps have there been where there were enough games to screen? [emote]:)[/emote]
Hmmm. This seems to be going into territory where people like me do not belong at all, but I’ll cheer from the sidelines, as it were. [emote]:)[/emote]
Specifically, what don’t you like the sound of? It’d be good to have a showcase in which non-comp people like yourself would feel comfortable entering.
Just a vibe thing (as festivals go, it isn’t sounding very festive). I’ll hold out hopes for the return of the Art Show [emote]:)[/emote]