Looks like the website updated recently! The Introcomp is ongoing once again!!
My apologies if this isnāt the place to ask, but what do most people do with their Introcomp entries after completion?
As far as I know, the only place one could put it would be the Spring Thing, as IntroComp entries are automatically disqualified from IFcomp, and you canāt put it up on any commercial platform (itch is one place I can think of, but I generally do not like it as it is flooded with a ton of half-complete stuff). I wonāt be able to put it on Hosted Games under the current rules.
I have toyed with the idea of participating several times, but Iām just thinking of what the end-goal looks like, cash prizes aside.
We entered Loose Ends in Spring Thing to get a bunch more eyes on it. For Scroll Thief, I just released it into the wild without a competition, since I was working on it right up until the deadline.
I also entered a completed version of my IntroComp game - Napierās Cache - in Spring Thing. I was happy with that option.
Soā¦ is there a submission form? There doesnāt seem to be a link to register anywhere on the pageā¦
Last year, it was all done via email. Which was a bit weird.
Hey there, former IntroComp entrant (and long-time organizer) here. Thereās something to be said with just entering and figuring out the rest later. Itās so useful to get that early feedback. I havenāt (yet**!) finished my 2002 entry (I have continued to work on it, though ClubFloyd, IntroComp, and now IFComp organizing have taken most of my IF-bandwidth), but without entering IntroComp, I wouldnāt have later made a couple of games Iām pretty proud of.
Thereās also something to be said for releasing things outside of a competition. (Blasphemy, I know!) But itās true. Itās totally a thing.
** I made that age-old mistake of my first interactive fiction release being the thing that was very important to me. Never do that, kids. Youāre better off making a game set in your apartment for your first game. Save the Really Important Thing for later, after youāve got more experience. Will I even release Waterhouse? Maybe. Will this post age badly? Maybe.
(And PS - I realize this isnāt your first game, Vance.)
Yeah, it all seems to be email at this point, and I havenāt gotten any response to the messages saying Loose Ends was finished, so Iām guessing the email wonāt be checked for a while longer.
Not my styleā¦ but you do you. 
Either way, I have taken one of my games out of closed-beta testing (probably a bad idea), so itās no longer eligible for competitions here. Anotherās probably going on IFcomp, so that works for me.
Soā¦ is it happening this year?
According to the website, the submission deadlineās past, and voting notionally ends in three weeks.
Iāve asked Eric, and thereās only one entry this year (intent withdrawn, and so too one entry). Heās updated the website with the link to the game on the main page.
I had just figured out I could log in to the IntroComp site, and got but a single option on the voting page: Good Bones by XYZoe and IronSerenity. And then guessed the URL of the game release directory.
(No relation to last yearās similarly-named ECTOCOMP entry, I think.)
The IntroComp is a weird puppy. So much so that it only has 1 entry this year. One entry. A second entry would have been given a prize of $150, but apparently no one thought enough of this competition to take advantage of free prize money.
It awkwardly preludes the IFComp by mere days. Then there is ineligibility for the IFComp. Why? Then there is rule simply saying the excerpt can be as long or short as you wish. Huh? Itās an Intro-comp, which means it should be a small sample of a full game to come. Then there is - we donāt want entries that might be strong enough to be a commercially released game. Why discourage that? You wish the competition to yield a āfantasic final productā but heaven forbid the author tries to make a buck for his hard work.
It would make more sense if the IntroComp would work with the IF Comp, not against it. And if an entry got seriously rave reviews, why not encourage that game to go commercial? Seriously, isnāt that what we all wish for.
1 entry is embarrassing. IF is a small world. I donāt understand why every event has to be so independently exclusive of each other.
Better one entry than being cancelled because no one submittedā¦
You canāt predict how many people will actually submit before all the entries are accounted for. There were enough people who logged an intent to submit (me included) to have a nice amount of entries. But sometimes, life gets in the way and it just doesnāt happen. Iām keeping my unplayable entry for next year.
Just because if IFComp doesnāt allow IntroComp entries means that all the events are independently exclusive of each otherā¦ The SpingThing, SeedComp, Text Adventure Literacy Jam, and the ParserComp allow IntroComp entries to be submitted.
Btw, any feedback about the IFComp should be directed to the IFComp instead (like the end feedback form or directly by email). The IntroComp doesnāt have influence over the IFComp.
That oneās not really Introcompās fault; IFComp changed its schedule this year to give more space between it and ECTOCOMP.
That does kind of step on Introcompās toes, so I expect Introcomp will change its schedule next year in the same way. (And the comp that comes before Introcomp in the calendar is Parsercomp, which I think is distinct enough not to cause problems. But if so, it can adjust too.)
Thatās IFCompās rule, not Introcompās. Youād have to take it up with them. (But the reason is, in IFComp you canāt judge a work youāve seen before, so if somethingās had a public release, it wonāt get many votes.) Most of the other compsāSpring Thing, ECTOCOMP, Parsercompādonāt have this rule, and you can submit finished Introcomp entries to them (like I did with Spring Thing this year).
Right, they just donāt legislate how large a āsmall sampleā should be. A sample of Prince Quisborne would be much, much larger than a sample of, oh, whatās a good short gameā¦Galatea.
Introcomp is pretty lassez-faire overall, which I honestly think is a good thing. IFComp is the outlier with its two-hour time limit, which goes back to why it was originally created (to encourage a larger number of shorter IF works instead of a small number of sprawling epics) and now ensures that judges can feasibly play the whole slate when there are 70-some entries.
Thatās not it at all. The idea is, people are judging Introcomp games based on how much they want to see them completed. Itās not really fair to the judges to take their time, effort, and feedback, then say āokay now you canāt see the final version unless you pay me an extra $50ā.
Personally I love Introcomp, and actually had an entry I was working on for it this year, but some catastrophes in real life ended up derailing that plan. Hopefully Iāll have something in it next year!