Chapter 26: Publishing
This is probably the lightest chapter at all, but has some good stuff in it.
Section 26.1: Finding a readership
This is the eternal struggle, right?
This section mentions that interactive fiction means a lot of things to a lot of people, and that choice-based mobile games are really popular right now.
Although it is not a typical tool for choice-based mobile games, Inform has been used to produce commercial works, both parser-based and not. Users are very welcome to sell works created by Inform with no royalty or requirement for rights clearance. It’s also widely used in education, and as a prototyping tool for other kinds of stories, such as interactive narratives that will ultimately take another (not text-based) form.
Section 26.2 is Editing and Quality Assurance
It says that if you think of IF as story, editing is important, and if you think of it as a game, beta testing is good, and gives this sound counsel:
Whatever the background, it’s good practice to have your work checked by other people before you release it. Other players can identify issues from typos to missing hints to thematic incongruities.
Play-testers can often be recruited by placing an ad on intfiction.org.
Section 26.3 is A Page of its Own
One option for publishing an Inform game is to just host your own website.
One option for sharing your work with the world is to set up a web page and a copy of the story file on a private web host. That host should ideally be as stable as possible, so that the URL is likely to remain fixed for what might be a long period. Freeware stories have a long period of viability relative to commercial games, which means that players may still be hearing about and checking out a story years after its initial release. A stable address helps everyone with links, and makes it easier for search engines to direct people.
For distribution platforms, it recommends itch.io over Steam or app stores.
Section 26.4 is The IF Archive
Because of the portable underlying format, however, games written in Inform are unusually stable and maintainable. Inform projects written in the early 90s can still be played – indeed, can be played on platforms that did not exist when the games were written.
This is true, and one reason I care a lot about archiving games: because we can! Flash may die, and console stores may obsolesce, but Inform games really last well, since you generally have to just port the interpreter once to put almost all games onto a new platform (excluding those using highly technical features like quote overlays or multiple windows).
It describes the IFArchive has a mirrored collection of if games, maps, walkthroughs, etc., and that its main focus is long-term archiving, not advertisement.
Uploading a work to the IF Archive is not too difficult, and can be done in two ways. One way is to use the archive’s web form at:
https://upload.ifarchive.org/cgi-bin/upload.pyThe other is to create a new page at the Interactive Fiction Database, at:
https://ifdb.org/It’s then possible to upload the story file to the IF Archive from IFDB. This is easiest all round, since it allows both IFDB and IF Archive to be updated at once.
I believe this is an error; I’m not aware of any way to use the IFDB interface to upload to IF Archive. If it’s there then I sure feel silly for not using it!
Given the recent flurry of several mini-controversies regarding archiving (of which I’ve instigated at least one), this is interesting:
Committing a story to the Archive is meant to be permanent. While the maintainers will happily replace older versions of stories with new improved releases, they are less eager to remove stories entirely. If that doesn’t seem appealing, or if we do not want our story to be treated as freeware with essentially unlimited distribution, the Archive may not be a good choice. But it is deeply valued by the IF community, and has saved many works which could otherwise easily have been lost forever. Many contributions important in the history of IF were made by people who are now not easy to trace, and whose websites are long gone. But their work lives on.
I heartily endorse these words. Write for the ages!
SEction 26.5 is IFDB: The interactive fiction database. It says this website is similar to IMDB or the iTunes music store. It allows people to read reviews or also play directly in the browser.
IFDB is community-editable, like Wikipedia, though editors are required to create an account and log in first – this is free, of course. A standard form is provided for creating a new record (accessible by selecting the option to add a story listing). More or less the same information that appears on Inform’s library card in the Contents index needs to be copied over: there’s space for the author name, story title, genre, and so on. IFDB will also ask for an IFID, a code identifying the story uniquely. Inform generates one of these automatically for each project, and it, too, is on the Library Card. It can always be found by typing VERSION into the compiled story and looking at the line that says
The download link should give the most stable URL available. If you have not yet uploaded your story to the IF Archive, you may do so by selecting the “Upload it to the IF Archive” link instead of pressing the “Add a Link” button. The benefits of submitting your story to the IF Archive in this manner are two-fold. One, IFDB will fill in much of the information required by the IF Archive for you. Two, the link to your story will not appear until the IF Archive maintainers move it to its permanent home in the archive, at which point the download link will be automatically updated and presented on the story page
This again. Is this true? I’ve got to see this.
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…
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I have never noticed this button in my life. I am IFDB’s most prolific user and an admin. I have added dozens of games to IFDB. Ever single time, I have skipped over this form.
I feel very dumb right now.
Wow.
A final quote from this text while I am recovering mentally:
Some awards for interactive fiction, such as the annual XYZZY Awards, require a game to have an IFDB entry as an eligibility requirement.
Section 26.6 is Competitions, Exhibitions, and Jams.
Wow, this includes a reference to ParserComp! Neat!
One very common way to get players for IF is to enter the story into an IF competition. The annual IF Competition, often just called IFComp, is the most prestigious and has the widest field, but the Spring Thing, ParserComp, EctoComp, and other events also catch people’s attention. Entering a competition is a path of least effort for authors promoting their new work, because the competition organizer usually takes care of hosting and archiving submitted stories, promoting the competition as a whole, collecting votes, and encouraging players to post reviews.
It references IFWiki for a list of events on the front page.
It mentions that longer games may not be a good fit for competitions (one reason I’m not going to release my 10+ hour game in a competition).
It mentions the XYZZY Awards as an annual event for games listed on IFDB, and suggests itch.io jams.
It finally references procjam for heavily procedurally generated projects.
Section 26.7 is Meetups and conferences. It suggests checking this url:
and Emily Short’s blog.
Section 26.8 is A Short Concluding Homily
I will just reproduce this in full, since I feel these are the true last words of the manual. We have another (fairly hefty) chapter coming up, but it’s not about writing your own game. So here are some ‘final’ words:
It’s natural to want to make a huge splash with a story, but in the IF community, instant widespread adulation for any work is pretty uncommon.
For one thing, players tend to play when they get around to it… which may be weeks, months, or even years after the initial release. Reviews trickle rather than flooding in. Appreciation builds slowly. And sometimes works that placed unspectacularly in a competition, or seemed to be overlooked in the annual XYZZY Awards, gradually come to be regarded as classics because of some pioneering technique.
So it’s wise (if difficult) not to judge a story’s success entirely by its immediate feedback. Even after its debut, a story can often use a little care and attention if it’s to reach all its potential fans – whether that means building further releases, posting hint files or walkthroughs, developing new websites, or approaching outside reviewers.
I think this was even true for Curses, Graham Nelson’s game that is my favorite out of the 2.5K+ games I’ve tried.