One thing is that the preference viv and I expressed is just our preference! There are many people who are fine with long games in the comp, and there are always a few people who try every game. So if you’re concerned that your game will get downranked because of people like us, I don’t think it’s very likely.
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The upside of the explosion of IFComp entries is there is something for everyone. The important thing is to be aware of is that even if you write a great game, there will be people who won’t play it for whatever reason. I myself am guilty of “hummingbirding” and just sampling lots of games without completing them, despite the fact I always write long games. Make the game you want to play. As long as you abide by the entry rules, you can submit it however you like.
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Speaking just for myself here, I am always pleased to see a really well-done longish game that takes more than two hours in the comp. I’m one of those people who really likes getting sucked in to something for a few days, and if the comp contains a few games like that, and at least some of them are really well-done, then I largely take it to be a good comp. (But then, I make no effort at all to play everything; I just wander from one thing to another, getting absorbed, and moving on when I’m not delighted.) I rate at two hours, per comp rules, but I’ll keep playing after that if I’m still enjoying myself, the rest of the comp be damned. (Well, not actually. I do tend to go back and play at least some of the games I missed when the comp is over, even if I don’t get to vote on them.)
So last year I was sucked in to Winter Break at Hogwarts for several days late in the comp, and The Four Eccentrics for a few days earlier in the comp, and both were really delightful, even though neither was perfect. The previous year, I wound up not playing things I’d intended to play because I got sucked into Birmingham IV on the last few days of the competition.
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Thanks again to all who’ve weighed in here. I think that this thread has steered me to arrive at the conclusion that I’m going to submit my “longish” parser game to the IFComp. However, time is a big factor, and if I don’t have it polished by September, I may just go with the next Spring Thing rather than waiting a full year. This may be the only big and/or public game that I write (at least for a long time), so it’s kind of like my one shot. (I plan to make little games for my kids though, once they can type…)
Apologies to any judges who are stressed by seeing long games on the docket… just don’t sweat it if you need to pass it by for your time constraints or if you don’t like submitting a rating for a partially-played game! I hope I’m writing a game that you’ll be glad to have played though!
Extra questions: if I declare intent to enter, then have to withdraw (before judging starts) because I’m not finished, can I still be a judge for this year’s comp?
TADS games: are any judges put off by having to download an extra interpreter, if say, they don’t already have QTads? Should I consider making my game a standalone executable (not that I know how)? Not having a wide experience with interpreters, are there already interpreters that play TADS (with minimal graphics) in addition to Inform games? (It looks to me like Lectrote does not open TADS files?)
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Again, just my personal opinions and observations here. Hopefully others will correct any incorrect information, or provide divergent views.
I would guess that most people who play parser IF in the comp probably also have some way to play TADS games. In some cases, this is because they use an interpreter that supports multiple formats, such as Gargoyle, which is usually what I use to play almost everything); it’s one of the more common interpreters on non-Windows, non-macOS operating systems. Some people already have a TADS-specific interpreter, such as the one from the TADS website or an alternative 'terp (such as qtads or frobtads under Linux).
Whatever design decision you make here is going to rub some people the wrong way to some degree, and it would be silly to think that you can please everyone all the time. Nevertheless, you can ameliorate some of the irritation for some people by building a native application that means that they don’t need a TADS interpreter at all; the TADS website has a page about doing this. (I’ve never worked with TADS myself, but this doesn’t look like too arduous a process.)
If you distribute a native executable, please also distribute your .t3 file with it so people who don’t run Windows can play it, too!
My experience is that QTads under Linux handles graphics and sound with no trouble, and it generally seems to be a pretty stable project. One issue you may run into if you’re depending on QTads is that many Linux users only have (easy) access to a comparatively old version in their repositories; this tends only to be a problem for people who are doing more than basic graphics and background music, if I understand correctly. (I beta-tested a TADS game last summer that did quite a bit more than basic display of illustrations and sounds, and it ran just fine under QTads.) It might be worth looking into what’s not supported by older versions and seeing whether you can work around not having those things; chances are, it’s nothing you can’t live without.
Testing your game on one or more alternative 'terps is a good move; so is hoping to find beta testers who use those alternative 'terps to play, because chances are someone is going to want to play it under some alternative configuration at some point. In particular, chances are some people are going to want to play it with Spatterlight for the Mac, which (if I recall correctly, and someone please correct me if I’m wrong) doesn’t support the HTML TADS extensions at all; so people who want to use Spatterlight will probably encounter your game purely as plain text. (This may also be the case for some? versions of Gargoyle? Again, hopefully someone will correct me if I am wrong.)
How you want to deal with that is of course up to you. Many authors seem to take the approach of considering graphics and sound to be optional enhancements that the game can do without if that’s how people want to play it: something like publishing a Dickens novel without the original Robert Seymour illustrations (the “it’s essentially the same book” attitude). On the other hand, as the creator of your piece, it may be that the multimedia stuff you’re doing is so essential to the piece itself that to separate them would injure the integrity of your work, in which case you’ll probably have to do more work explaining the situation to (potential) players and (hopefully) pointing them usefully toward their options for how they can deal with their various setups.
So it’s a design issue, and depends on what your vision of your piece is, and what’s important to you in your work. But no, there does not seem to me to be any kind of systemic eye-rolling at needing to download a TADS interpreter; and much of what there is can be ameliorated by a native Windows build, I think. But it’s still worth being aware that not everyone is necessarily going to get exactly and precisely what you expect down to the pixel level, and to account for that by testing under alternative implementations yourself and/or having beta testers who do.
EDIT for small gains (hopefully) in clarity and phrasing.
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Thanks a lot, Patrick!
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Also, I’m happy to tentatively volunteer to be a Linux QTads beta tester, assuming life doesn’t change in unpredictable ways that wind up making that implausible before you need me. 
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I’d also be happy to be a Mac playtester, to make sure Mac users can run your game ok. Good luck @johnnywz00!
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I would be happy to test a TADS game in the Raspberry Pi / Raspbian environment. I have frotz, gargoyle, and qtads installed.
fos1
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Yes. Only if you’re an entered author does your option to vote change. Authors vote internally on the Miss Congeniality award.
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@vivdunstan, @patrick_mooney, and @fos1,
Wow, thanks for all the playtest offers! I’m assuming that means you wouldn’t be able to judge on this game in the actual comp then, if you’re a betatester?
I will definitely be appreciative of these offers, however, I feel that I am still a couple of months away from beta testing. In my mind, it’s not worth putting my game out for others to fiddle with until I’ve at least tweaked it on my own to where I “think” it might work… right now it won’t! But I will give you all a holler to see if you’re still available when I get there.
If it matters, I’m developing and playtesting my game on a Mac with QTads.
@HanonO, thanks! I would love to do some judging if I can’t participate… I don’t find much time for playing these days, since nearly any leisure time that I can allot to IF pretty much goes to game creation…
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Comp rule #5 for judges prohibits judges from voting on a game that they have beta-tested. (Which is fair: they’re not getting it fresh, like everyone else is.)
But, again, realistically the pool is large enough that you’ll still get some plays, votes, and probably reviews even after beta-testers aren’t able to vote.
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I hear that. Same boat.
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My two silver pieces:
I make very large games. my IFComp entries have both been, at a generous minimum, 10 hours of content. I’d like to see more big, ultra-ambitious games in IFComp. I think it’s possible (I’ve certainly striven to prove its possible) to make a game where 2 hours of play effectively shows that there’s more than 2 hours of really good content there…and that’s the secret to making an IFComp game that can be fairly judged in 2 hours of play.
I do think I speak for a lot of relative newbies when I say that the reason why IFComp is usually a target comp, rather than spring thing, is that IFComp has cash prizes, which lead to more attention, which leads to more people actually playing your game…no bad review can match the disappointment of making a 10+ hour game over 2 years, only to have virtually no one review the game or even notice it. IFComp remains one of the few places where, if you put in the work, you can be reasonably sure an entry will get reviewed a few times…though Spring Thing is starting to reach that point.
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Yes, this is pretty much how I’ve been feeling from the start… especially when this may be the only “epic”-size game I ever make… So that’s my goal, is to make the first two hours a convincing statement that there’s much more to come…
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Yup, but very happy to help as a playtester 
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Personally, I favor big games almost by default. I don’t want to start something unless it’s got many, many hours of fun behind it, and the best feeling in the world is when you start finally realizing how a game’s gonna work and then you realize how much more of it lies ahead.
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I like to hear from fellow big-game lovers
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“…and I cannot lie.”
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I’m a little late to this pool party, but as one who entered a game at over two hours last year, I can say I still saw a lot of votes.
The 2+ hour games did seem to be a bit higher in the Golden Banana of Discord rankings this last year, so keep in mind that the entirety of your game will not be understood when the vote is cast. But if your goal is to reach a wider audience rather than win a competition, I think you will find that audience through the competition.
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