Another possibility–although I don’t know if it would be better–would be to use the “recommended list” feature on IFDB. So, for example, make a list of all Adventuron games released in whatever year, and then have people comment on the games to vote.
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Here is a second poll that would be the format used if we created one poll per system:
Per @AmandaB’s concerns, I tried adding a list of past games, and I actually think it helps, so I may have been wrong before.
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Apologies for not reading this whole thread… are there any takers for Funniest Game (as distinct from best made/written/implemented game that falls in a comedy genre)?
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I think it was included under the genre umbrella. At least 5 comedy games with the winner garnering at least 5 votes secures a comedy award for that year. At least, that’s as far as I understood it.
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If we are going to change the name of the awards, how about the “IF Community Awards”?
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Editedit: I’ve changed this to a public poll:
Due to multiple requests, I’m removing being able to campaign for votes from the core rules.
Instead, I’m offering it here as a suggestion, which I will re-implement if it gets at least 15 votes:
“People should be able to post links on social media to the awards and mention specific games that are in the competition as being good.”
Edit: note that this only allows merit-based campaigning. If this passes I’ll add another suggestion allowing campaigning on “let’s support [some platform like adrift])” or other non-merit based campaigning, which will need another 15 votes to pass).
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Yeah, it should be on the style of play, not the language (programming) it was made in. If you do that, you’d need to have all the categories; such as Inform, TADS, ZIL, etc.
On another note, generally try to keep the count of the subcategories down, or really go for it and have at least 20 or more. It’s probably an unpopular opinion but I feel otherwise it feels like you should vote in all, but it’s quite a lot and you don’t feel like it, so you do a rushed job. Keeping it shorter makes people want to try all the categories, which gets more voters but can be inaccurate, whereas a very long one tells the voters “Don’t try them all, it’s not for that,” so it’s slightly more accurate but then you get less voters.
Okay, I am going on a tangent. Summary:
- Short = more voters.
- Long = more accurate.
Best Outstanding Tutorial
edit: oops, sorry, I somehow missed @Warrigal’s post: Nomination thread for IF People's Choice and IF Authors' Choice awards - #83 by Warrigal
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Best Adrift game.
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Would it be feasible to just list every game that was released in 2022 and allow voters to rate them relative to one another? Your favourite game is rated #1, your second favourite is rated #2 and so on. This could be done with a drag and drop mechanism for sighted voters. Any game that you haven’t played defaults to zero. In this way:
- Voters get to see all the games that were released in 2022.
- You don’t have to struggle with a subjective five-star based system where everybody has a different way of rating and the individual voter ends up rating many games with the same number of stars.
- You can see the popularity of games. (By that, I mean how many people played it.)
- You can have a rule (like in IFComp) that you must vote for a minimum of (say) 5 games to weed out all the stacked votes, where someone gets all their friends, family and work mates to vote for just their game and nothing else.
- You can have an overall best game, but you can also automatically work out the best Inform 7 game, best Adrift game, best Adventuron game and so on without people having to vote separately in numerous categories.
The only thing you’d have to work out is the fairest way to do the maths. The mathematicians and statisticians out there could advise on this. My gut feeling is that if there were 100 games released in 2022, then each voter’s top game gets 100 points, 2nd top gets 99 points and so on. The total number of points allocated to a game is divided by the total number of votes for that game. So, to take a simple example, if one game received the top vote by 5 people (and no other votes), then it would receive (5 * 100) / 5 = 100 points. If another game received the top vote by 3 people (and no other votes), then it would receive (3 * 100) / 3 = 100 points. In this simple example, it would be a draw. However, if the first game got another vote of 80 points and the second game got another vote of 60 points, then the totals would be 580 / 6 = 96 points and 360 / 4 = 90 points, so the first game is the winner between those two games.
I think this is a very fair system and gives all the superb lesser-known and independently published games a fighting chance against the better-known games from the big competitions.
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This might be a problem unique to me, but I’d struggle with this system and would probably rank fewer games. Between Spring Thing, Parser Com, and IF Comp, I played probably 130 games last year. I can go back to my IFDB reviews and scoring spreadsheet to remind me of what I scored various games at and easily come up with 1-5 or 1-10 scores, and similarly it’s pretty simple to recall my favorite game in various categories, but I’d really struggle with the fine-grained judgment needed to rank that many games against each other and I’d probably default to just putting in a couple of my top games, which I think is the opposite of the goal!
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Fair enough. You just vote for the ones you remember and I find it easier to remember that game A was better than game B, rather than going through all my notes to work out how many stars to give them.
I would play over 100 games each year, but they’re mostly old games (so not elligible for the awards) and I don’t play any of the IF Comp games (except as a tester) because I’m simply too busy at that time of year.
For any of us that play a lot of games, it’s hard to remember what games we’ve played during the year and when they were released. I’m trying to alleviate those problems and allow me to vote for all the great games that I have played and tested from all the minor comps and the independently published games that weren’t in any comps. There were some brilliant games released in 2021 and they didn’t even get a mention in the XYZZY awards.
As I’ve said elsewhere, I had not played one single game in the XYZZY awards, so I couldn’t vote for anything. That’s clearly unfair.
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To be honest, I feel confused when you say this.
You can play 100 games a year, but refuse to play any IFComp games and also refuse to play a single xyzzy nominee for the whole time they come out, and they say it’s unfair.
I just don’t understand. It’s like going to a cupcake festival and there’s a poll for best cupcake, but saying that that’s unfair because you didn’t try any cupcakes because you don’t like them and didn’t eat any.
Why not just play IFComp games after they come out when you do have time? And why not play the nominees for the XYZZY awards? You use “I didn’t play a single nominee” in your arguments the way people usually use involuntary conditions (like “I didn’t go to work because my car crashed), but it’s completely voluntary!
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Okay, I’ve updated the top post to list all current passing nominations.
I’ve also listed nominations that haven’t passed (including blatantly favoring my own suggestion at the top).
For the systems and genres, I used IFDB search and only included genres and systems that have at least 5 games, as well as categories for Other. Romance had 5 games, but none had received any ratings, and Abuse had 5 games, but 3 were by an author who doesn’t want them in competitions.
I am using the IFDB genre list because IFDB is the basis of the competition. The competition polls themselves will contain a list to a search on IFDB for games with those genres or systems. If a game you like doesn’t appear, you will need to edit that game to have the correct publication year, genre, and system.
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Inspired by Mathbrush “C64 parser game” example, I propose “Best retro IF game”. So that would include any game published to run on a retro machine such as the C64 but also Atari ST, Amiga, Spectrum, Apple II etc.
NB: By accident 
, I created the thread in the announcement thread instead and if a moderator moves it, the likes may be lost, so I have to do it like this, sorry. There are currently 10 likes over there:
You can find it here: Announcing a new set of Interactive Fiction Awards - #62 by Denk
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Honestly, it’d probably be best not to move it; I’ve already linked to it directly in a few places on the interwebz. Moving it might be fine, or it might break the links, I dunno. It’s getting close anyway, last I checked, it was at 12.
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If you do this, you could have 5 games which you rate (only 5, or 10, fixed number) and the best gets 5 points, the second favourite gets 4, and so on.
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I read through the discussion in the other thread, and I don’t think anyone actually wants a total ban on social media discussion. I think people just didn’t want an expectation that authors will be campaigning for their own games. More generally, I think it’s okay to have some ambiguity in the rules for now; I would propose that there is no explicit mention of campaigning/social media in the rules, and just play it by ear to see how it goes in the first cycle.
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Suggestion: split this into “Uncommon or custom parser system” and “Uncommon or custom choice-based system”.
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I think with all the scattered discussion and nuances, it needs its own discussion. I’m going to make a new poll as a separate post.
Edit:Okay, I got it running! I’m removing my suggestion above.
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