Ever since I made my run-off suggestion earlier, I’ve had this idea I can’t stop turning over in my head.
I’m imagining a few hour long Speed-IF Jam that starts with the announcement of the theme, sort of like Ludum Dare. Then, voting would determine the top so many submissions, maybe the top 10? It would depend on the number of submissions.
Those top games would then go into a second round where the authors would be given time (A couple weeks? A month?) to flesh out the games and spend more time developing the idea.
After this development time, another round of voting decides who did the most with fleshing out their Speed-IF game.
I like this, because the first round isn’t only a vote for who you liked best, but also a direct vote for the game you would like to see more of.
It also flexes two very different skill sets for the authors, raising an interesting challenge. Someone adept at quick coding and rapid idea generation may excel in the first round, but then struggle with creating a more long-form game from this start. Conversely, there are probably some very accomplished authors that would struggle to qualify for the second round in the first place.
Was chewing on what to call it, and so far all I got is SeedComp (IntroComp is rightfully taken, lol).
Edit-to-add: I imagine each author’s final second round submissions being listed directly next to the Speed-IF they submitted in round one, enabling easy comparison between the two.
Edit-to-add×2: Erm, anyway, yeah, sorry for the distraction. Please carry on with the uncomfortably familiar discussion of bad-faith actors impacting the vote and how little we can objectively do about it.