Yipiii!!! Parsercomp is here!
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have authors announce publicly that they opt-out of archival. Let me tell you, I’m gonna vote against any game that does that, and I’d recommend that others do the same
Gosh. kicking a game for reasons nothing to do with the content itself.
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I guess that’s what will happen. 
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Good God, it’s like you can see into my house. How in the world did you know that I’m knitting a hat and doing a fantastic wooden jigsaw puzzle? Christopher, this is just creepy.
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Though I am very much in favor of archiving, I think this discussion made me review the rules and I realize that there is no rule about voting in good faith. Generally impossible to control except for public statements but they may also be the most important ones to address.
Also, archiving should first happen after the voting period has ended to avoid stigma on anyone opting out of archiving and because many authors fix bugs during the competition. Thus the bug fixed version should be the one most easily accessible.
However, any author can upload their game to the IF Archive if it helps them make a useful Play Online button on IFDB.
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Some authors come from other IF communities (or are just feral) and may not know about IFDB and the archive. There’s a poll on IFDB right now about commercial indie IF games, and I was surprised at how many of them that I wanted to recommend had no IFDB listings.
It strikes me that the Comp could provide a comprehensive information sheet about how (and why) to submit a game to the archive. I tend to think most people would do it themselves if they knew about it and it was made easy for them.
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I thought you might be! One has a sort of intuition about such things, after knowing people for a while…
Noted, and added to Rule 7. Impossible to enforce of course, so we’re relying (as in so much of life) on people’s inherent good nature.
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“Your game entry will be archived for posterity at the IFArchive.org repository and receive an entry on IFDB so it will be visible and available to future generations of IF players. You can upload your game’s subsequent updated versions to IFArchive as well. If this is a problem and you wish for your game not to be archived for some reason, you must specifically opt out with an email request to: [email@address]”
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Uh-huh.
And Americans are worried about Chinese spy balloons. Clearly British spy technology is far sneakier.
[draws curtains] [covers up computer camera]
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Interesting. Was that a typo? I don’t see a poll on IFDB so could you give us a link? Thanks!
Ahh - silly me. I was looking for an “official looking poll” on the main page 
I am fully aware of the ordinary polls on IFDB but didn’t think of these at all.
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What with the submarine Lamborghinis and laser watches and auto-mixing martini shakers they hand out to their spies and all.
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I have a built-in slide cover on my webcam… 
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I once saw a very slick BMW amphibious car on the yacht Calics during an inspection. The rich and the famous. It was one of twelve own by Mr. McCaw of McCaw cellular.
I should use it in my next sea story…
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What exactly is “archiving”. It seems there are actually two things here;
- long term preservation and storage
- making it available to other people
To me (1) is archiving and (2) is hosting/distributing. It appears that permission for both is sought.
There is also the question of any obligation to provide materials for “archive”. Are there any?
For example, if a game is externally hosted, permission may have been tacitly granted for “archiving” (eg via no opt out), but the materials in question are not easily accessible.
Does the author have an obligation to hand them over to assist the archive?
Furthermore when granting rights to “archiving”, it should be made clear whether the materials can be monetised. It seems to me the owner of distribution/hosting rights could, in theory, monetise this right either directly or indirectly.
For example by charging a fee for access or a fee for physical distribution (which was done in the old school shareware days).
None of this is made clear. Right now, it’s all rather wooly.
It seems to me that there should be an archiving agreement charter that accurately describes the legalities.
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This doesn’t make sense. If everyone opts in, there’s no need for it being mandatory. If there are objections, why would you want to make it mandatory?
As it stands, the current requirement that everything must be freely available and archived means that commercial products (i.e. good, really well done, meticulous games) are not entered into the competition. This will highly limits the number of really good entries, which strikes me as to be the opposite of the intended IF projects showcase to draw in players.
When you consider that the organizer is willing to publicly shame/boycott the people who desires opt-out, what do you think people will think/do? If it’s me, then I’ll just boycott the competition altogether as I certainly do not condone such boorish behavior.
Hey, if you want to do it, that’s on you. Just make sure you post a big prominent warning to the fact and see how many people will be willing to do so.
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The organizers of ParserComp have not done this. @ChristopherMerriner and @fos1 have been discussing this and taking opinions in a very reasonable fashion.
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I confess I’m not sure I follow this - the idea is someone would enter their game into the competition, but in order for judges to play and rate it they’d need to buy it first? I don’t see how that would be appealing to either authors or players. Or is the idea that people making commercial games would enter like a free demo?
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