I am extremely surprised by these results. I havenāt heard of a single person who had anything positive to say about the first two games. I didnāt play them or rate them myself, so I would love for someone who rated them higher than the other games to say some words on why they rated them so highly. Since theyāre first, Iām sure a large chunk of participants must have enjoyed them, and Iād be happy to learn from those people and understand what they found especially enjoyable about the games.
Edit: On a side note, I think āThe Starā should be āTin Starā.
I enjoyed many of the games this year! Thanks to all the participants!
I, too, would be very curious to hear more about what raisedbywolves, Twitterresistor, erigir, dsilver1976, and jeremyberemythe3rd enjoyed.
Unfortunately, I didnāt get the chance to play many ParserComp games, and definitely not enough to feel like Iād be voting in good faith, but I liked EYE and Swap Wand User very much!
How is it relevant? I assume itās because some of the entries used generative AI? If so, how did they place?
The top two entries used generative AI. Itās interesting to compare the ParserComp results to the gamesā IFDB ratings:
I know Iām going to kick a hornets nest here, and, frankly itās your deal to run however you please. That said, I donāt understand how you can read this:
And then read this:
And then read this:
And then try to tell me with a straight face that all that text, down to the the soft blue shirt, was curated and created by a human hand. This is all narrative text and it is all being generated on the spot by an LLM. It is clearly and flagrantly against the compās own rules as written. Iām honestly puzzled why the rules arenāt either changed, it they arenāt going to be enforced anyway, or the entries disqualified. To do neither is at the very least confusing.
And finally, because thereās no point in doing things halfway, the vote brigading on reddit was widely noticed. r/Accounting? Really?
I donāt think Iām the only one who would be intensely curious how many votes were cast this year, both in total and average per capita, compared to previous years.
So, no, I donāt find the results relevant.
It is complicated. There were considerations after the start of ParserComp 2025. In addition, there may be other issues which I cannot elaborate at this point
Okay. I look forward to hearing more when the time is appropriate. Thanks for responding promptly, fos1.
Iām glad these issues are being discussed, and, like pinkunz, Iād like to hear more.
I do wonder if the moderators would consider moving these recent posts (including mine) to the parsercomp thread for visibilityās sake? I see the relevance, but this feels like ānew news.ā
(Thanks mods)
This rater seems a bit flagrant: Ratings and Reviews by raisedbywolves
Yeah, Iāve also been busy lately, so I didnāt get a chance to play many of the games and definitely not enough to vote, but I did think Swap Wand User was excellent.
You are correct, it is Tin Star
Thanks
Iām somewhat out of the loop here; what happened on r/accounting?
As a participant in ParserComp, I couldnāt say anything earlier, but now that the results are out, I canāt help feeling that the competition has become a bit of a joke over the last few years, which is unfair to those of us that make a genuine effort to adhere to the spirit of the original intent of the comp and adhere to the rules.
I havenāt played the first four games, so I canāt comment on them specifically, but I have read the reviews and I canāt help but feel that the weirder the game, the higher it scores. It was the same last year.
There is something very fishy about the top two place getters, though. As @mathbrush pointed out, no one that reviewed the games had anything nice to say about them. Mystery Academy has three votes on IFDB with 1, 2 and 5 stars. Last Audit of the Damned has four votes with 1, 2, 3 and 5 stars. As @DougOrleans pointed out, the two 5-star ratings were both given by raisedbywolves. raisedbywolves only joined IFDB on 13 July 2025 and has only rated these two games. Perhaps he/she would like to explain what he/she found so extraordinary about these games to award them 5 stars.
As @pinkunz pointed out, these two games use AI/LLM in a way that contravenes the rules, so they should have been disqualified. But they werenāt.
The Community page for Last Audit of the Damned boasted that it had reached 1000 plays. Holy mackerel. How does a game from an unknown author in a niche genre get so many plays? In comparison, my entry had 194 browser plays and 87 downloads in the last 30 days. I presume that more plays = more votes. But why such high-scoring votes?
Some of the other comments got me curious. I didnāt have to look far to explain the high plays. Hereās just a few:
I could continue, but I think thatās enough to get the point across. Thereās probably a similar number of links for Mystery Academy, and thatās just on Reddit. Self promotion is one thing. Encouraging people to vote on your game is another. I couldnāt see any rules that specifically forbid self promotion, encouraging people to vote on your game, sock puppeting and so on, but surely this is unethical.
Iād be really curious to see how many people voted on these two games alone and did not vote on any others. Only the organisers are privy to that. Will there be a breakdown on the voting like there would be if it was done on itch.io?
EDIT: On a closer read of the rules, and as pointed out by others, I think the authors of Mystery Academy and Last Audit of the Damned are in breach of rules 7 and 8.
I think āweirdā as in different and innovative is very different from āweirdā as in AI jank.
I mean, the games are perfectly open about being AI-driven. Some competitions prohibit static text that was originally AI-generated but allow live-service AI; you could read the ParserComp rules this way, I guess, which Iām assuming is whatās happened here since the games were allowed in the competition.
Iām trying very hard not to be an old man yelling at clouds, but this makes me sad.
Iām very much uninterested in wasting my time by reading AI-generated books, looking at AI-generated art or playing AI-generated games (very much my personal preference, but I prefer my art generated by humans, thank you).
Making friends and relatives give inflated votes, or in worst case paying for votes, seems unethical. But it is maybe hard to stop entirely.
My understanding of ParserComp is that it is a celebration of the old classic style of parser games (read like Infocom and the 80s). If fear that if comps are flooded by AI generated material, that traditional creators/authors will quit and the comp will eventually die.
My opinion is that AI games should compete in their own competitions and not be judged against human stories.
hey guys, I just want to say, that donāt go too hard on the organisers.
One donāt know when bad (capitalist, or fascist in the case of the global situation right now with the internet) actors would come and ruin your comp, or jam, or whatever community driven resource.
So, letās be compasionate and friendly between us, letās learn, and letās kick out these disruptive actors out of here.
BTW: Ectocomp this year will have a complete NO AI rule.
Just to be clear, I in no way blame the organisers. They do wonderful work and I canāt praise them enough.