Yeah, I believe that happens quite a lot too. Being well known for making great games surely gives those authors’ games a rating boost, even if it just a small amount.
But I don’t begrudge any author from entering any competitions, I think they have as much right to enter as anybody else.
I agree with your other points Garry, public voting is prone to many potential issues, and I believe the organisers of these competitions do understand those issues and do their best to mitigate them.
Jadi explains in her own words!
Now the TALJ 2026 is over I’ve submitted my next new game to ParserComp 2026 and requested a few playtesters. My last entry to the ParserComp was in 2021.
Regards,
-catventure.
I feel like sometimes it’s kind of hard to be a competition organizer. Between AI, how games are scored, continually having to develop revised rules in an ever-changing world… It’s tough.
I appreciate that you lit the lamp for the photo.
I’m probably being a pain in the butt about the scoring, but seeing how it affected the outcome of Ectocomp 2024, the unfairness of it sticks in my craw.
In this thread it was recommended that the next Ectocomp use the raw scores only, which is what they did do in 2025, by keeping the Results page private/hidden and providing a public list/spreadsheet of the raw scores.
I suggest that @fos1 follow suit, and @warrigal for the TALP too.
Edited for clarity
@Warrigal are you now one of the organisers?
No. I think @andrewj was referring to Text Adventure Literacy Jam. That’s a bit off topic, so I’ll answer it in the Results for Text Adventure Literacy Jam 2026 thread.
Sorry for the confusion, yeah I was talking about the TALP (next year to be precise).
I’m really hoping I can get my entry in on time, but it’s going to be tight. Last week a tester found some very significant flaws with how the clues to the central mystery are presented, and since then I’ve been in North Carolina without most of my devices. Here’s hoping it’s ready by the 27th!
36 hours left, and only 7 submissions. Think it will be a smaller competition this year, or are people waiting to the last second to submit?
The time has come
To join the rest,
Time to enter
Woodcutter’s Quest.
And just to prove
I’ve done my best,
A second game
Is Dead Man’s Chest.
I wrote two games
I’ve been quite stressed
So which of these
Will pass the test?
Unfortunately I think I will not be entering this year. The tester feedback deserves more attention, and I figure better for a game to be released late than released unpolished.
I look forward to playing the other entries, though!
I wasn’t able to offer any testing, as I’ve been busy testing others and working on my own games. However, now that mine are nearly finished, I can do some testing further down the track if you need it.
We are down to the wire. After reading the comments, I am struggling with voting and ranking. I may have to move the opening of the judging period by a day or two in order to come up with a better solution.
On a more positive note, I have placed a deposit on the medal design. Now I know why they are called challenge coins!
I have room on the front for the year. The reverse is blank for individual personalization for the winners.
I apologize for the lack of my presence recently. I have had to do my part to enhance the fleet of German luxury cars at my local health provider system. 
Fortunately, my issues are moving toward a resolution.
fos1
Good luck with coming up with a system! Seems like as long as you can collect ratings in some form, then you could adjust the way votes are totaled up later on (whether you do google forms or itch ratings).
When do you want us to make the games published on itch?
Sorry about the health issues, and hope you feel better!
Please publish on June 30.
Thanks
I busted a gut to get my games submitted and made public with only 30 minutes to spare. The deadline was 10 p.m. 28 June local time.
Then I tidied up a few things and checked back in after 10 p.m. and the deadline had been extended by 12 hours, so the new deadline was 10 a.m. 29 June local time.
So I got up this morning, checked my emails and found that @Lazzah had released a new game. I remembered this one, as I had tested it, so I checked in to download the latest version and found that it was a submission to ParserComp and, lo and behold, the deadline had been extended by another two days. So it’s now 10 a.m. 1 July local time.
Given that I originally made my game public with only 30 minutes to spare, I hope I’m not going to be disqualified for having a public release before the deadline.
Incidentally, @fos1 you haven’t updated the dates on the home page.
I guess both organizers and authors are aware that itch. Io is fine but not optimal so we should all be open to the limitations. E.g. authors should manually make their game visible near the deadline and the organizers may have to extend the deadline in order to delay the rating period for whatever reason.
As a consequence, games cannot be released at the exact same time. If we just have mutual understanding I guess everything will be fine 
Hi Garry,
What is ParserComp without a little controversy… 
After some of the pointed complaints (and the cartoon video) I adjusted the submission timeline by a couple of days to work on the scoring system.
I’m still working on it.
