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).