But are reviews posted during or after the comp? (Or at least visible.) Because couldn’t that come under changing opinions? EDIT: Ah, Victor already mentioned the influencing bit.
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That was the case earlier in the Comp’s history – everyone used to post their giant review threads all at once in the newsgroups as soon as the Comp ended – but for the past I think 5-10 years, that rule’s been changed, so now you typically see lots of reviews cropping up during the Comp.
There are two informal norms that I don’t think are actual rules, but are good practices to my mind: 1) many reviewers don’t assign numerical ratings and/or put their reviews on IFDB until after the Comp is ended; this can help reduce the risk of biasing judges before they play a game; and 2) authors generally keep their reviews of other games to the authors-only forum, so they’re not publicly commenting on competitors’ work during the Comp (since authors can now be general judges, I suppose this technically doesn’t matter as much, but I think it’s still nice and collegial).
You could see it that way, which is I think an extra incentive to aim for thoughtful, even-handed evaluation when reviewing.
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Ahh, okay. Makes a little more sense now.
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Not only are the reviews public on the Forum, there’s even a spreadsheet keeping track of reviewers’ efforts. Just to make sure we reviewers feel the others breathing down our necks, pushing us to write one more review. And then another…
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I’ve only entered the comp once before, but the biggest takeaway for myself was what an opportunity it is to see and experience work other than your own.
You’ve likely spent weeks/months in a narrow tunnel, focussed only on finishing and polishing your own IF. The comp is a great opportunity to see other OS, points of view and applications of the same tech you’re using. I would say this is almost unique, especially compared to other writing adjacent competitions.
There will also be more than a few stories and experiences that will stick with you. It’s a really good time, and well worth your time sampling other games.
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In fact, I like to hold onto that belief myself. For the sake of my own sanity, I try to give the audience the benefit of the doubt.
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If author is not native English speaker:
now certain players are judgemental;
now the assumption is "This is a translation!";
now the mood is "Let's find faults with it!".
Understand "flourish", "pun", "wordplay", "witticism", "repartee" as a mistake ("Hah, this must be a mistake! I am very clever!").
Test me with "put tongue in cheek / get stoical / g / g / g / g / g / g / ".
Read this with: 
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Vic, never underestimate Italian prowess in hot debating… 
Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.
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I never underestimate gli italiani in anything, caro dottore 
I fully expect a dressing-down for appropiating some giallo tropes in my game.
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not much to expect; as you can infer from here:
Italian giallo are, broadly speaking, the mystery equivalent of spaghetti western, so the same broad set of tropes applies, so you probably “appropriated” is more precisely re-imported 
Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.
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European culture is a girotondo 
And your comparison with spaghetti westerns is perhaps even more on-point than you thought - considering how many (if not most?) of them were actually shot in southern Spain.
Re-importing indeed!
Oh I knew I forgot something 
Yeah some reviews might be quite critical about the writing, which can be a bit discouraging for ESL writers. Even if they have some good points about the flow and reading and such.
So to all the ESL entrants this year: 
good job on creating a game with a language that’s not your mother tongue! That’s impressive!
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Manon, isn’t a major issue in this tiny, close-knit community of IF coders and players, there’s plenty of mothertongue ßtesters whose are happy to be also proofreaders 
Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.
Maybe it’s not a major issue for everyone, but it can be for some. We had a whole thread about this topic on this very forum a few months ago…
Not every participant is hanging out in the Forum or knows that people here are willing to proof read or beta test. Not every participant come from the Forum or even knows that there is a Forum to begin with.
I certainly didn’t know about the Forum or that those beta testing/proofreading calls here were a thing before I submitted last year. It would be unfair to assume this to be common knowledge…
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As someone who tries to play, rate, and review on IFDB, as many IFComp games as I can every year (with varying degrees of success) I can say that I never look at reviews before picking a game to play. After I finish and rate a game on the comp page, I’ll go to IFDB and write my review. Sometimes if I didn’t like a game as much as I thought I might, I’ll read some reviews before writing my own and sometimes they influence me to raise my rating, to see positive qualities in the game that I missed or were overshadowed by things that frustrated me (did this with my Ballyhoo review even though it isn’t an IFComp game). If I liked a game I usually don’t read reviews and just write my positive review. I’ve never let other reviews influence me to lower my rating.
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Based on my last entry, I learned the following:
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If you want your game to be reviewed by more people, make sure it’s a parser game. Choice games do get reviews, but in general not as many.
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If your entry is Part One of an ongoing story, let the people know. It is unlikely to reduce viewership by much, and the expectations of the reviewers will be properly tempered.
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Talk about your game ideas, problems, even your dietary habits. You have a welcoming community here and we all have opinions. Take them or leave them!
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As mentioned above and elsewhere, you WILL get critical reviews. Treat them as tools to hone your skills. Those who hit it out of the park on the first try are extremely rare. So elusive, in fact, that if you took a photo of them, it would come out blurry.
It will be a fun experience for you. Enjoy it all, the easy and the hard!
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The rest of this post is great advice, but I saw this and was wondering if it was actually true these days since my impression is the opposite. At least as far as reviews captured in the 2022 review spreadsheet are concerned (and per my off-the-top-of-my-head categorization which might be slightly off, especially since I excluded a couple hybrid/nonstandard games, which are judgment calls), choice games got an average of 9.6 public reviews and 12.4 total (the difference is due to reviews in the author’s forum), while parser games got on average 8.1 public and 10.2 total.
I think there could be conflating factors here, since shorter games definitely get more reviews and my sense is there are usually more short choice-based games than short parser games. But still, hopefully this isn’t something authors need to worry too much about this year too!
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I feel like this might be a cultural difference too. If peeps are coming from a choice space to play and rate games, some of those spaces don’t always welcome reviews or have different norms around them, which means many (not all) of the people writing reviews are going to be parser people, who, out of 100+ games, might spend more time playing parser over choice titles.
Like, I’m not saying you’re wrong over, let’s say the last 10 years, I just don’t know if it reflects as much bias so much as a difference in cultures. I don’t have any brilliant ideas on how to address this or if it even needs to be addressed. Other communities norms can be just as valid, after all.
Maybe, if you’re submitting a choice game into IFComp and you specifically welcome full written reviews, soliciting those reviews in the game’s blurb might help? That way, folks who might assume you wouldn’t welcome a review know that you are specifically asking for frank feedback?
Like I said, I don’t have all the answers.
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You can only control what you can control. If you have made something that brings joy to yourself and/or others, you have succeeded.
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Perhaps important for new authors to know:
The IFComp guidelines for judges explicitly recommends this:
Use all the numbers
IFComp - Best practices for judges
In many cases, especially for people new to IFComp/coming from communities with different rating habits, this can lead to a bit of a shock of disappointed surprise. An author who has been reading multiple favourable reviews of their work might find out that their game got an average of “only” 5 or 6 in the final comp results. They may think their game was not good at all in the end, and reviews were misleading or not representative of the majority of players.
This is most likely not the case. Keep in mind that when “using all the numbers”, 9 or 10 are almost unattainable, 7 and 8 are very good to great, and so on…
5 or 6 is a very respectable score according to my rubric.
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