I agree. If ParserComp tries to be all things to all men, it’ll just be another IFComp. I haven’t played any of this year’s games yet, so maybe I’m barking up the wrong tree.
Look at this blast from the past though – ParserComp discussion – it quickly turned into a “what is a parser game” debate!
I think it did not try to be something else than a parser comp. This is basic Darwinism: You must know your niche, or you are dead. That means:
1) Don’t try to admit things that are not parser. Very important.
2) Not left behind parser games. Most important indeed. If you don’t fill the niche other will do it for you and this will be your competitor.
The first one I believe that is very clear for everyone: The dangerous point is in the second one, as far as I see it.
I really agree with a lot that was said above. I love twine and Choicescript and ink games, but I also love parser games, and Parser Comp comes up a lot because there are many people who want specifically more parser games.
I wonder if instead of putting the onus on the organizers if it can just be thrown to the judges? Like a warning or message in the submission page that “Most parsercomp judges are interested in games with text input/output and a world model. Examples of such games can be found here (link to CASA or IFDB or both). Other types of games can be entered but may not receive as much attention or favorable feedback.” Then people can enter whatever they want but won’t be shocked if it doesn’t place well.
PARSERCOMP: PROMOTING PARSER GAMES
Another idea for ParserComp2023 would be allow parser games previously published during the last year (from ParserComp to ParserComp).
Not allowing that is in fact making people don’t enrolling their parser games in other “main” competitions like IFComp, making parser games also less visible, and working for a smaller ghetto in the ghetto.
Perhaps some additional points for Parser Comp exclusive ones?
I think that’s true, but that’s not the only set of authors to whom it seems to be attractive. Like, of the 20 games that were entered, here’s my rough count by subgenre:
Retro/old school: 4 (Oct. 31st, Euripides Enigma, Uncle Mortimer’s Secret, Alchemist’s Gold)
Mainline/new school: 7 (Impossible Stairs, Of Their Shadows, The Muse, Things that Happened in Houghtonbridge, Anita’s Goodbye, Improv: Origins, Midnight at Al’s)
Limited parser/choice hybrid: 5 (Radio Tower, Context Nightsky, Desrosier’s Discovery, The Lantern, python game)
“Abuse of parser”: 4 (Gent Stickman, Cost of Living, You Won’t Get Her Back, Kondiac)
One of the cool things about the Comp to my mind is that it’s bringing together very traditional examples of the form as well as attempts to push the boundaries of what a parser game can do, both of which seem like they’re worthy entries in something called ParserComp.
As you say, there’s a balance to be struck between dilution and focus, but at least this year all the headaches seemed to come from defining “parser game” too narrowly, so I think that’s why folks are tending to propose loosening things up.
Yeah, this is what I think I was trying to grope my way towards, unsurprisingly stated much more clearly by Brian.
Running with the ribbon idea I was noodling at above, I wonder if there’d be a way to signal to authors that particular kinds of games are welcome by creating “best retro”, “best abuse”, etc. awards – so like overall placement would be determined by a single 1-10 ranking, but then a judge could also click a box to vote for one of those specific awards if a game seems to really exemplify the spirit of the category? I dunno, that makes it a bit more fiddly, but might give folks who know they’re making something that isn’t going to be as broadly popular something to aim for?
I worry this would make ParserComp feel less special, since judges might feel like they need to wade through reheated leftovers to get to the good stuff (and if an author has made significant upgrades to their game since an IFComp release, that work might get wasted as judges prefer playing fresh games).
More broadly, I feel like parser games do get a lot of attention in IFComp – they almost always win and dominate the top 10/20 – and there are way more games of all kinds, including parser games, being written these days than in previous years (there were only 28 entries in the 2012 IFComp!) If it felt like parser games were on more of a downward trend, my thoughts on what would make sense would probably change, though!
I like that idea a lot! We already allow games that have been entered in IntroComp and then completed. Maybe any games that have not been entered into one of the other comps prior to ParserComp. Great Idea!
I agree. I don’t want to sound non-inclusive, but. There are other jams and competitions for hybrids and fringe games. Maybe the organizers could just point kindly to Spring Thing for people who want to present a hybrid or highly experimental work.
But in the end, I think parser comp should be only about text adventures with parser.
PD: I’m the admin of ECTOCOMP, and there you can send EVEN bitsies that are minimalistic graphic JRPGs… so… I’m pro inclusivity of formats, but I feel the spirit of parser comp, and the success of it, depends of be only for parser games.
For that we have Xyyzy Awards.
Gosh, I come back off holiday to find people are still talking about ParserComp! I knew it would be the event of the year.
My tuppence worth, as one of the organisers:
@mathbrush is clearly right in that the judges know a parser game when they see one, whatever definition we worry over: of the top ten in the last competition, 8 were pretty traditional and recognisable parser games (the outliers being Gent Stickman and You Won’t Get Her Back) and all of the top 5 were that. So we could just allow anything through the doors and let the public decide. But then we do risk diluting our USP and moving in the direction of becoming a more general text game competition, of which we have plenty already. I’d be inclined to reinforce our definition of what we consider to be an ‘orthodox’ parser game and have one field of entries for those, and then have another field for everything else (‘out of the box’ or whatever we decide to call it). That way, we please the parser purists like @warrigal (insofar as it is possible to please Garry), while still allowing fringe games into the competition. Anything that still doesn’t fit into either of those broad categories gets chucked out (note that this did actually happen in the last competition, but before submissions ended - we disqualified a couple of spamming arcade platform games because, well, they were spamming arcaded platform games).
An overall best game score does, on reflection, feel like the fairest way of deciding the winner. But I’m still keen to keep categories that could be voted on separately, as a way of gathering meaningful feedback for authors, since the bald ‘best game’ metric doesn’t say a lot on its own. I like the idea of pinching (I mean, respectfully borrowing) the ribbon idea from Spring Thing and allowing judges to create custom awards. I’ve no idea what that would require technically, but happily I don’t have to worry about that side of things - @fos1 and his team of boffins can put that together while I do some dusting, and chat to Sandra in the front office.
I’m not keen on allowing previously released games into the competition, and I’m not sure participants would be either. I think I would find it slightly annoying if I entered my brand, spanking new game into a competition and found myself competing against something that had been knocking around for six months already. Competition submission dates are (I find) good, solid deadlines for authors to work towards, and there’s definitely something special about lifting the curtain on a set of brand new, never before played games that would be lost if we did away with that rule (which was also, incidentally, enforced this year: one game was disqualified before the deadline as it had been previously released).
One thing I definitely plan to do is condense and clarify the rules next year. The current set were inherited and (with no disrespect to @Adam_S who put them together last year) rather long-winded without proportionally increasing clarity. My fault for being too tentative to take a proper hatchet to them this year. I’ll prune them harshly in time for next year’s jamboree!
As official scribe, I am taking copious notes, pages and pages…
Great feedback both here and on the discord.
29 posts were split to a new topic: Jams, Competitions, Parsers, and Defnitions [moved from Planning for ParserComp 2023]
ABOUT CATEGORIES
As I said in agree with what other people already said, I would like to see a general “Best Game / More Enjoyable Game” one.
But I would love not only to maintain the more detailed ones, as they are useful to see what other people thinks about different aspects of your game, but to add even more, perhaps related with characteristics of the input allowed (after all is a parser comp), and perhaps not mixing some of them as “Use of multimedia (graphics and sound) [5% weighting]”, that lead to see them as “oh, yes, all that other stuff”, but separate them in Graphics, Music (and perhaps “Original Music” like in the Oscars and “Previously Existing Music”?).
Perhaps the “Best Game” being a mandatory category for voters, and the other ones being optional for them to avoid voters leak due to a “too much to select” wall?
You can have a Best game category, and consider only that for the final ranking, instead of the average that usually uses Itchio. Like that you can have other categories.
For example. In ECTOCOMP there are 2 kinds of games, La petite mort, and Le grand Guignol. So itchio rank all games mixed in a unique ranked list. Officially I ditch that list, and then proceed to make a compilation by hand in the two separate lists.
It works for me.
I have the convenience of itchio, and I make my own rules about the results.
But, that only works if you have a voting category that is “Best game”.
That is exactly where we went with ParserComp.
My thoughts are coming together on this. More after a few more responses.
Thank you
In the competition there was ONLY ONE game that could be clearly disqualified attending to the ParserComp rules.
I left for you as an exercise to determine which one and due to what rule break. A little clue: Is not any of the ones marked with a “Scarlet Letter”.
I would have defended it to stay in the comp anyway if the moment arrived for it to be disqualified, not because of me being so valiant or something so, but because I firmly believe that voters should be the ones that should decide that.
ABOUT THE SPECIAL CATEGORY
I prefer to be burnt with the witches (even knowing that I’m not) than be set apart from the other children in the schoolyard that I want to play with.
Why are some people so afraid of the remote possibility of a “strange game” winning ParserComp? I don’t think it will happen, but if it happens… well done!
I think the same for old school 8 bits fantasy set games. And for Shakespearean verbose games without puzzles. Let the games speak to the voters, and let the voters speak to the comp!
Set games in a different category makes me feel a bit like a teacher telling Mr. Gump’s mother that her boy is different.
WHAT IS A PARSER GAME
I can understand the need for the comp to give some definition of what a parser game is, but I believe that the main use of this would be to help people from outside the community to understand what is that comp about.
Was ParserComp really created to determine what is and what is not a Parser Game? to tell an author that what he said is a parser game is not because someone else decide that? or even to determine what a Parser Game is universally, out of the scope of the comp?
I want to think that it was not.
GENT STICKMAN
Some people believes that Gent Stickman is not a Parser Game. That’s nice, they are wrong, but it is nice that people have the right to be wrong. I will demonstrate it is, but I will do it after presenting the “Gent Stickman Ante Vitam (postmortem sucks)” that I am working on, as I will use for that demonstration some of the concepts I talk about there.
FINALLY
I could perfectly understand a NO AZ GAMES clausule because of tiresome. I would do it myself. But boys! Let the games live outside the indian reservation!
And be good! and happy!
Wow! Somehow I missed this thread, but it’s great to read about it now. Big thumbs up to the organizers. I’m still wading through the Discord server. I think you guys did very well to navigate the bad parts of the rating system & have confidence you’ll figure it out.
You know, I was thinking this myself. I like this–I’m in really good company here.
I don’t think this violates inclusivity at all. Not all competitions have to be a certain way, and I’m wondering if IFComp’s all things to all people tack is bringing it down. Having parameters means people are able to judge games more easily, and while placing’s not the point, it’s nice to have some standard of comparison, and to make it easier for people to be sure they’re saying something.
FWIW I like being able to participate in EctoComp even if my stuff isn’t particularly scary.
Andrew’s reply made me realize I should maybe clarify my tone here – this isn’t meant to be pejorative at all! In the late 90s/early aughts folks would talk admiringly of “Z-machine abuse” for things like Zarf’s Tetris port so that’s the label in my head for hacker-y things that are poking at the borders of what folks think of as a parser game.
No worries here from me – yes, Free Fall/Tetris was the sort of thing that made me realize I wanted to try to abuse the parser and make it do things it originally shouldn’t. I think one problem I ran into when I was first writing was, I felt I had to write the way Infocom did, and I had to take care of all the standard verbs, or learn them, before making real progress. Then I learned you could just zap them, and I felt a sense of freedom.
I know when someone makes an effort that leaves me saying “I didn’t realize you could do that” or “I’m glad they didn’t feel the need to support command X–it takes away from the game” it’s definitely inspiring. The overall result may be weak in many ways. But it helps me push the envelope in all sorts of writing. So I definitely welcome it, too, even if it might finish in the lower half of ratings. And I hope my stuff does that for other people, too.
Yes, perhaps this could be made clearer.
But having said that, the following passages were in the FAQ and in the rules on the ParserComp page from the start and seemed intended to address that need:
“A parser game is a text-based game where the player character is controlled primarily [by]* entering text instructions via the keyboard, the results of which are also displayed as text.”
[* text says: “be”, typo]
“the main game mechanic is text input, parsing, and text output”
“the main control mechanism remains entering text instructions and receiving text output”
“the primary game mechanic remains text input and output”
“ParserComp defines a parser game as one where the primary input method is the keyboard, commands are typed in, the computer uses a parser engine to understand commands and then outputs text to screen describing the results.”
(And there were more explanations, and links to examples, and links to typical engines.)
No, its purpose was and is to encourage development of additional parser games, but depending on the course of events, that might or might not necessitate determining what a parser game is, at least for the purposes of the comp. If people hypothetically entered, say, arcade games or graphical RTS games, those might be great fun, but would not further the goal of having additional parser games one iota.
The author can only be the sole arbiter of what his game is intended to be, not what it actually is. He doesn’t get to decide the meaning of terms which have been in constant and reasonably consistent public use for decades. An FPS or a platformer would not be a parser game even if an author insisted on it.
No, not necessarily, and it says so in the rules:
“We acknowledge that wider definitions exist and are valid in their own right, but in the context of the competition this is our definition.”
p.s.: I’m not taking a position on Gent Stickman here specifically, just addressing some of the points you raised.
Well, those were more the kind of rethoric questions to make us think about the rules or protocols for the next ParserComp, not the past one, than real questions.
They were a try to expose my points in a more poetic way, but I see that seems better not to take risks with my english ^.^
I hope nobody will send a green elephant to ParserComp 2023! wait…mmmmmm…