Results of the 2011 IF Competition

The Interactive Fiction Competition has ended. Congratulations to Ryan Veeder, whose “Taco Fiction” took first place! The top three games were:

Taco Fiction, by Ryan Veeder
Six, by Wade Clarke
The Play, by Deirdra Kiai(tie)

The winners of the Miss Congeniality contest were:

Taco Fiction, by Ryan Veeder
The Play, by Deirdra Kiai
The Life (and Deaths) of Doctor M, by Edmund Wells and
Kerkerkruip, by Victor Gijsbers (tie for third)

Congratulations to all who entered!

The full results list:

  1. Taco Fiction, by Ryan Veeder
  2. Six, by Wade Clarke
  3. The Play, by Deirdra Kiai
  4. Escape From Santaland, by Jason Ermer
  5. PataNoir, by Simon Christiansen
  6. The Life (and Deaths) of Doctor M, by Edmund Wells
  7. Beet the Devil, by Carolyn VanEseltine
  8. Kerkerkruip, by Victor Gijsbers
  9. Cana According To Micah, by Christopher Huang (writing as Rev. Stephen Dawson)
  10. A Comedy of Error Messages, by Adam Le Doux
  11. The Binary, by Simon (writing as Bloomengine)
  12. Tenth Plague, by Lynnea Dally
  13. Cursed, by Nick Rogers
    (tie) Ted Paladin And The Case Of The Abandoned House, by Anssi Raisanen
  14. Cold Iron, by Lyman Clive Charles
  15. It, by Emily Boegheim
  16. Andromeda Awakening, by Marco Innocenti
  17. Keepsake, by Savaric
  18. Sentencing Mr Liddell, by I-K. Huuhtanen
  19. Calm, by Joey Jones and Melvin Rangasamy
  20. The Guardian, by Lutein Hawthorne
  21. The Hours, by Robert Patten
  22. Blind, by Andrew Metzger (writing as Arman)
  23. The Myothian Falcon, by Andy Joel
  24. Last Day of Summer, by Cameron Fox
  25. Death of Schlig, by Peter Timony
  26. Fan Interference, by Andrew Schultz
  27. Playing Games, by Pam Comfite
  28. How Suzy Got Her Powers, by David Whyld
  29. Return to Camelot, by Finn Rosenløv (writing as Po. Prune)
  30. Awake the Mighty Dread, by Lyle Skains
  31. The Ship of Whimsy, by U. N. Owen
  32. Operation Extraction, by Ming-Yee Iu
  33. Professor Frank, by Laurence Kilday
  34. Dead Hotel, by Comazombie
  35. Fog Convict, by Andrew Metzger (writing as Arman)
  36. Luster, by Jared Smith
  37. Vestiges, by Joanna Houston (writing as Josephine Wynter)

Well done everybody! Especially Ryan! Pats on backs all round are in order. Also, those that know comp history better, is this the highest a hypertext game has placed?

Congratulations all around, and good work, Sarge!

And I’ve just uploaded my Breakfast Reviews: ricordius.com/others/ifcomp11/index.html

Conga rats, all, and thanks! I’ve just gone and posted a “making of” article to my blog about “The Play”.

Heh, mine sounds exactly like the sort of thing I enjoy eating for breakfast. Awesome!

I’ve just broken my fast on the recommended Calm breakfast. Lacking in expected flavour, but not without its own merits.

Dry toast, a poached egg, and soy milk:

Yay, fifth place again! Last year I took fifth place out of 25. This year it’s out of 38, so I am moving up in percentile. Next year I hope to take fifth place out of fifty.

Yay, more reviews! I was hoping for something just before the deadline…but this is just as good! Right after the results, which came right after the deadline. Good work both, and good work all the authors.

I would love to see 50 authors next year. But it would be so tough for me to get through all the games, no matter which side of the judging veil I’m on.

Congrats to everyone! Soon I’ll be playing some of these; oh yes I will …

(The Play, in particular, has my interest piqued)

Congratulations and thanks to the participants for the great time!

Sargent: ifcomp.org/comp11/results.html says “Results of the 15th annual Interactive Fiction Competition”. You might want to change that [emote];)[/emote]

Also, games no. 5 and 7 seem to be missing from the prize choice list for some reason.

Also no. 12?

Reading this list just makes me disappointed to know that I have yet to play many of the best games from this year’s contest. Looking forward to check them out!

Congrats to everyone [emote]:)[/emote]

Congratulations to all! This was a very interesting comp. I’m curious whether the other pseudonymous authors will reveal themselves.

(BTW, sargent, the “Main Page” link at the bottom of the IFComp site 404s.)

I’m not sure that The Play really counts as hypertext fiction in the usual sense, but I suppose that’s how Undum describes itself (‘CYOA’ annoys the good people at ChooseCo, and ‘choice-based narrative’ isn’t very specific.)

Regardless of what you call it, it’s definitely the highest-placed. I think that the previous highest-placed CYOA was Duncan Bowsman’s The Ascot, which placed 15th of 24. (Desert Heat technically placed above a higher proportion of the field, at 28 of 53, but I’m not sure that you can compare one of the highest-entry years to one of the lowest this way.) In fact, I don’t think that CYOA has ever placed in the top half before, which means that this year would be mildly notable for The Binary even without The Play.

Cool, a CYOA game has managed to rank in the Top 10 this year. I see there is demand for CYOA authors and games after all. [emote];)[/emote]

Thanks, fixed!

Also please give a big hand to Dan Shiovitz, Mark Musante, and our other IFComp volunteers without whom this competition wouldn’t happen.

I’m quite grateful for everyone’s work. The intra-comp updates were clearly nontrivial, and the online transcripts were quite nice, though I didn’t use them as much as I should’ve.

How long will the transcripts be around for? I want to do a lot of post-comp work, so I’m not sure if I should save them locally. They take up a bit of space, and I may want to access them from multiple computers.

Also, one hour turnaround time for results = wow. Your guys were very effective.

So, not to spoil the party, but has it occured to anyone that while the number of participants has increased, the number of people who voted has decreased quite significantly? Any thoughts on this?

presents the volunteers with a large hand Thanks! You folks are awesome!

I noticed that. The two facts might be related. Not sure if this is right, but there may have been roughly the same number of judges, each of them playing a smaller proportion of the games (given the huge number of games to get through).