The total number of judges is noted on the bottom of the results page:
2011: 109
2010: 150
2009: 133
2008: 177
2007 and before: no data
The typical number of votes per game interestingly enough always seems to have been around 100 (or slightly below), regardless of the number of entries. Now it is what? 60?
Confusion over which version of the games they were meant to be voting on? I’m sure there are other reasons but that’s the one which occurs to me right off the bat.
I would be astounded if more than one person failed to vote for that reason.
Yeah, I doubt that the updating rules have anything to do with it. We’re talking about a fairly small number here, one that’s subject to pretty large variation and doesn’t have a very big dataset. I’m not sure that very much can be drawn from a single datapoint.
More broadly, everybody I know who’s given a reason for not playing enough games to vote this year has said that it’s because they have a) kids, b) a busy career or c) both. If you do want to make a pattern out of a datapoint, then it’s probably going to be a demographic one.
Another point is that authors can’t vote.
Actually, my more sensible theory would be that the sheer number of games in the comp is so daunting that people who would otherwise be inclined to vote for, say, a comp with half a dozen games in it, look at the figures - 38 games, six weeks to play them all, almost one a day on average - realise they’ll never make it and decide in the interests of fairness not to vote at all. I’ve played a grand total of a dozen IF games over the past year, and some of them were small games written for mini-comps. Compared to that, 38 games in six weeks is a heck of a lot of games.
b) for me. I kept intending to get to the comp, up until I found it was too late. I haven’t even played The Play yet (I’m looking forward to it, Deirdra!).
Another reason that I come to think of is that the Comp is no longer seen as much as something to point new people at as it may have been in the past (or at least, that’s my impression). Outreach to the general public takes other forms now.
(David’s and Matt’s theories makes sense too.)
Then I was probably that one! [emote]:)[/emote] As I stated at the early judging days, I was quite enthusiast about voting this year, which I haven’t done since 2006 comp. But on second thought I preferred to stay away. It wasn’t that I felt confused about which versions to score. I was aware that I could freely make my choice about that. It was just that I couldn’t get the point of a same work receiving several votes based on different versions of it, among other possible unfair things I mentioned in a couple of brief posts.
I’m glad most other judges felt comfortable with the new rule and acted accordingly, but I sincerely thought I shouldn’t actively support it.
I’m still considering to enter next year comp with an IF work. At least we’ll be aware in anticipation of this new deadline that is not a deadline (the un-deadline? If I find the time to make a short satirical IF game I’ll call it The Walking Deadline! [emote]:lol:[/emote] )
Congrats to the winners and to everyone that made it all possible! Now let’s play all this new bunch of works and enjoy! [emote]:D[/emote]
I won’t be entering the IFComp next year but I was planning on voting on the games… but now I’m having second thoughts about that as well. How am I meant to vote in a way that’s totally fair?
a) I download all the games on day one and base my vote off version one, but… if next year is like this year, some of the games will be updated as many as half a dozen times and the final version will probably be a vastly different game than the one I played, thus rendering my vote kind of meaningless. Best scrap this idea.
b) I download all the games on day one but update my vote every time a new version is released, but… if next year is like this year, some of the games will be updated as many as half a dozen times and keep playing the same game over and over again and keeping track of what’s changed and how it affects my vote… No, too much hassle. Best scrap this idea, too.
c) I download all the games once the IFComp is done and the final versions have all been released, but… the IFComp’s done by then so clearly my vote won’t count for a thing by then. Scrap another idea.
Well, I’m stumped. I can’t think of a single fair way of voting at all. Maybe I’d better skip voting at all.
While I didn’t do any voting this year, being an author, I would suggest following my plan - instead of downloading all the games at once, I played each game one at a time, downloading a new game only when I finished the previous game. The first games I played weren’t updated; the later games were, and that was just the luck of the draw.
Yes, if you wish to make up reasons not to vote because of this rule, you certainly can!
There should be a rule explicitly allowing people to make up reasons not to vote because of that rule, and then a set of guidelines on how best to do so. Because otherwise, how can people know if they’re making up fair reasons not to vote? What if someone’s reason not to vote changes in the middle of the comp? What then?
Well, I don’t know if you need to worry about Absolute Fairness per se. That requires many different judges with many different outlooks, and the more there are, the more this sort of thing gets ironed out (e.g. someone will play an updated game early, someone will play it late–or people will like some genres but not others.)
I’d say that the percentage of people who download and play the updated/better version will work itself out as more people vote. That means, if a game is updated quickly with a bug that really deserved to be fixed, it won’t get nailed badly. But if it’s tacked on at the end, that’s the author’s fault.
I think most authors accept the potential for unfairness in any sort of competition. You can just do whatever you feel is best. Sort of like how there is no standard template for grading IF games, themselves. It’s important to consider exceptions to rules and potential for abuse, but at the end, I think judges just want to play good games.
Yeah, I don’t really see how updates during the comp are unfair to anyone. I mean, I suppose it’s unfair to people who don’t want to update their games mid-comp, but that’s like saying that it’s unfair to allow betatested games. (Some authors will have had better testers than others! And they’ll have spent different amounts of time on testing! How can I, the pure-minded voter, retain my perfect impartiality under such conditions?)
There’s also the fact that adding too many new features often winds up introducing new bugs, which could potentially result in an arguably worse game than before…
I’ve just put my notes up at http://www.bubblycloud.com/ifcomp2011/. I managed to play all the games this year.
I’ve got transcripts from most of my playing, so if any authors want theirs you can email me.
Congratulations and thanks, everyone.
Even without adding features, this is true. Fixing bugs is often like squashing bubbles in the wallpaper; it just causes two different bubbles to pop up somewhere else [emote]:)[/emote]
I’d suggest going ahead and saving them locally. You should have access to them for a while now, but still.
Thanks! Mark Musante actually had the results ready to go in about 20 minutes; the rest of it was my processing time.
I assign a preliminary score based on the vowel : consonant ratio in the game’s file name. I ignore the file extension to avoid platform bias. A “y” is counted as a vowel if vowels predominate; otherwise it is not counted.
After starting the game, I type HELP, ABOUT, or CREDITS until I locate this information. I check to see if IF Comp judges are thanked; if so, I allocate a bonus point for common courtesy. If the game is dedicated to a pet or a child, I assign another bonus point. This is because I am sentimental to a fault.
I spend the remainder of the two hours discovering what the game says about me. Points are subtracted for serious factual errors. For example, I have a velvety baritone of which I am quite proud. A game that denigrates my singing ability or repudiates it outright is a game that strikes at the root of my identity. In such cases, I will remove any bonus points awarded during the CREDITS stage, since the author did not really mean it.
I do all of my judging on November 7. I call this day Red October because I am always late turning my wall calendar to the next page. That is a little joke I tell people after I sing a song.
I am concerned that allowing authors to update games will undermine the exactitude of my process. I harbored suspicions when Aotearoa came out last year, but I said nothing because I have dark brown hair, green eyes, and an abiding love of dinosaurs.
This year, a game was renamed outright. Again I said nothing, because the change lowered its score.
I have read enough popular quotes to know that next year they will come for the judges, and there will be no one left to vote.
Well, thanks for the reviews. Mine was very funny, although it gave me even MORE to think about and try and correct.
So: in part I love you, in part I hate you. That’s how it went for my game in judges’ eyes, so it is quite fair, anyway.