ShuffleComp planning!

Competitions
1

Okay, I’ve got some XYZZY-related duties signed off, so I’m going to relax and think about April minicomps. In particular, ShuffleComp!

(Edit: for those late to the party, here’s the summary of what ShuffleComp is going to be:

)
So: one of the consistent things about events in the IF world is that the amount of feedback they get corresponds (not perfectly, but pretty well) to whether there’s ranked voting involved. Ranked voting seems to be a catalyst for reviews. That seems like a reasonable trade-off to me: if you want a lot of visibility and feedback there are high-pressure events, and if you don’t want to deal with that level of judgement then there are lower-pressure, lower-visibility things. I think it’d be useful to have things a bit more in the middle, though - events which attract some level of ranking and reviews, but which aren’t the trial-by-fire of the IF Comp.

So here’s how I’m envisaging Shufflecomp working: there will be voting! Votes aren’t numerical, though; you vote with a simple list of the games you think deserve recognition. Some proportion of games - say the most-voted-for 30% - will get a Commendation, but other than this the vote rankings won’t be published. (This is at least partially inspired by Introcomp’s approach.)

That seems like a reasonable approach to me: if you just want to have fun making something silly, we’re not going to split hairs over whether you should place mid-pack or second-to-last or whatever. But if you’re moved to go the extra mile and make something a bit special, then you get a nod for it.

Here’s the flaw with this system: Comp scores aren’t dependent on how many people play a given game. In this system, it would matter quite a lot - if someone with name-recognition entered, for instance, they might get a substantial advantage. I’d like to figure out a way around this. Obviously you could require voters to play every game, but this only works if the number of entries is quite low. Assistez moi, brain trust!

(The other thing with this is that if I want to make a game for it, and I probably do, then I’ll need to find a dependable vote-monkey to do the counting. This seems like an easily-solved problem, however.)

2

I like the system you’ve described.

I’m not concerned about it, because this isn’t likely to be A Major Event. And even if it were - the XYZZY nominations work similarly, right? People with name recognition are more likely to get a boost there, and we don’t sweat it.

However, my perspective may be skewed here, and if other people are concerned, I could be swayed.

3

Yeah, I’m not super-stressed about it. If fixing it would mean anything involving complex explanation or vote-sifting, it can stay as it is; but if there’s a nice simple fix or alternative that I haven’t thought of, I’d be interested in it.

4

Can’t you just collect the played-games data somehow? Get people to rate games Commendation, No Commendation, or Unplayed, or something like that? Then you decide which games get commendations based on the ratio of C : NC, ignoring UP’s. You’d still have a problem if there are so few voters that some games are only played by one or two players, though.

5

The other possibility I’m thinking about is that if you submit a review - within some common-sense boundaries, like minimum-150-words, no-funny-business - your vote for that game might count double. That mildly encourages but doesn’t mandate a positive review environment.

6

I plan on allowing entrants to vote, so there’s that. (With some stipulation that you can’t vote for your own game unless you also vote for at least two others.)

7

In other news, I’ve settled on eight as the sweet spot for the number of songs each entrant should submit, if anybody wants to start planning their playlists.

8

From what I’ve heard Shufflecomp sounds like fun and I’d like to be involved, but I don’t really know much about how it works. Searching the forum doesn’t come up with much (is that just the search function letting me down, or was there no thread for the comp?), and searching Google just gets me a lot of hard dance. Could we have a brief summary?

9

It took me a bit of rummaging to find it, but here’s the original post: viewtopic.php?f=23&t=9796#p60278

10

Ah, oops, yes.

It’s basically a cross between SpeedIF Jacket and Apollo 18+20. You sign up by sending me a list of eight songs that you think might make for good games. I shuffle them up, and send each participant eight songs. They pick one and make a game vaguely inspired by it.

It’ll be happening at some point post-XYZZYs.

11

That sounds like fun…I’d be interested in this. I like these little comps!

12

So the criterion for inclusion of a song is that it be YouTubable?

13

Pretty much. ‘Available online and for free, YouTube preferred.’

14

Also, no more than two songs per artist, per participant.

15

Is there any monetary cost of entry? Cause that’s what put me off Spring Thing.

16

Nah, this will be a considerably more informal effort. (Spring Thing is pretty unique among IF events in requiring an entry fee.)

17

Sooooo, who already has a list and checked to see if they’re all YouTubable?

Just, y’know, curiosity.

18

Guilty.

Just don’t let the kids find out until Christmas morning, okay?

19

You could ask which games the voter has played and count the percentages, so if game A has 10 recommendations out of 15 plays it wins over game B that has 15 recommendations out of 50 plays.

20

I’m all over this! Will there be a guideline or a fixed time limit for working on entries? Can we work in any platform?