Son of Shufflecomp 2015: seeking an organiser.

I figured it would be the common result. Actually, I’d say that every game prompted by my idea would be fanfic in at least one sense.

I don’t think that’s the issue, so much.

The advantage of music, for me, is that it’s primarily more evocative than concrete; even when there’s a clear narrative, it tends to leave much more unspecified than a prose or film equivalent would do. They sort of come pre-mythified, if that makes any sense. In (most) novels or movies, narrative, setting, character all tend to be a lot more nailed-down.

Other ideas:

  • Sound Effect Jam - everyone submits sounds, these sounds get used somewhere in the games.
  • Sequel Comp - Phase 1, people submit fully formed game plots. Phase 2, authors create games as if they were sequels to these plots.
  • TruffleComp - Everyone makes edutainment games about mushroom foraging. Whoever implements the best pig training simulation wins.

I pretty much want to do all of these.

Also TitleComp, where at least some of the titles come from a random title generator: <a class=“postlink-local” href="https://intfiction.org/t/ifcomp-game-names-merged/675/1

I suggest WalkthroughComp. People submit various walkthroughs; you pick one and write a game around it. Both hyperlink walkthroughs (including only the appropriate links) and parser linkthroughs could be submitted. (A walkthrough comp has been done before - see emshort.home.mindspring.com/walkthrough.htm - but without participant submission of walkthroughs.)

Apart from that, I’d be in for the TitleComp suggestion, or for directly revisiting Shufflecomp sans changes. I really liked ShuffleComp.

(Arguments for TitleComp:

Farmer Brown’s On Pluto
El Finds Kitten
It’s A Dog’s Lists
Dracula’s Town Musicians
Nostradamus’s Onion Aurora
Where Museum
I’ll Cauldron
Even the Devil Must Eden
Bored Quest Only For The Noble
Dance Fever Tire Hoax
We Are Maze
Dungeons of Z-Tornado
Robopuppy of Baron von Glockenspiel
The Revenge of Clueless Bob Newbie, Part Green
Captain Speedo: Busted!
Revenge of the Killer Surf Nazi Robot Coming to Tea!
Pac-Man TAXES
Orientation DEATH DEATH DEATH

All legitimately generated at nitku.net/if/namegenerator/. C’mon, you know you want to.)

An idea that crossed my mind was to use the Periodic Table of Storytelling somehow in a comp. For instance, maybe you are given 5-6 of the tropes and have to include them in the story? For those unfamiliar, the link is below:

http://designthroughstorytelling.net/periodic/

To be clear, I’d definitely like to see Shufflecomp 2: Mimetic Boogaloo at some point. (I may have started song selections, even.) If not next year, probably the year after.

Unless someone else really wants to do it, I’ll adopt the son of ShuffleComp. I’ll make a formal announcement early next year, following the same schedule as Maga did. I will also try to secure an assistant or two at that time.

The Comp will probably be the same as last year, since there seems to still be interest. However, keep posting your suggestions here, and show your support for those you like. I can be persuaded otherwise.

Neil

Generalized “Edutainment Comp” sounds pretty cool to me. Especially if they’re user-submitted and randomized, so everyone has to learn a new skill and then write a game around it.

Awesome. Thanks for taking this on, Neil.

(hails cab to Timbuktu, exits stage left at speed, rubbing hands together in villainous fashion and cackling ‘sucker’ under his breath)

I dreamed I was in a creative writing class where we all had to write up story ideas and then choose one another’s story ideas to write an interactive fiction project about (this being a dream, it was a lot easier to design the interactivity than it would be in real life). I went to one of the other students asking him kind of casually if he’d found someone to take his idea and he cheerfully said yes, which let me down because I’d really wanted to do that one.

You might think I’m going to propose this as the format for a comp but what I’m really thinking of is that we write up some dreams that could be used as inspirations. (I think there was a DreamComp, which may never technically have ended, where people made games based on their own actual dreams, but this would be different.) It might be too intimate though. And maybe not evocative enough in the right way.

I would be into that! Eleven-year-old me’s great ambition was to write edutainment software.

(Eleven-year-old me didn’t get out much.)

I figure when – I mena if – something goes wrong, I can say, “It was like that when I got here.”

Neil

Other People’s Property Comp, you name/describe/photograph X of the most interesting/meaningful physical objects you own, then these get shuffled into lists for other people to use in their games.

Ooo.

I thought you were suggesting a plagiarism comp. I don’t think it would be very popular though.

I was going to call it Other People’s Stuff Comp but then I realized I was passing up an opportunity for people to ask each other if they were down with OPPComp.

I’d be in for that. Or maybe It Was a Good Day comp. Where people pick 10 cool random things that happen, or could happen, in the space of a day. Perhaps the game could have easter eggs if you determine what day it actually is, like so: murkavenue.tumblr.com/post/16553 … s-good-day

Okay, maybe it’s better, err, less awful as a concept.

YES! I would definitely take part in this.

“Generalized “Edutainment Comp” sounds pretty cool to me. Especially if they’re user-submitted and randomized, so everyone has to learn a new skill and then write a game around it.”

I’m not sure I completely understand the concept of edutainment – and maybe I misunderstand what you mean by “skill” – , but it seems to me that learning something new and becoming skilled at it take time, and ShuffleComp authors only have about six weeks. I was impressed with the quality of this year’s entries, and I would like to see the same next year.

Neil