You just responded to one. I’ve entered both the Spring thing and the IFComp in the past, but with the rules as they are I won’t be entering again.
Sorry for derailing from Spring Thing. Folded for courtesy to those who are in BRIEF mode.
[rant]
Oookay, whoa there. Here is where I feel these arguments don’t come from a place of inclusion and promotion - I don’t think the IF community as a whole is so enormously huge that people need to be “weeded out” and “suffer consequences” because they took the time to essentially “audition” their work for a contest.
One might consider a contest entry as an audition and it should be judged. Since nobody plays the game at the exact same time, they get to judge what’s there when then download it or play it online. When an fledgeling author gets feedback, the most positive reaction they can have to having someone discover a problem is to immediately fix what is wrong and make it better.
Or one might be Simon Cowell and say “No. You’ve screwed up. You’re not qualified to do this thing you enjoy and spend a lot of time doing if you can’t do it perfectly. Give me the jacket back, you’re fired.”
This is why beta testing happens. Closed beta testing however is a limited resource because of the nature of interactive narrative, not every reader is going to get to every part of the game or try every possiblity. Beta testing narrows this down, but for a more complicated narrative nobody will get to every path. Consider two examples which offer loads of interactivity:
Counterfeit Monkey received support for a good long time, and is now publicly sourced so others can continue to improve the implementation.
Scroll Thief has been done for a while, but is tirelessly updated as people find new possibilities with the Zorkian magic it permits.
[spoiler]When I beta-tested Scroll Thief, (as I remember it from more than a year ago, I might have the details off a bit and I’m sure the game might have changed somewhat in the interim) the first problem in the game is you need spells which come on scrolls, but scrolls burn up when you use the spell. You need the gnusto spell to permanently inscribe a spell to your spellbook (which needs a source spell on a scroll to burn, after which you can cast it from the spellbook), but how to get gnusto? Without it your spell book is a computer with no operating system.
You start with rezrov meant to get you into the library, but my first move instead was to use one of my four expensive blank scrolls in starting inventory to make a backup copy rezrov scroll. This allowed me to enter the library where an exhibit of ancient gnusto source scrolls are secured in a protective display case (magic glass so tourists don’t inadvertently cast and burn up a rare artifact). Since I didn’t burn my only rezrov spell getting in, I can also rezrov - open the case. I used two more blank scrolls to copy gnusto twice (you don’t want to cast gnusto from a historical source scroll and burn it up–you’re a scroll thief, not a scroll dick). Then in another room for safety, per the rules the game set up, I should be able to GNUSTO GNUSTO. Daniel wrote back that he didn’t plan that at all. I’m supposed to use frotz to get in the library and there was some whole other way to inscribe gnusto. I had also locked myself out of winning by using too many parchments, but what I did was “legal” per game logic, so despite it being a non-winning path, he had to figure out how to implement GNUSTO GNUSTO correctly. (I personally think it’s brilliant to make a game that contains magic emergent solutions unrealized by the author; also the case with Counterfeit Monkey.)
(Digression but an anecdote hopefully illustrating how an author can be blind to what actually can happen in their own game.)[/spoiler]
Again here with the perhaps misplaced hostility. “Responsibility” is a good word. “[…]penalized” is not. At least in the context where you are suggesting you feel people should be penalized but not let them take responsibility for a mistake in a free game that you are in no way being coerced to play and have usually 40+ more to choose from.
Mm…sure. If that’s the world you want the community to emulate.
But that would seem to depend more on the qualities of the game unrelated to the pipe and wire mechanics below, such as writing and plot which also matter. If you want to penalize a potentially high quality game for a mechanical bug that must remain in place despite the author knowing about it and being able to fix it…that’s winning chess due to your opponent’s phone ringing. Potentially suggestive one is less interested in discovering a compelling work than they are in dismissing it.[/rant]
Rant-tagged as well, good idea:
[rant]The only reply I have to your post, HannonO, is to say that I agree with the most part - what I want to emphasise is that what a true competition is and what the comps we have here are are two different things. And they should be. The IFComp isn’t like auditioning for the Met. It’s not a dog-eat-dog world in here - and it can’t be, because it’s a small community, because people are not trying to make a living out of this, because people are doing this for fun, because actually being the best won’t make a wit of difference to anyone’s life.
Therefore, all my points about competitions are not necessarily valid for these specific comps. I thought I’d made it clear before, but in your responses you do say quite often that “that’s not the sort of competition we need”. I agree. But that IS what an actual competition is like. Moving AWAY from that sort of competition to adapt it to the necessities of the community is, IMHO, an act of intelligence.
I still don’t like the updates rule, but again, it’s for the reasons I’ve said before. [emote]:)[/emote] Not for these. I did use to cite these reasons as well, but as usual this healthy debate has caused me to reconsider.[/rant]
EDIT - [rant]Quick note: context is important. In this case, the context is “who is arguing for what” and “what makes them argue that way”. For instance: I’m an opera singer. Of COURSE my views on competitions is going to be a dog-eat-dog affair. There’s no excuses. If you miss the first note, you’re out before you can do anything. If they don’t like the way you look, you’re out before you open your mouth. If you’re at your very best but someone else is better, you’re out. No excuses, no second chances. No margin for error, period.
Of COURSE I’m going to defend a certain view on what a competition is. [emote]:)[/emote] It’s my experience, and it’s what I live with daily - it doesn’t end after the audition, you’re continuously being judged.
Is it helpful to apply this model to this community? I don’t think it is, as things currently stand. It could be, if people were to look at it differently. It seems pretty clear that no one wants to do that, though, so it shan’t be done. And that would seem to be that.
It’s a competition model, though. It’s like a mod of a competition, better suited to this community and similar communities. A true competition is bloody - people are out to win, after all. And you do have people like the PC in Broken Legs out to sabotage you.
I’m just ranting about this because it bothers me a bit when people take something for their right. It’s like saying (and I’ve heard this quite often) “I’ve paid my tube ticket, therefore I’ve a right to sit down”. No, you paid for the ticket, therefore you’ve a right to travel in the tube, that’s what your money bought you. If there happen to be empty seats, good for you, otherwise you stand. False entitlement gets up my goat. Similarly, saying “I have a right to make my competition entry better after I enter it” is only true in the comp where it’s allowed by the rules… but if it weren’t in the rules, by default you would NOT have that right. It’s quite baffling to me why people would think they would. Everyone arguing this point bring up this community, and the model of this competition, and they’re totally missing the fact that they’re defending the MODEL of this competition - which was never an issue - whereas what they were asked to defend was their entitlement to that rule in competitions overall.[/rant]
EDIT 2 - Come to think of it, now that I’ve verbalised the model of competition I’m personally used I realise it’s also just another model. Not any more or less valid. As long as a group of people agree on a set number of rules, participants and judges agree to be rated and rate on those rules, and there is a ranking at the end where, according to a set of definitions, at least one entry is singled out as being better than the others, it’s a competition.
Well. THERE’S my whole argument out the window, then.
Well, not my WHOLE argument, I still have my original player-centric reasons. Best to stick to those, they’re more constructive.