Week 5 Update
Three weeks to go now! Your weekly stats:
- 127 reviews
- $578 raised
- Only 1 game with no Review-a-thon reviews!
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Week 6 Update
Only two weeks left!! Things have slowed down a bit, but @DeusIrae is keeping up the momentum, with 39 reviews written! Our current totals:
- 145 reviews
$582$600 raised
Let’s see if we can hit $600 by the end!! (EDIT: done!) As always, anyone is welcome to jump in at any time, writing as many or as few reviews as you like. I’ll once more link to the review spreadsheet, where you can get links to all the reviews written so far (and to the IFDB pages for all the games), and to the sponsorship spreadsheet, where you can sign up to sponsor reviewers or be sponsored yourself!
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Thanks for the update!
If a bit of self-promotion is allowed, I’ve currently capped out on donations from my generous sponsors (wisely, none of them wanted to be held hostage by my ridiculous compulsion to get to the end of any list I start). But if someone wanted to step up to sponsor my last 10 reviews now that I’m within striking distance of getting to 49, that would neatly get us just over $600…
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wish granted!
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Yay, thanks so much!!!
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FWIW, since I missed the boat on sponsorship, I did match my sponsors’ pledge of $148. Making the total an INFURIATING $748. Imma lose sleep over that not-end-in-0 number.
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Don’t worry, I have it on good authority that there are more reviews to come! (The authority being me—I’m writing another right now.) So the number will rise yet!
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Future of the Review-a-thon
Skipping a formal update this week because I don’t expect the numbers to change much between now and the end of the event (August 30th—final stats, “awards”, etc. to be posted on the 31st!), but I wanted to get this conversation started before IFComp kicks off. As I think about future iterations of this event, I’d love to hear any feedback or suggestions. JJMcC already mentioned having it earlier in the year next time to space it out more from IFComp, which I definitely agree with.
I’m also specifically interested in thoughts on the frequency. Originally I’d planned for it to be an annual event, but now I’m not sure that makes sense. Since this was the first time, we had a hefty 49 games submitted, with the oldest one published in 1988. Most, though, were from the last year or two, so it seems that it mainly drew authors seeking feedback on recent games. So far, since I made and announced the 2025 poll, only four games have been added (two by me 
). So I’m wondering if a June/July 2025 Review-a-thon would be too soon; there might be too few games submitted by then to sustain a whole event. Making it biennial might make more sense, or I could hold it whenever the poll reaches a certain number of games—that’s probably overly complicated, though, and I’m not sure what the number would be…
Any and all thoughts are welcome!
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I think waiting until the 2025 poll fills up in actual 2025 makes sense? like, we don’t know what games will be released by then that have been under-reviewed, and that’s almost a year out. if there are still only 4 games submitted, sure maybe holding it in 2026 would be better. But if the Neo-Interactives jams are as active as they have been, and there are other competitions like the Art Show incoming, I’m sure that 4 is not where it will stay. Even 15 games would be sufficient for a Review-a-Thon for me – some competitions get submission numbers comparable to that amount!
I do wonder if submitting others’ works with their permission could be allowed. maybe that’d be considered a pain cuz if you’re getting permission from the author they might as well just submit it themself-- plus how would permission be checked, honor system? still, maybe an author hadn’t considered, or feels too humble, to submit their game themself, and you want more attention drawn to it as a hidden gem. that seems like an interesting thing to allow. probably with a maximum limit of what non-you games to nominate – (I’d say 1-3)
I also would like to suggest that a maximum number of initial reviews be the limit for whether a game can be submitted for consideration, like ≤ 5 reviews or something.
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Don’t forget to put your reviews on IFDB as the Review-A-Thon comes to a close! I feel sad that I just completely forgot about this halfway through, but I’m glad I got some in.
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I put in a few last-minute reviews on IFDB just now and added them to the spreadsheet. Putting them in an intfiction thread as well isn’t a requirement, right? I’m also not sure when the deadline is since I’d do a few more if I had the time, but, well…
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Oh nice, looking forward to reading them! A thread definitely isn’t a requirement, and I’d say the deadline is any time up until I post the wrap-up post today, so feel free to do some more in the next few hours!
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Wrap-up
Welcome… to the end of the inaugural IF Review-a-thon! I’m going to start out by saying THANK YOU to everyone who participated in any way—writing reviews, sponsoring reviewers, reading and liking reviews… I had no idea how to expect this event to go, and its success has blown me away! In the end, we had (drumroll)…
- 14 reviewers
- 163 reviews
- And $758 raised!
Beyond my wildest dreams, y’all. I’m so happy people were into this event!
Next up… awards!
- First review: @Zed
- First-time event reviewers: @30x30, @SomeOne2, @inventor200, @lavieenmeow
- Bingo-getters: @jjmcc and @wolfbiter
- Most reviews: @DeusIrae (all 49 games!)
- Runner-up: @jjmcc (41)
And seriously, I appreciate everyone who joined in, whether you wrote 1 review or 50.
Besides the awesome numbers and the success of getting those authors who wanted it more feedback on their games, the RaT had the side benefit of generally drawing more attention to these games. Some had been out for years with no or few IFDB reviews and ratings, but those numbers went up for most of them during the RaT, and not always due to RaT reviews being cross-posted! So RaT led some people to discover new games that they likely never would have otherwise, and I think that’s super cool.
Going foward...
Speaking of IFDB, as Max said above, I highly encourage those who haven’t to cross-post their reviews there. As both an author and a player, it’s nice to have that repository of reviews all in one place. And sponsors, don’t forget to donate to the GoFundMe! I made a handy second sheet on the sponsorship spreadsheet with everyone’s totals.
I definitely plan to host the RaT again (although I’ll note that in the event of my devise or unforeseen disappearance from the internet, anyone is free to take the reigns and initiate another RaT themselves). As noted a few posts above, I’m open to any and all feedback, from participants and bystanders alike. Suggestions for improvement, thoughts on what worked well, what not so well… I mentioned time of year and frequency before, but what about length? Was two months too long? Regarding frequency, we’re now up to six games in the 2025 poll, so I’m thinking that having it in 2025 will be no problem—and again, the plan is for June/July to space it out more from IFComp.
Anyway, feel free to reply here or DM me with any feedback, and thanks again to all the participants!
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Congratulations and thanks to organizer and participants! This was a great activity that called attention to some overlooked works. Bravo
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