Round 4, the Division Championships are underway, and the winners of these matches will each have the distinction of outcompeting 15 other games to represent their division in the Round 5 Semi-Finals next week.
DAY 1
Votes are relatively slow coming in for this heat; with only the top eighth of contestants remaining, fans are faced with some difficult choices…
Augmented Fourth has started out strongly against Six in a relatively hot match. The first measure of votes has gone decidedly in its favor, yielding a four point lead at 6-2.
The match of A Change in the Weather vs. Sand-dancer has just as many votes and is tied for hottest of the heat. The two slice of life stories with magical realist elements have so far tallied up the same number of votes at 4 each.
The relatively slow match of First Things First vs. Never Gives Up Her Dead has seen the chart-busting newer work take a significant lead at 4-1. The two long-form time travel games have the highest combined play time in the segment.
In the last bout, Babel and Metamorphoses have also notched the same number of points each. The score in that match is currently 3-3.
DAY 2
A second wave of votes has been tallied, and the heat is rising as these eight games vie for the fan votes that will give them a claim to the top spot in their respective divisions…
Six has gained significantly on rival Augmented Forth, the former posting three points over the last 24 hours while the latter added one. The score there is now 7-5 in favor of Fourth.
Sand-dancer and A Change in the Weather continue their evenly-matched contest, with new votes bringing the score in this intense match between comp-length entries to 6-6.
First Things First earned a vote, reducing the gap between itself and Never Gives Up Her Dead, but the current leader quickly made up the difference, leaving First Things still three behind at 5-2.
Metamorphoses has quickened its pace, securing four points in a sudden burst while rival Babel’s score increased by one. The physics-and-metaphysics puzzler now leads 7-4.
DAY 3
Only a single vote today as the work week begins…
Sand-dancer, showing either strength or luck, has managed to get ahead of A Change in the Weather and now leads by one at 7-6 in the segment’s hottest match.
DAY 4
No new scoring. The crowds are hushed, waiting to see what the contestants’ next moves will be.
DAY 5
First Things First has scored a third time, leaving it two behind Never Gives Up Her Dead at 5-3.
DAY 6
All scores static with one day remaining. Will current leads hold?
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FINAL RESULTS
The contests were short and sharp this round, delivering clean wins to the four victors that have earned the distinction of being division champions.
Match #57: In the battle of Six vs. Augmented Fourth, the classic Infocom-inspired puzzler beat the high-energy funfest with a final score of 7 to 5. Although Six scored the first point, Augmented Fourth charged forward with great fanfare to score six points by the end of Day 1. A sizable gain by Six on Day 2 wasn’t enough to close the gap, leaving it in second place at match’s end. A quarter of prognosticating fans expected Fourth to go the distance here, but the stunning performance by Six far outstripped predictions; the conventional wisdom was that it would lose to Alabaster in Round 1. Six, which pushed the limits of multimedia and user-friendliness that prevailed in its time, was the only competing game by author Wade Clarke, a long-time presence here on the forum. Fans will be pleased to know that several other works bear the mark of his authorship, including Leadlight, Ghosterington Night and Captain Piedaterre’s Blunders, as well as some commercial works. We salute this fine game and its author as they retire honorably from the field to cheering from the crowd.
Match #58: Sand-dancer has continued its string of improbable wins by besting A Change in the Weather with a score of 7-6. Having earned the division championship, the magic-tinged fantastic drama goes on to face another tough match in the semi-finals against opponent Augmented Fourth. A Change in the Weather started out strong in this match, notching the first point and leading for most of Day 1, but a strong performance near the tail end of that first 24 hours let it even up the score at 4-4. Another day of struggle between these two modern tales of personal change saw Sand-dancer pull ahead, only for A Change in the Weather to get its second wind and retie at 6-6. On the third day, the last vote was cast, favoring Sand-dancer with the win. As with Division 1, few predicting fans saw this result coming – only one fan expected A Change in the Weather to reach this point, and none expected Sand-dancer. The historically-significant A Change in the Weather, one of the oldest competing games in the tournament, was the last of four champions created by author Andrew Plotkin. In addition to his many games besides those which were nominated, which include Spider and Web, Shade and The Space Under the Window among others, Plotkin was the inventor of the Glulx virtual machine and a significant figure in the early years of the Interative Fiction Technology Foundation, from which he only recently retired from office. The crowd gives a standing ovation as he and his work transcend this dimension in a colorful shimmer of light.
Match #59: Never Gives Up Her Dead secured the division championship by defeating First Things First in low-key match ending 5-3. In this contest of games featuring time travel, Never Gives Up Her Dead put the first point on the board and outscored First Things First four to one on the first day. Although First Things First gained two votes to Never Give Up Her Dead’s one over the remainder of the match, it fell short of what was needed to pull even. Predicting fans foretold both contestants meeting here, though more expected the newer work than the older, and its win is the least unexpected for the round. First Things First was the only competing work by J. Robinson Wheeler, who is listed as author or contributor to nearly 20 works on IFDB, including Being Andrew Plotkin, The Tale of the Kissing Bandit and ASCII and the Argonauts. First Things First, a first effort that was completed over a five-year span, won the 2001 XYZZY for Best Puzzles and was nominated for both Best Game and Best Story. We salute both author and work as they depart the field to audience applause.
Match #60: In the last match of the segment, Metamorphoses was victorious over Babel at 7-4. Though the match looked to be close-fought over the course of a first day that left the board even at 3 all, a sizable batch of votes on Day 2 more than doubled its score while its rival gained only one point. The new margin held throughout the balance of the week, giving Metamorphoses the win with the largest lead in the segment. As with Division 3, at least some predicting fans expected each contestant to be here, and a single fan expected both while also calling the win. Author Ian Finley had no other competing works in the tournament, though IFDB credits him as author of five other works, including Kaged and All Alone, as well as co-author of The Shadow in the Cathedral. The audience cheers for Babel, which won the 1997 XYZZY Award for Best Story and was nominated for four others, and which has also appeared twice on the Interactive Fiction Top 50 of All Time, as author and game leave the field.
Here, now two-thirds of the way through the tournament in terms of rounds (and just two weeks from the end in terms of time), PCT Fan @mathbrush continues to hold a narrow lead in the Official Prediction Game with 33 out of 60 correct calls to date – but two other predictors have been on a hot streak and have made up a lot of ground.
This heat has knocked out nominees by @BadParser, @Denk, @Hellzon, @Joey and @mathbrush, plus one fan who submitted nominations anonymously. Unfortunately, those were the final champions for all of those fans. Of the 6 fans with champions remaining: one has 2, and five have 1. Of the 5 fans with champions remaining: two have 2, and three have 1.(Some contestants were nominated more than once.) [EDIT: I made an error in bookkeeping for these stats again; revised number are correct.]
We’re down to the Final Four in Round 5, from which two finalists will emerge for the championship match!