Your average score is reduced by 3 if your intfiction.org username begins with the letter D. Fair?
People have a sense of fairness that’s independent of whatever set of rules are established. As mattw said upthread, we’re retreading old ground here, and I’d encourage you to read the old thread, but my basic contention is that rules that isolate whatever attribute is being measured by the competition contribute towards fairness, while rules that muddy the waters with extraneous factors (such as the order in which a judge chooses to play the games) detract from fairness.
No, that wouldn’t be fair to people whose username starts with a ‘d’, but that example has nothing to do with the quality of the thing being submitted to the competition. Updates to the work do.
Assume that we both submit games to the comp that have quality 7/10. One week later, we both update our games. Now they have quality 8/10.
Scenario 1: A judge plays my game on day 1 and your game on day 8. She gives me a 7 and you an 8.
Scenario 2: The same judge plays your game on day 1 and my game on day 8. She gives you a 7 and me an 8.
Our games are of equal quality, both before and after the updates. In Scenario 1, it’s not fair that I scored 1 point less than you did. In Scenario 2, it’s not fair that you scored 1 point less than I did.
Consider the alternative universe with no updates. We both get 7s (or, if we hustle, we both get those changes in before the deadline, and we both get 8s). Fairness ensues.
Sure, and for all I know you’re secretly Andrew Plotkin in disguise. But what people have to go on is your public-facing persona, and so far the bulk contributions of that seem to be telling authors that they are ruining the comp and, by proxy, that they are unwanted here.
As for the rest: “Fair competition” is not objective but subjective. There are entire fields of study dedicated to what form of voting – in national elections, so arenas with much higher stakes than an interactive fiction competition – produces the “fairest” results, and there is no agreed-upon consensus, at least not agreed-upon to be universally implemented. As for the comp, others have brought up their own opinions as to the fairness of the competition and the judging as it stands. There are a lot of variables at work.
And as for principles, I realize others may disagree, but I don’t believe in rules for rules’ sake. A rule is only as good as its effects. Multiple people, as well as outside consensus and coverage of the competition (and probably scores, if someone were to do that analysis) have suggested that this rule has improved the quality of IF being released. So it really comes down to what you value more: better IF being produced, or adherence to a rule strictly because it was a rule at one point.
But there’s more than one judge. A more likely scenario would be:
You each have an average of X persons judging your game per day. Updating at mid-comp, you’d both have an equal number judges with an average score of 7, and an equal number of judges with an average score of 8, for a final average of 7.5
However, if one of you hustles and gets those changes in before the deadline, that person now has an average score of 8 from all their judges, putting them ahead of the other.
The person who relies on updating during the comp is already getting penalised, unless they’re so very lucky as to have no-one judge their game before they make the update. And if updating comes as a response to reviews, then clearly that isn’t happening.
Two games can’t have equal quality, that is not how subjective assessments work, especially not in a rating scale such as the 10-point system the comp employs which lacks granularity.
I strongly doubt that anyone will dock points for updated games. I can’t prove that this will be true, but you can’t prove that it won’t be, because we don’t have data to support such claims. I’m aware that there have been cases of people expressing urges to 1-vote games they’ve seen which have been updated, but these have largely been recanted. If you played a game at a point and thought it deserved a 5, and another person plays it after an update and thinks it deserves a 6, you can’t prove that the discrepancy here exists solely because the update made it approximately one point better. I can’t prove that it doesn’t, but let’s be real: two people come to the same work of art with different subjective experiences in tow, and thus are going to grade things differently. This will not change ever; if I play a game and think it fucking sucks and I feel is deserving of a 1 because of the quality and narrative content of its writing but its rife with spelling errors, even if I play that same game again after the author has updated it to remove all spelling errors, it’s still very likely that I’m going to think the work is a piece of shit and deserves a 1. I’m not going to all of a sudden say “Oh well now it’s easier to read, so it’s a 2.” You can have a pristinely put-together thing in terms of production quality and I personally can still think that work is deserving of a 1, because that’s just how I am. And not everybody is going to think that way, and that’s perfectly fine. Subjective experience is what makes you human. BUT I suspect that most people who care enough about narrative and writing quality to vote in an interactive fiction competition are going to feel similarly.
I doubt I’m going to change anyone’s mind here, and that’s fine. I’m an author in the competition, my opinion on the matter inherently matters less because I’m a part of it and my votes don’t go to the final rankings of the competition, I get it. But I hope I’ve made my point clear here. This is probably the last I’ll say on the update privilege, at least in the public board. Have a good one, y’all.
The bulk of my contributions (70% of my posts here) are in the Inform 6 and 7 Development Forum, where, among other things, I help new authors learn how to write I7 games.
I haven’t said that authors are ruining the comp (see my post about not penalizing them for taking advantage of the existing rules). I’ve said that the competition organizers changing the rules in response to the complaints of some authors who want to update their games after the deadline or promote their games on social media during the voting period has damaged the competition by making it less fair.
To the extent that the community is deemphasizing the programming aspect of what was once a unique writer-programmer hybrid culture and transforming into a generic writer culture, I feel as though something is being lost. That doesn’t mean that I don’t want new people here, but I want “here” to still be metaphorically here and not somewhere else.
@Miseri: Ideally, yes, but maybe more judges play in alphabetical order by file name than use the randomizer that’s provided. Is the ability to update worth introducing all the extra noise and making the results that much less meaningful? Clearly, many people think yes, but I don’t.
That was a simplification to illustrate the noise that updates create even when we assume an objective measure of quality. In reality, the situation is even noisier and may depend on whether a judge is in a bad mood or has indigestion from lunch that day. Why make things worse?
is both an entirely separate criticism from updates during the comp (particularly given that updates during the comp, both as they exist and as they’re being characterized, are mostly related to programming) and a straw man, one that happens to be rather loaded*.
I realize this is a mixed metaphor, but I would say that, being one of those terrible writers.
It’s a response to the phrase “they are unwanted here” in your post to which I was responding, and it does relate to updates in that bugfixes are accepted as updates while content improvements are frowned upon as updates. This means that an author who got the programming side correct before the deadline is at a disadvantage relative to one who got the writing side correct before the deadline.
I think we’re on two different pages about what “content improvements” entail. Most people, as I see it, are talking about “content improvements” in terms of additions or large-scale changes. This could be revising the writing, but it could just as easily be implementing and coding new content. Bugfixes are accepted, as are fixing typos and other small changes that really don’t have much of an effect on overall writing quality. Writing a bunch of new content or making huge sweeping revisions is not accepted, and neither is making huge sweeping changes to the mechanics or implementation of a game.
As for “they are unwanted here,” that quote very much reads as “Sure, new people are fine, as long as they’re not those people, which are ruining the comp.” But again, coming from a writing background, I realize I’m not an unbiased opinion there.
Okay, I don’t normally come here any more, but I desperately wanted to make a sarcastic remark here and decided the best way to stop myself was to actually make a serious post.
First of all: I have pretty solid if not spectacular programming bona fides (well into the field of “real world” programming, too, and not just IF) and I have been paid actual money to write things, so if anyone is a “writter-programmer” it’s me. Those credentials are bullshit; they don’t qualify me to speak out any more than anyone else. But I do want to head off at the pass the notion that I’m pushing back against this kind of thinking in my self interest.
Here’s the deal: this sort of talk about “culture” is just gatekeeping. There is no such a thing as “programmer culture.” Seriously. People who are not programmers might be fooled into thinking that there is, because there’s a lot of talk of “hacker culture” and whatnot in tech circles, but it really is just membership in a self-defined in-group that cares mostly about keeping other people out. “I am not against new people but I don’t want things to change” means, at best, that you’re only interested in new people if they look and think like you. I’m not here to argue with bad, unhelpful opinions, but I did think it was important to come in and say for the record that I’m doing everything in my power to support new people coming into this community no matter what their background is, and I’m not alone in this.
I think that the latter (sweeping technical changes) are more likely to fly under the radar and be accepted, because the changes are not necessarily evident and the end result often just looks like “now things work properly.”
Here’s an analogy that might clarify things.
Scenario 1: I welcome someone into my home to collaborate with me on expanding it. After spending some time familiarizing themselves with the surroundings, they go out into the backyard and build a gazebo in a similar architectural style. My response: “Nice gazebo.”
Scenario 2: I welcome someone into my home to collaborate with me on expanding it. They take a cursory look around, bulldoze the place, and build a bowling alley. My response: “Wtf? I want my house back!”
It’s the difference between coming into a community, taking some time to understand its culture, and building on that culture, versus coming into a community, ignoring its culture, and immediately trying to remake it in your own image.
The sort of sweeping technical changes I had in mind would be, say, submitting a game with no scenery implemented, then implementing all the scenery. In both Inform and TADS that would entail both coding and writing, but the writing is the easier to sacrifice in this case. Suppose it’s a rope or a lit fireplace or any of the classic coding exercises. Nothing’s been enforced ever, so this is all speculation, but I imagine most people would say this would not fly under the update rule.
As for the rest: a) it’s not just one person’s house, yours or anybody else’s, and b) given that I’ve been in the community for 7 years now – more, arguably, but I’m going with the most conservative measure here – I’m unsure how much more time I must put in before I am no longer “coming into a culture and ignoring it.” Many people in this discussion have been there for the same amount of time or longer. I don’t necessarily agree with this line of reasoning – actually, I don’t agree with it at all – but if you’re going to apply it, these are the people you’re applying it to.
I’m a bit confused over who would be bulldozing what, here. The updates rule has been around for a while; 58 people–a record number, I might note–this year were happy enough with it to submit their work to the Comp. The organizers have been around since the 90s and so are very much coming from the community. Also, community cultures are, as a rule, dynamic and constantly in flux; there will never be one static ‘culture’ to come into. I don’t understand at what point one has paid their dues and gets to join “the community”.
Online platforms aren’t obliged to provide an update date, much more any info about what was updated.
Multiplayer games like Aspel or Naked Shades provide a different experience any time you start it, same code and same player.
People abusing the system are hurting themselves because some players would play an unfinished game and rate it as such.
IFComp participation is not “coming into a community”, it can be a single case of “hey, I heard about a text games comp, I have a game for them”. IFComp has no obligatory link to intfiction.org forum, you can register on ifcomp.org website. In fact, some platform-centric communities can trump this one by sheer numbers.
My argument is, you have to tolerate the mid-comp updates because without them, offline games are at a big handicap. A 1-voting practice can encourage making more online-only games that can be updated without disclosing the fact.
I wanted to say sorry for communicating extremely about my opinions. I’ve already sent PM apologies to a couple of you, but I also realized I should post here in case any others were offended. I felt un-welcomed by some opinions because I’ve updated a lot post-deadline. I should have found a more civil way of expressing myself. Sorry about that.
After reviewing this topic again, I can really see both sides of the coin, and understand the point of view in how this rule can negatively affect fairness/compness.
Have fun in this year’s comp whether you are an author or judge! I know I’ve been learning quite a bit.
As someone who plays winners of previous competitions, I sometimes find myself wondering, “Why didn’t this one do better? Did they improve it at the end?”
And yes, I let the rankings determine which games I play first and which ones I ignore. I let personal reviews affect my choices too, and sometimes wonder when the review was written with regards to updates.
Perhaps more visible changelogs? I’d love to see metrics on improved rankings after updates. “Most Improved” might be a worthwhile award.
This is a bit tricky, because, for instance, if I play a game at 2 PM for 2 hours, and it’s updated at 3:30 PM, and I vote–what’s counted? I think also people may not vote on the game they play right away, introducing a further wrench into the system. But the sentiment is good, and I hope that doesn’t sound like a backhand compliment. I also think that posting an IFDB review of before/after may help a lot (e.g. this author really improved things.)
However, it would be interesting to see how much updates do affect rankings. The metric wouldn’t be perfect, but we’d get some idea.
Re the changelogs, I think they are visible enough, and I enjoy reading other authors’. IIRC Jason was open to the idea of shutting off updates with 1 week left in the comp. Maybe a side thing to do would be to send out a list of updates for all games, so people could see what they might want to replay.