What is the best interactive fiction?

Vote vote vote!

You can find out about the choices at the IF Comp ballot.

Can’t vote for your best? Post a reply (or PM). For bonus points, say why you think it’s the best.

ADDED Sub Rosa (5 Minutes to Burn goes up in smoke)
ADDED Nowhere Near Single (farewell Paradise)

Voting guidelines

Use all your votes. Isn’t there a web game which is good enough to win? Don’t just be a good old parser fan.

Sorry, this topic is weird. Didn’t we just run a competition about this? The competition had a year context and more entries. Why are the things being added and removed?

What’s the point of this? If you just want to ask about the comp you really should edit the title to say so. If it’s the best of all time, the Top 50 was only just updated…

Do you know what the best interactive fiction is? Don’t you think the voters should decide? If somebody wants to vote for another game why shouldn’t it be added?

It’s fun to predict the result of IF Comp, or just vote on what you think is best. We couldn’t have this poll before because it would have promoted a few games during the judging period.

I’m proud to be a good old parser fan, because it’s what I like. [emote]:P[/emote] I like the parser. What’s wrong with being a parser fan? There is no direct relationship between being a parser fan and liking non-parser games.

Also… people just spent a month and a half voting on this. [emote]:P[/emote]

Finally, if we’re going to be picky, the bit I quoted (and the preceding sentence) has a direct bias which doesn’t really work any voting situation.

Heck, the very fact that there are games being added and removed to the poll makes it all flimsy. Who chose that? What is, in fact, the point?

EDIT - Here’s an alternative approach. A thread asking people what their favourites were, and what games they thought was going to win. No poll, no awkward voting, and definitely no bias. I remember that after I played Coloratura I was certain that it would do very well in the Comp. It did - it only went and won. I was happy to talk about it in a review I wrote at the time, and would be even happier to have discussed it in a thread…

…but as it stands, this isn’t really a thread that is conducive to that, is it?

Anyway, the answer is “to crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of their women.”

To you, maybe. Some of us would like hot water, good dentishtry and shoft lavatory paper.

There is, as a matter of fact (oh yeah, now that the voting is over I’m free to say Birdland is freaking incredible) and it definitely doesn’t need pity votes to do it. I don’t have a preferred format; both types can be done well or terribly (they tend to be terrible in different ways, though) but every time I see people chided for preferring parser it comes off as “don’t you be biased in favor of games you enjoy, now!”

Also, yeah, this is a weird voting format; why have an incomplete poll that keeps having games removed and added when there’s a much more accurate poll coming out this afternoon?