IFCOMP 2020

 

Image credit: IFcomp/Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation

Last year, Donald Conrad and I entered IFcomp, the annual Interactive Fiction Competition. We don’t have an entry this year, which means that I can talk freely about the event and its entries. I’m happy about that, because past entrants would get amazingly catty about rule #4 — don’t encourage judges to violate the rules — and whether someone’s public comments were a violation. 

I won’t be as prolific as someone like Brian Rushton, who manages to play and review every entry each year. However, I’ve got to play at least 5 entries to be counted as a judge, so I should be able to write at least 5 reviews. 

The real challenge is going to be the pacing of the reviews. Games are released today, and even if I threw myself at the very first 15-minute entry I found, I’d still have to organize my thoughts and edit my sentences before I published anything. That delay can be difficult. 

I found it agonizing to wait for public mentions of my past entries. I kept telling myself that I wanted that delay so that people could give my work serious consideration. I’d say it was okay to wait for a month if I got a detailed review — and then five minutes later I’d be willing to sell my soul for any kind of public mention.