intfiction.org

Well, I was browsing the interactive fiction database the other day, and suddenly a neat thought occurred to me.
Interactive fiction should really have a "Top 100" chart somewhere on the internet, in which IF players could vote every year for their favorite games. I'm not really sure if such an animal already exists, but I would love some feedback on the idea.

Cheers

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Violence is certainly the answer to this one...

I think it would be interesting. Have people send in their 10 favourite games, add the numbers, generate a top 100. If nothing else, it would give us some data on how the tastes of the community change over time; and it would also serve as a list of recommendations. I'd participate.

There's the (long-defunct) IF Ratings scoreboard, which stopped being updated with new games some time before IFDB was rolled out. It was a worthwhile experiment, I think, but I hugely prefer IFDB's system of emphasizing reviews and using scores only in a handwavy sense; apart from anything else, the relatively low number of users meant that it was highly vulnerable to tactical voting.

I'm mixed on the idea; I certainly wouldn't want to see it presented as an authoritative IF Canon, and I doubt that it would promote discussion more in-depth than "No way is The Wall better than Straight Outta Compton", "I have read a lot of these" or "top-100 lists suck". But it could be interesting as a random-sample kind of thing, and statistics are fun.

That'd be a better method than what I was assuming (a comp-like system of rating everything you've played 1-10) but I'm not sure that it would produce a list 100 games long. Maybe there'd be a long tail of single-vote games, but my guess is that the meaningful portion of the list would comprise Adventure, ten to fifteen Infocom games, and 30-40 modern ones.

Such a list could have some good uses. It would keep some attention on good games from past years, instead of the community only paying attention new releases. The IFDB is already helping to keep older games relevant, but a regularly updated list of either highest-rated or most-played games could do more. It would help newcomers to the IF community as well. I guess it would be the equivalent of the New York Times bestseller list, or something.

The only problem I can think of is that the Top 100 List could become a sort of a canon in some players' minds. Granted, games that remain on the list for long periods probably deserve to be considered part of the community's canon, but this might make other deserving but relatively unknown games fall further into obscurity.

Just one? We should have three of them!

What's wrong about a canon? For people who're not so much into the scene but want to play something it'd be a great help.

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Wenn man in einschlägigen Frauen- oder Lifestyle-Zeitschriften von Apfel-, Birnen- oder Pfirsich-Popos liest, dann frage ich mich immer, ob ich der einzig Sehende auf den Kürbis­feldern deutscher Innenstädte bin.

Maybe it would, yes. I'm not married to the number 100. It would depend on the number of participants, of course.


I'm not very worried about that. Rarely do people consult a 'canon' and conclude that they should not be playing a game / reading a book / listening to an album / watching a movie because it is not in the canon.

In fact, assuming that people post their own top-10 (or top-whatever, I'm just making up some numbers here, of course) list in a publicly accessible place, I think it would lead to more rather than less chance of old games being rediscovered: even if only one persons puts a game in his list, that might make you want to check it out.

Okay here is my top ten!

1. Afflicted by Doug Egan!

2. can't think of any others that aren't super obvious.

3. should have started out with number ten and then counted down to number one.

4. although in that case my number ten spot would be Afflicted by Doug Egan

5. and it can't be both ten and one at the same time can it? that would be stupid.

6. it's important that I figure out ten different games that are impressive enough to show I have great taste but obscure enough to make me look really well-read.

6. also it'd probably be pretty classy of me to put an IF adaptation of some classic literature on here.

7. if I put in Moby Dick, would people think I was talking about an IF?

8. Moby Dick is too obvious. that's the kind of thing you put in your ok-cupid profile to look smart if you're too dumb to think of anything else.

9. speaking of which, I can't think of anything else.

10. Afflicted, by Doug Egan

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we gotta move these refrigerators

I think there could be more potential to this: You know that great feeling when you discover a book, a film or an album that you think is just magnificent but that isn't a best-seller or a box office hit, and you think to yourself "whoa, people really should know about this, I need to tell someone". The feeling is even more extraordinary than the one you get from liking a "canon" work.


Indeed, in any field of art, I think, the newcomers first turn to the canon to learn the basics and then, when you become "a serious dilettante", you start to broaden your horizons - which adds to the odd pleasure of expertise. Knowing the out-of-canon part of the art is actually something that is revered in most (if not all?) communities around art.

So, all this is why I think a top 100 (or top whatever) list would do us good. But only if there's enough interest, only if it's a real community effort.

Ok, my thoughts came out somewhat blurry (yet, in my mind, all was so very clear...), but surely someone recognizes that tickling feeling when discovering a work that seems "undiscovered", or the pleasure of knowing just way too much about a subject, right? They both require the canon to be there so that things can be outside of it and become discovered (and then maybe later canonized).