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I would guess that many of the Choice voters had at least heard of or played the other Choice games on the list. So they did pretty much what the rest of us did: vote from within the subset of stuff that they were already familiar with. You're right to suggest that the average Choice voter probably played a lot fewer games on the list than the typical IF community voter, and that's not a good thing. And they apparently had very different norms about how a community awards process should go, what with the swamping of the polls and the nominations in every category. But if they're guilty of ignorance of Mentula Macanus when they nominated ZE for everything, then I guess I'm also guilty of not knowing a damn thing about ZE when I voted.

I think the uproar is in part because the XYZZYs are "our" awards, and we want the results to reflect our collective judgments about "our" games (which can be parser-based, CYOA, or whatever, as long as it's stuff we've played and talked about). But the voting process as it stands doesn't necessarily produce this outcome.

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How can it not be about CS vs everyone else? Do the people who vote for ZE actually play parser games? I assume most don't. So by not comparing apples to apples, the pop system has the advantage because of its mass appeal. Like in my earlier comparison of Bethooven vs Justin Bieber.

This is about CYOA vs parser-IF and no amount of sugar coating (and this thread is full of it) is going to change that.

Well, we didn't have any of this regarding The Play - not that I recall - so if it *was* about that, you'd think it'd have come up before.

If people insist on not speaking up about the problem of putting COYA in the same boat as parser games because they don't want to offend their friends and acquaintances in the "COYA camp," then we're in danger of traditional text adventures disappearing completely. Stop discussing the issue privately (I won't name the individuals since they want to keep it private) and go public with your views. Not stepping on someone's toes is not worth the death of text adventure games.

The awards are open to all interactive fiction games released in the year, and though incomplete, Zombie Exodus was definitely released last year (on multiple platforms no less). I think it's a little unfortunate for Jim because when he does eventually release the fuller and most awesome version of Zombie Exodus, it presumably won't be eligible for entry.


Not to mention Binary, which if it weren't for The Play, would have placed higher in the IFComp than any prior hyperlink game entered.


That's somewhat over-egging the pudding, don't you think? No ones going to stop playing text adventures just because hyperlink games are enjoying a resurgence of popularity. If anything, I'd expect the reverse!

You mean like Point&Click adventures (which is the direction we're moving here, even though that already happened two decades ago) helped IF?

They must have, because here we are playing IF.

I'm not sure that's right. The Introcomp games were certainly released last year, but don't appear on the list of games eligible for nominations.

But ZE was released commercially, so its incompleteness is of a different order. Like Minecraft's incompleteness...

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Hmm... if it would make the community more comfortable to put CYOA into its own category, I certainly wouldn't feel offended... though I'm not sure it's necessary beyond, say, the Best Implementation award, where it's extremely obvious that a parser game would need extra polish in this area whereas CYOA can cut corners. (Maaaybe Best Puzzles/Individual Puzzle as well?) I mean, good writing/story/characters are what they are regardless of interface, right?

And yeah, to be honest, I was pleasantly surprised when The Play did as well as it did in the comp. I thought there'd be more genre purists complaining about it...

I have no friends or acquaintances in the CYOA camp, and I don't think putting CYOA in the same boat as parser games is a problem or likely to lead to the death of text adventure games. In this particular case, the problem is partly that there's too little communication between the camps, not that there's too much.

I do feel that there's a bit of a one-way street in the communication; the ChoiceScript folks have been reaching out to the IF community by entering games in the comps etc., but have they been playing the parser games much? If not, who should do what about it?