IF is dead

You gotta be kidding me! Only 13 Inform games, and no TADS?!! Is this an IFComp?
I suppose it’s possible that one of those “Web” games has a good parser, but I won’t be finding out.
The only question I have now is whether to 1-vote the non-IF games, or not vote on them.
The good news is, I ought to be able to play all 13.

It’s not dead, it’s resting.

I think for next year, the IFComp should be renamed to the CYOAComp because that’s basically what it is now. Still, it lost me as a fan a few years back so it’s hard to feel anything more than mild disappointment at this year’s turnout.

IF has survived many previous deaths.

Yes, it’s like a puppy you have to keep hitting with a newspaper to make it behave.

Well, “Web-based” doesn’t directly mean “non-IF”. As far my experience with the IFComp goes, rarely the Web games have been more interactive than flipping pages… but this doesn’t mean we can’t have good IF this year.

Also: 13 Inform games mean IFComp is NOT dead. As for anything, majority doesn’t mean having the upper hand.

I reserve my (useless) judgment until I’ve played some games. 42 are a lot, though.

[rant]The end-of-an-era feeling is there, yes. I’ve been trying to be an IF author since when I was 14, and now that I’m one - or have been - looks like game’s over. It fucking figures.[/rant]

It’s your fault, basically. Writers of your kind (you, Cadre, zarf, and all of the same out there) should come back to the IFComp, instead of spoiling our hopes for Xyzzies by releasing on New year’s Eve…

Edit to add: " "

I can understand your sentiment. But think of it this way, in the 80s, text adventures came out pretty much concurrent with personal computers themselves. The only people with PCs were intelligent, literate, sure, maybe nerdy, people so it was the perfect storm. Now that every asshole and his brother has a PC, the demand for all sorts of games is around, but there is still that sect of people who are literate and intelligent and who has an appreciate for interactive fiction. I don’t think it’s going away. Maybe the face of it is changing. Hopefully CYOA will branch off and exist somewhere else one day (I’m a hater as well), but it seems like it’s not today.

Serious question: Why do you care?

I wonder if it’s time to shuffle the CYOA and non-parser games into their own category and have the main comp be just for IF (parser) games.

MTW, I hope you discussing things here won’t spoilt your entry. That said:

1. Yes, I believe “standard” IF will stay as long as the old peeps are alive. Or new ones pop up of the same kind.
2. The fact that nowadays making a piece of IF is as hard as typing text into a form (this is how twine works, isn’t it?) will surely open the doors of IF to many good writers who could not achieve anything with “formal coding” (namely: me before I7). But it will also do it for that marauding mob of talentless bimbiminkias waiting for the other 15 minutes of celebrity. This will eventually spoil the fun and make the noise the far more audible sound in here. I’m not that happy.
3. I don’t even know why I’m judging, as I’m a perfect bimbominkia myself, too. (But got to the IFComp with a lot of seriousness – if you get what I mean).

Just tried the first (random) game. No testing; grammar mistakes in the very first sentence (random commas, bad capitalization!); dull - if not vacant - descriptions. And it doesn’t know what “xyzzy” means.

It will be a looooooooong judgement period.

I should be ok so long as I’m not discussing MY game. But I’ll hush now anyway since I’ve nothing more useful to add, lol.

The easier a system is, the more terrible games it produces because it attracts the kind of people who don’t have the patience to learn a more difficult system. Just look at Quest.

With dogs (as with people), it’s more effective to provide positive reinforcement for behavior you do want than to punish the behavior you don’t want.

If I’m included in this question (English has great ways of being ambiguous): because. I feel like the overwhelming mass of non-parser will kill the parser. The World will want and have it this way, maybe, and that’s the evolution, baby. But I don’t like it. I don’t want the parser to die, as I didn’t want the X-Files, Twin Peaks, and Lost to end.

Ow, but isn’t this the same old rant me, Whyld and somebody else fall to every bloody year? Are we repeating ourselves? Yes, we are repeating ourselves. We contain multitudes. Of repeating people.

I’m deleting my comments just in case. I’d love to be part of the discussion, but I should hush as an author. They weren’t controversial, I’m just ensuring I’m following the rules.

It won’t let me delete them. Oh well.

intelligent nerdy etc is just shorthand for white

there are tons of shoddy parser games

twine is beautiful

You can remove the content of each post if you want to. But as you said, I think you’re ok since you’re not discussing individual games.

I’d be curious how much the coming of I7 made I6 authors feel “IF is dead” because it lowered a lot of barriers, and if there were a lot of lowly-rated I7 entries after I7 showed up.

Also, I’m not big on “X is dead” comments. “What can we do to keep X alive” seems more productive.

To you, I guess.