Possibly. So you might wish to watch what you start saying in threads created by new members who are actively looking into IF and the community.
There’s 48. Not sure why there’s not 50, though.
Lots of games got the same number of votes, so they were all given the same placement. I imagine there were three or more games with the next highest ranking, so adding 49th and 50th would require expanding the list past 50.
Hey gang I have to admit, arguing with namekuseijin wouldn’t have taken over the thread if y’all hadn’t dignified 'em with replies.
Anyway, one thing I actually like to do is browse past IFComps. The top games are generally pretty fun to play.
ifwiki.org/index.php/The_Annual_IF_Competition
True enough. But sometimes silence = consent. Constructive criticism is one thing, but destructive criticism is another. And right now, when people are hard at work – and that was one of the points of the OP – the last thing people need is for someone to come along and trample their gardens before they have time to grow. So anyway namekusejin – why not direct your criticism towards specific things (and what you like would be more constructive than what you don’t like), and if you want to talk about how much you hate certain aspects of IF, start a blog.
Yeah, I know, and you’re right. I just think that we’ve sorta just hit the point where it might just be best to be like “Ignore namekuseijin; they’re always like this” and resume the conversation.
Exactly. Tell new folks to ignore it and move on, don’t engage. There is way too much credence given to worthless commentary.
I dunno. I think sometimes it’s best to grab the slug-like humanoid by the antennae.
useful commentary means a dead board, it means no passion, just technical showcase
what’s the purpose of reading or playing if you never talk about it?
yes, I do showcase more contempt than content, but it’s still better than useful and frigid tech talk
I’ve not seen this board as alive as since the P**** guy… he must be giggling at everyone pointing fingers whenever someone says something that is not praise for any trivial zynestry
Shh! People’s Court is on!
Having delved into the IFDB, I tend to agree. Even the few works that may deserve an honourable position in interactive fiction history are somehow dishonoured by being so easily available, so cheaply present. Everything is in hopeless disorder, jumbled together, out of historical sequence, and that is how I as a newcomer experienced post-commercial interactive fiction. In other arts something like a natural selection takes place: only the best or the most significant or influential or successful works vie for our attention. Sinclair Lewis, once a giant of American letters, is fading away from bookstores as we speak. Literary scholars no longer approach him as a writer, but rather as a souvenir of cultural history. His works have been supplanted by more relevant ones. No such survival of the fittest and corresponding extinction of the unfit can be discerned in interactive fiction.
In other arts, works from the past are often touched up to accord with the tastes of the present. In film and music, remakes are made of the most important works. A handful of classic novels are republished with new forewords and annotations. A small repertory of plays is continually reinterpreted for contemporary relevance. By contrast, works of interactive fiction are available en masse, the worst with the mediocre and the best, the forgotten with the half-forgotten, the ones so dreary you don’t know if they qualify as fiction or if they’re just some twelve-year-old’s idea of an in-joke long gone stale. I’m guessing that most of this stuff never really made it with any audience, but in an art form where free self-publishing is the only venue available, it’s hard to say with any certainty.
In interactive fiction nothing is cleaned away, sorted out, discarded. There is no equivalent of studio fires where negatives of unwanted films can burn, no pulping of unsold novels, no blissful fading of period pieces, like the zenith of Sinclair Lewis. There’s a hopelessness to the immortality of interactive fiction; since nothing ever permanently fades away, what does not deserve to last lasts, and it all begins to seem like one big pile of junk and some people say “Interactive fiction never is any good anyway, so why don’t read Shakespeare instead?” If the same had happened with the novel, or the theatre, or the visual arts, if we were constantly surrounded by the junk pile of the past, it’s conceivable that today’s civilised men and women would have very different notions of what constitutes culture.
Interactive fiction has become the boring neighbours – we hang out with them because they are easily accessible. It takes some effort and money to go to the movies or order a novel from Amazon or buy music from iTunes. Our boring neighbours are only a mouse click away.
Libraries and Project Gutenberg must horrify you.
There are many sites out there where people put together highly-recommended works of IF. I’ve build a couple in my time. But you can’t do that work without the archive of everything.
Would you rather everything be commercial? The whole point about IF that I find cool is what you hate: there are no editors except self-editors, and there are no publishers, except self-publishers. But then again, I like metal music. I’m sure you’re going to say, “Why not listen to Brahms?” And, I also listen to Brahms. Just as, I also read literature, both classical and modern. It depends on my mood. When I’m angry, Brahms just doesn’t cut it. I’d rather listen to Arch Enemy.
Yeap. That’s what the rating system is for. And these are games, dude – not “American Letters”. (Although some where written in America. With letters. 
)
Yeap. And the good ones, that took a lot of effort to create. And, you bring up a good point that I’ve been thinking about. People usually approach art in three ways: as observers, who learn what it can teach, and take away what they like, or don’t like. As people who engage, meaning, they are artists themselves, and they learn something to take into their own art. And people who criticize. Criticizing is the easiest, it takes the least work. You only have to look at the tip of the iceberg to criticize something – you don’t see the large body of hard work that went into it, even if it was a “poor effort”, as you say. On the flip side of this coin, is those who actually make it. They are criticized with the same zeal, but for different reasons – out of envy. People look at the tip of the iceberg, and say “Oh, I could have done that in my sleep.” But then, they never do. But if it helps them sleep at night, to have said that, then I applaud them. Sarcastically.
My thought exactly. Most books I have bought in the last year has been digital, and older books that used to be out of print are increasingly easy to find as ebooks.
Music of course is a decade at least ahead. How is ifdb worse than itunes or spotify? We will have to get used to most forms of culture requiring that we dig through piles of obsolete garbage to find what we like.
This is exactly why I suggested playing the IFComp winners, man. These are people who worked hard enough that their games, though freely available, won them prizes. They were good enough, at least by this community’s standards, to be worth something.
If you can’t enjoy something without paying for it, there is in fact still commercial IF out there (especially if you’re willing to experience graphical IF). But this forum is mostly devoted to the enjoyment of non-commercial IF, so you won’t find much here.
And if other people curating IF for you doesn’t make up for the bitter sting of community accessibility, well … feel free to jog on.
So long as you don’t JUST play comp games. Some real gems out there were never released in a comp. (cough cough Anchorhead cough)
Yeah that’s fair. I mean if people drop some links to curated “best of” collections I would probably find some stuff I would love but hadn’t heard of 
Yeah- plus the blogs out there really help people decide what IF is up-their-alley.
Here’s a recent collection post from Emily Short:
http://emshort.wordpress.com/2014/02/20/a-mostly-recentish-if-list-for-breadth/
If you want the best on ifdb.tads.org, choose “browse” and then “highest rated” in the drop down selection box. That has both comp and non comp games.