Re: IF Contest Issues - The Future

["Avrom Faderman" <Avrom_Faderman@email.msn.com>]

Don Rae wrote in message ...

>Sure, the smaller IF games are a good training ground for starting authors.
>I won't deny that.   But does everyone here not want to have some kind of
>formal recognition for trying to build larger designs?  Doesn't anyone else
>want to see plenty more of the Curses type offerings?  Or even the
>possibility of trying to gain the needed momentum for a return of
commercial
>based IF offerings?


There have been a fair number of these lately.  The list of nominees for the
1998 XYZZY awards included the following long non-contest games:
Anchorhead
Once and Future
Spider and Web
Losing Your Grip
Guilty Bastards (I actually haven't played this;  just assuming it's
good-sized.  It wasn't in the contest.)
Bad Machine

None of these could possibly count as 2-hour games!  (It might be possible
to win Bad Machine in 2 hours [in fact according to the author what happens
the first time most people play counts as a "win"], but you would be missing
most of it.)

If you were interested in becoming a distributor--well, that's 6 games in 1
year (if the authors were willing to sell, that is).  Five, I guess, since
Once and Future was already spoken for.

Of course, that's a lot less than the number of games that *do* get entered
in the contest.  But of course there are more short stories than novels in
any given year.
Also, I don't mean to say an official longer-games contest or longer-games
tradition wouldn't attract more.  Just pointing out that there isn't a big
paucity of longish games.

(And re walkthroughs:  Anchorhead, OaF, S+W, and Grip were released without
walkthroughs, and Bad Machine's would only get you to one of several
possible endings.)


Best,
Avrom