Speed IF: Why?
Something that’s always bothered and amazed me is the concept of Speed IF. It’s a losing proposition from the get-go: create a game in some small amount of time (usually a day) for the purpose of winning a contest. What this does is litter the IF landscape with spartan, shallow, shoddy works, most of which aren’t even finished. For what purpose? To see who can code the fastest? Wow, that’s a plaque I want on my wall — I coded faster than the other idjits who entered this contest, and look at the pile of steaming turds I created with my ultrafast coding. I can’t think up any other reason why these contests recur like waves of the plague. They sure don’t create quality games. They don’t create interesting puzzles. They don’t even create finished works! Geez! Is this some kind of self-defeating contest, where we shout to the world, “Look at how much we suck?”
The IF “community” never seems to miss a chance to shoot itself in the foot and then brag about it to the world. In this case, Speed IF contests, are like holding a contest in foot-shooting and then not burying such juvenile antics, but preserving them, so that every Web crawler and idle passer by can look at the excesses of prior years.
The Deleterious Effects of Contests
I was out on the IFDB, which has improved a few notches since my initial visitation, although it’s clear the juvenile attitudes of some people remain. In any case, I noted that often game entries bragged about winning such-and-such position in such-and-such contest, utterly unaware how much like rotted wreaths such approbations appear now! Yes, this game may have won 3rd place in contest Blah, ten years ago, but so what? Given that IF contests are one of the most incestuous affairs ever created, I’m not so sure that the opinions of a very small number of people really count for much, and their opinions rheumed with age count for even less. Reading these old braggadocios is like listening to someone in their 30′s brag about being voted “most likely to succeed” in high school.
Plus, because these contests are such incestuous affairs, some games will be crucified without any possible check or balance, because all contests rely upon the goodwill of the voters. If a bunch of people gang up on a particular author, his or her works will be the ones that crawl in at 200th place or something. This is an unacknowledged flaw which continues from year to year in all IF contests.
Not only that, but the inherent nature of a contest itself is that someone must win, and someone else must lose. I’ve always found it strange that people celebrate such a construct and then use it to lure people into submitting to the contest. Who would celebrate their chance to lose? Because the odds are (if you believe in such things) or common sense will tell you that you won’t win. Only one person will win, and unless you craft some freakin’ amazing stuff, you might as well not bother. Even if you do win, the honor is a little less than it’s cracked up to be.
I think awards are the way to go, instead of contests, and the more awards we have, the better. It would be wonderful to see different groups reward games on the basis of different criteria — say best SF game, or best portrayal of faith, or strongest female main character, and so on. Think of the art world, and the literature enclave, and all the varied awards that they have. IF, as a kind of art, should do the same — if it ever grows up.
2007 XYZZY Awards
In a single word, whatever. That’s how I feel about the results. There were a buttload of games (which was good), but that superabundance made me feel that I couldn’t vote unless I had played most of them. Such a daunting task got thrown on the old back burner, which means I didn’t get around to voting. So yes, take this post with a grain of salt.
Lost Pig winning nearly every category disappoints me. I’m not really sure what people see in impossible puzzles, loquacious but unhelpful NPCs, and claustrophobic environs. (Gentlemen, start your psychoanalysis!) I’m confused by people who claimed that the game was easy. How in the heck do you figure that one? The other games I don’t have any experience with (except one which I also disliked), but the number of unfamiliar authors was refreshing.
