Spring Thing results

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Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

The results of Spring Thing 2005 are in!

The results are:

1. Whom the Telling Changed, by Aaron A. Reed
2. Bolivia By Night, by Aidan Doyle
3. Threnody, by John "Doppler" Schiff
4. Flat Feet, by Joel Ray Holveck
5. Second Chance, by David Whyld
6. Authority, by Eva Vikstrom

See also:

http://www.springthing.net/2005/index.htm

Special thanks to all the prize donors (Daphne Brinkerhoff, The
Eclectic Lapidary, Ken Franklin, Merit Maat, Carolyn Magruder, Jimmy
Maher, Phil Swinbank, David Whyld, and me).

Also, thanks to all the entrants, and to all the voters!

Another note before I go on. Aidan Doyle and Eva Vikstrom still need to
get back to me about their prize preferences, so if that's you, or if
you know one of them, please tell them to check their email and get in
touch with me as soon as possible. (When somebody's trying to give you
goodies, I say make it easy for them.)

Greg
 
Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

"before I go on": the result of rearranging the message. Sigh.
 
Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

Greg Boettcher wrote:
> The results of Spring Thing 2005 are in!
>
> The results are:
>
> 1. Whom the Telling Changed, by Aaron A. Reed
> 2. Bolivia By Night, by Aidan Doyle
> 3. Threnody, by John "Doppler" Schiff
> 4. Flat Feet, by Joel Ray Holveck
> 5. Second Chance, by David Whyld
> 6. Authority, by Eva Vikstrom


Interesting outcome. I guess I would've predicted that WTTC would come
out on top, all else being equal, but having Second Chance do so poorly
is a bit of a surprise. Have you put up a results page, yet? If so, I
can't seem to get to it. I'd be interested to see how the voting broke
down.

PJ
 
Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

I wonder how much Second Chance being written with Adrift affected its
overall placing?
 
Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

PJ wrote:
> Interesting outcome. I guess I would've predicted that WTTC would
come
> out on top, all else being equal, but having Second Chance do so
poorly
> is a bit of a surprise. Have you put up a results page, yet? If so,
I
> can't seem to get to it. I'd be interested to see how the voting
broke
> down.

The results are at the link I posted:
http://www.springthing.net/2005/index.htm

Greg
 
Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

Greg Boettcher wrote:
> PJ wrote:
> > Interesting outcome. I guess I would've predicted that WTTC would
> come
> > out on top, all else being equal, but having Second Chance do so
> poorly
> > is a bit of a surprise. Have you put up a results page, yet? If
so,
> I
> > can't seem to get to it. I'd be interested to see how the voting
> broke
> > down.
>
> The results are at the link I posted:
> http://www.springthing.net/2005/index.htm
>
> Greg

Right. I see it now. For some reason, it wasn't there when I first
looked at it.

Thanks,

PJ
 
Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

I'll take the liberty of copying and pasting the results which are
available at the link Greg included. The numbers are mean score,
standard deviation, and number of votes. They show, I think, the
generally good quality of the games with 5 out of six scoring higher
than 5 out of 10.

Results

1 Whom The Telling Changed 7.13 1.62 24
2 Bolivia By Night 6.77 2.39 22
3 Threnody 6.25 2.21 24
4 Flat Feet 5.92 1.61 24
5 Second Chance 5.38 2.29 21
6 Authority 2.79 1.44 24


As a voter who rated Second Chance quite low, I'll offer a brief
comment, not really a review. I didn't enjoy the game. I lacked
motivation throughout; I did not like personally, empathize with, or
enjoy reading about the characters; and I only got a hint of what was
going on in the final scene. Reading the final text I said to myself,
sure I could play this again and try to get a better ending but I
wouldn't enjoy it. So I closed the runner and voted it a 3 for
technical competence but nothing I liked. A purely subjective
reaction, certainly. I could enumerate a list of things that I want,
even expect, a piece of IF to have that I felt Second Chance lacked but
that expectation is just as subjective and arguable as the unevidenced
vote.

Anyway, I hope that others beyond the ~25 judges play the games and
form their own opinions. They are certainly all good to have. Thanks
to Greg, again for hosting a great Thing.

Cirk R. Bejnar
 
Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

Cirk R. Bejnar wrote:
> As a voter who rated Second Chance quite low, I'll offer a brief
> comment, not really a review. I didn't enjoy the game. I lacked
> motivation throughout; I did not like personally, empathize with, or
> enjoy reading about the characters; and I only got a hint of what
was
> going on in the final scene.

I think that's probably what sunk the game's prospects -- the
characters aren't that likeable. Of course, given the premise, they
weren't necessarily meant to be. But it's hard to argue that anyone
should give the game a higher score if they really didn't enjoy reading
about the characters and couldn't empathize with them.

> Reading the final text I said to myself,
> sure I could play this again and try to get a better ending but I
> wouldn't enjoy it. So I closed the runner and voted it a 3 for
> technical competence but nothing I liked. A purely subjective
> reaction, certainly. I could enumerate a list of things that I want,
> even expect, a piece of IF to have that I felt Second Chance lacked
but
> that expectation is just as subjective and arguable as the
unevidenced
> vote.

Understood. I'm not sure I liked the characters any better than you
did, but I was looking at it more from the standpoint of what the
author was trying to do with the game as a technical exercise. That
maintained my interest, perhaps more than most. But, of course, that's
just as subjective as your approach. We are what we are, after all,
and what we don't like we are going to score low.

> Anyway, I hope that others beyond the ~25 judges play the games and
> form their own opinions. They are certainly all good to have.
Thanks
> to Greg, again for hosting a great Thing.

Yes. Despite the fact that there were not a huge number of entries,
this Spring Thing did get some very interesting games. Greg deserves
congratulations for hosting a very nice competition. My only advice is
to make the judging period shorter next time. Maybe a sense of urgency
might have rousted out more player/judges -- only 24 voters or whatever
it worked out to is a bit disappointing.

PJ
 
Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

dwh...@gmail.com wrote:
> I wonder how much Second Chance being written with Adrift affected
its
> overall placing?

That's always a tough question to get a grip on. Do people generally
rate games lower because they are done in ADRIFT? Or do people have a
bias against all ADRIFT games because so many of them have been
charitably, less than good?

Personally, I don't know why a superior game written in ADRIFT would
not be recognized. This Spring Thing had a very small set of
voters/judges, however, so it is quite possible that a small
anti-ADRIFT bias could have lowered Second Chances scores.

On the other hand, WTTC plainly had most people convinced that it was a
very good game, with only one person voting it less than a 5. I don't
think an anti-ADRIFT bias explains the differences between the two,
though as you know, I personally rated Second Chance marginally higher
than WTTC.

No, I think Cirk's comments below explains it. Second Chance was a
technically interesting and to me, engaging, game. I think too many
people just didn't like the writing style and the characters. Given
that, they were not inclined to look past that to some of the game's
more technical merits. It's hard to argue against that but perhaps a
larger group would have come up with a slightly different opinion.

PJ
 
Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

PJ wrote:
> dwh...@gmail.com wrote:
> > I wonder how much Second Chance being written with Adrift affected
> its
> > overall placing?
>
> That's always a tough question to get a grip on. Do people generally
> rate games lower because they are done in ADRIFT? Or do people have
a
> bias against all ADRIFT games because so many of them have been
> charitably, less than good?

> No, I think Cirk's comments below explains it. Second Chance was a
> technically interesting and to me, engaging, game. I think too many
> people just didn't like the writing style and the characters. Given
> that, they were not inclined to look past that to some of the game's
> more technical merits. It's hard to argue against that but perhaps a
> larger group would have come up with a slightly different opinion.

I don't think there was any kind of "anti-ADRIFT" bias during that
time. It's probably better to believe what PJ said about the voters not
being able to look past the game's, uh, less-than-desirable qualities.

Personally, I played Second Chance myself, and it's quite amazing to
see how ADRIFT has grown over the years (since v3.90 when I first
attempted using it). It has its share of rough edges as well, but I saw
more of these in the story itself.

However, it's too rash to say any bias on the IF system existed. (You
guys know better than that.) Wait for the reviews/commentaries to come
in and see.
 
Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

Cirk R. Bejnar wrote:
> Anyway, I hope that others beyond the ~25 judges play the games and
> form their own opinions. They are certainly all good to have.
Thanks
> to Greg, again for hosting a great Thing.

I, for one, am hoping the authors would put out post-comp (read: Less
Buggy) releases soon. I'd like to re-run through the games without
having to quit because of something I've triggered which should not
have been. Just ruins the game.

--Arnel
 
Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

Hear hear! I would love to put out a revised version of Whom the
Telling Changed, but I haven't received much feedback outside of the
reviews from Dan and Emily. If anyone found any bugs or has
suggestions, I'd love to hear from you at aareed@gmail.com. :)
 
Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

In article <1115087224.823876.196400@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com>,
"Arnel" <jalespring@excite.com> wrote:

> I, for one, am hoping the authors would put out post-comp (read: Less
> Buggy) releases soon.

I, for one, do intend to do just that (although "soon" may be a bit
ambitious). Nobody's reported blatant bugs, but there are several
things that could be handled better. (The biggest problem is pervasive
enough to not be fixable in a re-release, but some smaller problems can
be.)

My point is, if you have any specific issues in Flat Feet that you'd
like to see addressed in the re-release, please send them to me. I
can't speak for the other authors, of course, but most community
software developers welcome bug reports.

Best wishes,
Piquan
 
Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

I'm the author of Flat Feet. It's my first released game, and I'm very
happy to have been involved in the Spring Thing. But I wouldn't be so
happy if it weren't for the efforts of many other people. Some--
particularly library authors and beta testers-- were thanked in the game
credits, but there's a few who I want to recognize here.

First off, my thanks to Greg for organizing the event. I'm sure it's
much more work than any of us could imagine, and I'm thrilled that he
was able to run the event so smoothly.

I also want to publicly convey my thanks to the reviewers. They've
given me (sometimes in advance of net.publication) excellent, and very
constructive, critical reviews of my game. Based on these reviews, I
feel confident that my next game will be all the better for it.

This has been a good event; I'm glad that we had such good games
entered, and the participation and feedback I've gotten from the
community is certainly encouraging me to write more and better games.

Best wishes,
Piquan
 
Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

For those who are interested, I have a little tidbit for you. I became
curious what the comp results would be like if it was a matter of "cast
one vote for your favorite game," as in the XYZZY awards, rather than
"rate all the games on a scale of 1-10."

So for every ballot, I gave a 1 to the voter's favorite. In a few cases
there was a two-way tie, so in those cases I gave each of the two games
0.5. In one case there was a five-way tie, so I gave each of those
games 0.2. I'm posting the results here in case anyone is interested.

The results are almost the same as they would have been otherwise,
except there's a tie for third place.

7.2 Whom The Telling Changed
6.2 Bolivia By Night
3.7 Flat Feet
3.7 Threnody
3.2 Second Chance
0.0 Authority

Greg
 
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