IFComp News: A bit of Rule 4 clarification

IFComp News: A bit of Rule 4 clarification

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I see folks on forums and elsewhere still a little confused about the intent of this year’s modified author rule 4, the one replacing IFComp’s earlier forbidding of all public comp-talk among authors with a more specific admonition against authors telling judges how to vote.

I worded the new rule that way that I did with the intent of preventing both of the following undesirable situations:

1. Authors making direct and overt public appeals to judges, literally instructing them on specific ratings to assign and why. Bluntly, any variant of “If you enjoy and want to support my work, please remember to give this game a 10!” (Or even just “Please give me a 10!”)

2. Authors doing anything else besides the previous that more resembles someone campaigning to win an election, or someone making a sales pitch, more than someone entered into an arts competition.

So far, no competitor has come close to conflicting with my intent with this rule, at least not anywhere I can see. Yes, this year some authors have linked to reviews, or have assented to interviews for news stories about IFComp. One could make an argument that these actions violate the current rule 4, asserting that promoting any “good press” one’s work receives is tantamount to telling judges “As you can see, other people like my game, and therefore you too should give it a high rating.”

But to my mind that strict reading leads directly to “Come to think of it, authors should really just not speak about their games at all, since anything they say might influence judge opinion,” and that did indeed describe the rule in question as it stood between 1997 and 2015. We already know that IFComp works fine under such a rule, and this year’s experiment means to determine if it works at least as well without it.

We’re halfway through the judging period now, and I fully intend to see it through while continuing to allow authors the freedom to speak that the modified rule gives them. I have both faith and evidence that this year’s authors understand the rule’s intent just fine, and more to the point that 2016’s IFComp judges understand the rules that apply to them, too.

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October 23, 2016 at 05:02PM