Interactive Fiction Competition
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The Interactive Fiction Competition is an annual competition for works of interactive fiction that has been held since 1995. It is intended for fairly short games, as judges are only allowed to spend two hours playing a game before deciding how many points to award it.
The first competition had separate sections for Inform and TADS games. Subsequent competitions have not been divided into sections and are open to games produced by any method, provided that the software used to play the game is freely available.
Anyone can judge the games, and anyone can donate a prize. Almost always, there are enough prizes donated that anyone who enters will get one.
Entries are required to be released as freeware or public domain, reflecting the general non-profit ethos of the IF community.
In addition to the main competition, the entries take part in the Miss Congeniality contest, where the participating authors vote for three games (not including their own). This was started in 1998 to distribute that year's surplus prizes; this additional contest has remained unchanged since then, even without the original reason for its existence.
The following is a list of winners to date:
- 1995:
- Inform category: A Change in the Weather by Andrew Plotkin
- TADS category: Uncle Zebulon's Will by Magnus Olsson
- 1996: The Meteor, The Stone, And A Long Glass Of Sherbet by Graham Nelson
- 1997: The Edifice by Lucian P. Smith
- 1998: Photopia by Adam Cadre
- 1999: Winter Wonderland by Laura A. Knauth
- 2000: Kaged by Ian Finley
- 2001: All Roads by Jon Ingold
- 2002: Another Earth, Another Sky by Paul O'Brian
- 2003: Slouching Towards Bedlam by Star Foster and Daniel Ravipinto
- 2004: Luminous Horizon by Paul O'Brian
- 2005: Vespers by Jason Devlin
- 2006: Floatpoint by Emily Short
- 2007: Lost Pig by Admiral Jota (writing as Grunk)
