I've been asking around on the subreddit and Discord to see if there's any interest in a minicomp this year after a hiatus of 2 years. There seems to be some lukewarm interest, so it might be worth going through some additional preparations to see if it generates some additional interest.
Is anyone interested in running the minicomp this year? Does anyone have any ideas or opinions about how the minicomp should be run?
I don't know when the best time for the deadline should be. In the past, it sometimes took place during the summer or sometimes when college was in session. With Coronavirus, everything is in flux. Is it best to have the deadline be earlier when everyone is in lockdown? Or later when some people might be back in college? Of course, the deadline always gets extended by a few weeks anyway.
And what should the rules be? BBBen proposed returning to a more traditional format with restrictive rules: one room and one NPC. I've been toying with the idea of trying a different approach. We always receive complaints from people with expansive game ideas who don't like the restrictions. But we still need to restrict the game sizes, and we've already tried restrictions based on word count, room count, and number of characters. One of the hardest parts of writing an AIF game are the sex scenes, so why not try to restrict those instead? I was thinking of a "minicomp romp" that focuses on story over sex: unlimited rooms, unlimited NPCs, but when a sex scene starts, it must be described in only one paragraph and then the sex scene must end. People are then free to build complicated plots or alternately, a shallow sex romp, but still keep things manageable by having short sex scenes. The lack of restrictions might inhibit creativity though or cause people to start inappropriately large projects. On the Discord, people weren't too enthusiastic about the idea of reduced sex scenes and were more generally in favor of the one room, one NPC format.
Any thoughts on any of these topics? Anyone interested in running the minicomp? Discuss below in the comments or on the Discord.
It seems like no one else is interested in running the minicomp this year, so the responsibility will fall on me again. I'll spend the next few days writing up some rules for the minicomp and getting things rolling.
ReplyDeleteSounds like a great idea! The community needs a boost, with plenty of us stuck at home for a while. Would be interesting to see how many entries incorporate a quarantine theme.
ReplyDelete~3 months should be long enough to write a smallish game, from whenever you decide. For what it's worth, I've always preferred the idea of one room, one npc, one sex scene (of any length, detail or complexity). Of course, a game of any size needn't be bound by arbitary rules - just release it regardless of any minicomp. We'd still love to play it!
However it may be, I would be happy to dip my toe back into the AIF authorship pond. I think I remember enough TADS.
I would love to see a new game from you!
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