2015 Erins - Now Live!

Voting for the 2015 Erins is now live!

The voting form can be found at http://goo.gl/forms/1zDx5K7tVC

You have until the close of 7 February 2016 (GMT) to cast your vote.

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This year there are five categories (although you don't have to vote in all of them if you don't want to).

Game of the Year

This is for the 'best' (however you choose to define that) game of 2015.

The winner will be determined by the instant-runoff voting system. You can vote for up to three games, in order of preference.

Best Character

This is for the 'best' (again, however you choose to define that) character to appear in an eligible game in 2015. In this case, 'character' includes both player characters and non-player characters.

Because of the number of possible choices, write-in voting is being used. Please identify your choice as clearly as possible, and only vote for one character.

Best Sex Scene

This is for the 'best' (again, however you choose to define that) sex scene to appear in an eligible game in 2015.

Because of the number of possible choices, write-in voting is being used. Please identify your choice as clearly as possible, and only vote for one sex scene.

Best New Author

This is for the 'best' (again, however you choose to define that) new author to appear in 2015. A new author is anyone who released their first game in 2015.

The winner will be determined by the instant-runoff voting system. You can vote for up to three authors, in order of preference.

The Badman Memorial Award (aka the Hall of Fame)

This is awarded to the person who has made the greatest contribution to AIF over the whole of their involvement with the AIF community, not just in 2015.

You can only be inducted into the Hall of Fame once, so votes for previous winners will be discounted. If more than one person receives a significant proportion of the vote, they will all be inducted.

Because of the number of possible choices, write-in voting is being used. Please identify your choice as clearly as possible, and only vote for one person.

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This year's nominees are:

Coffee Date by Lamont Sanford

Condomocium by Octarine Flash

Enticing Ella by BeanBean

Hail to the King by Minterlint

Let Me In by BBBen

Teacher's Pet by Dr Realgood

The Heir by Efon

The Lost Hound by Palaverous

Working Man by Ice

You've Got Mail by Brokenknight

The new authors are:

BeanBean

Efon

Ice

Octarine Flash

Palaverous

Dr Realgood

Note that during the pre-voting discussion there was some disagreement as to whether all the nominees should be considered AIF. If there is a game on the list that you personally don't think is AIF, don't vote for it.

What I've been doing lately (Pervert Action: Legacy progress)

I haven't been posting as much publicly as I used to about my game development progress for a couple of reasons, but mostly because I write a full blog post every week for my Patreon backers and so doing smaller updates elsewhere feels a little distracting. Also I couldn't think of a way to do it that didn't just take the form of shameless self-promotion. Anyway, in case you're interested in the larger changes that have been taking place and the general level of development of my current WIP, Pervert Action: Legacy, here's an update.

Random News - 19 January Edition

The first in a (hopefully) regular series

This week's piece of random news is that House Party by Eek Games entered beta a few days ago.

I found House Party to be notable for a couple of reasons. The first is that it's built with the Unity engine, so it actually looks like you'd imagine a 21st-century adult game to look (ie. a 3D environment with a first-person view). Secondly, unlike all the other graphical games I've seen on Patreon recently, the writing is actually halfway decent.

Of course, having only just entered beta, House Party is still pretty rough around the edges. The plot feels a bit random, and is completely linear (each problem can only be solved one way, even though other plausible solutions exist). The gameplay is mostly limited to finding objects and delivering them to other people. And, probably most importantly, there's very little content as of yet.

And that was the news for today.

If you have a piece of random AIF-related news that you'd like to share, please send it to editor.aifblog@gmail.com.

The Erins! - Discussion

In case you didn't already know, the Erins are annual fan-voted awards that honour the year's best AIF games and authors. They started in 2002, but went on hiatus after 2009 due to the downturn in the number of games being produced. They were brought back in slimmed down form last year. That experiment was successful, so here we go again!

In order to establish the Erins 2.0 as a going concern I thought it might be a good idea to establish some rules going forward (especially as the original rules seem to be missing in action). Note that the following is all provisional. Suggestions for improvements would be welcome.

Eligibility

For the purposes of this year's iteration of the Erins, entries must fulfil the following criteria:

1. They must be adult games where the player uses text-based gameplay to advance the narrative.

2. They must have been originally released as a full game during 2015.

3. They must have been published (ie. posting a link to the game) on the aifarchive Yahoo! group or AIF Central blog by the author, or with the author's permission.

Authors can choose to remove their game from consideration.

Where there is some uncertainty as to whether or not a game is eligible, a decision shall be made by the person(s) organising the Erins.

Categories

The categories are:

Game of the Year - for the 'best' (however you choose to define that) game released in 2015; open to all entries

Best Character - for the 'best' (however you choose to define that) character to appear in an AIF game in 2015

Best Sex Scene - for the 'best' (however you choose to define that) sex scene to appear in an AIF game in 2015

Best New Author - for the 'best' (however you choose to define that) new author to release a game in 2015; open to any author who hasn't released a game previously

The Badman Memorial Award (aka Hall of Fame) - for the person (or persons) who have made the 'greatest' (however you choose to define that) contribution to AIF; open to anyone not already inducted in previous years

[As suggested last time, if more than one person gets a significant proportion of the Hall of Fame votes they will all be inducted.]

Nominees

On that basis, the nominees are:

Game of the Year

Coffee Date by Lamont Sanford
Condomocium by Octarine Flash

Enticing Ella by BeanBean

Hail to the King by Minterlint

Let Me In by BBBen

Teacher's Pet by Dr Realgood
The Heir by Efon

The Lost Hound by Palaverous

Working Man by Ice

You've Got Mail by Brokenknight

Best Character

Any character appearing in a game nominated for Game of the Year

Best Sex Scene

Any sex scene appearing in a game nominated for Game of the Year

Best New Author

BeanBean

Dr Realgood
Efon
Ice
Octarine Flash

Palaverous

Hall of Fame

Anyone, except the previous inductees: Badman, Choices, NewKid, Christopher Cole, Scarlet Herring, A.Bomire, BBBen, GoblinBoy, or Purple Dragon.

[If there are any eligible games I've missed, please let me know. Conversely, if you don't want your game to be included (for whatever reason) please let me know.]

Voting

The voting period provisionally starts on 24 January 2016 and finishes on the close of 7 February 2016 (all times GMT).

Voting for the Game of the Year and Best New Author awards will use the instant-runoff voting system. Voting for Best Character, Best Sex Scene and the Badman Memorial Award will be a write-in vote.

[In future I'd like to start the voting earlier so as to make sure the Erins don't distract from any games released in January or February.

Google Forms looks like it can handle preference voting, which several people asked for last time. However, it's kind of clunky and the votes will still have to be totalled manually (which is why you'll be restricted to three preferences), so if anyone has a more elegant alternative it would be eagerly accepted.]

Winning

The winner gets... to win!

[It would be nice if winners got some sort of customised award graphic, as in days of yore, but I simply don't have the artistic ability for that. If anyone with more talent could provide something suitable it would be very much appreciated.]

January Open Thread: Game Plans for 2016

After a great beginning to 2015 with a lot of entries this blog became very quiet. My open thread topics died off as I became very busy. There was actually a few times I signed on to start a monthly open thread, but then would get derailed by surprise events like Goblinboy's return (I actually went to post an open thread the same day Goblinboy made his first post in April and I chuckled about how it would look if I bumped his thread down the page).

Hopefully this blog can keep the momentum going through the year and I thought a good topic to get 2016 going would be for the authors/potential authors out there: what are your plans/hopes for releases for this year? Even if you just have an idea brewing and you hope this is the year, here's the opportunity to let us know what you're thinking. Give us as much or as little about the game as you want.

Feel free to err on the optimistic side for how much can be done: it's a new year, let's have high hopes.

Teacher's Pet by Dr Realgood - Released!

Reposted from http://drrealgoodsaif.blogspot.com/2015/12/a-little-about-game.html

You are a young man at school who has the chance to dog sit for his English teacher.
There is a test at school today, if you don't do well, you'll have to stay home and study instead.
7 points needed to progress, 2 very simple bonus points to be earned. One of my testers thought the quiz was impossible, but I came up with each question and answer off the top of my head.
IF you do need help, you only have to ask, I want this shite little game to be shite and enjoyable.
All sex commands are usual.
I urge you to smell taste and take everything.

Download

SNEEZECOMP 2015 Winner

By a close vote of 16-13, Condomocium by Octarine Flash is the winner of SNEEZECOMP. Congratulations!

I'm going to set up a Hall of Fame, of sorts, sometime this week or next. The authors will be getting the feedback you gave them, too, when I have the chance to compile it all.

So thanks for everyone that voted, and thanks for the people who submitted entries. And soon I'll be posting and replying to some of the feedback about the contest itself, so stay tuned for that.

SNEEZE COMP 2015

There were two entries to this year's SNEEZE Comp. Thanks for everyone who participated! These are:

• Condomocium by Octarine Flash
• The Heir by Efon

You can download the entries here.

Have fun playing! Once you are done, fill out the voting form here. Voting closes on October 8th, 2015, 12:00 PM. Since there are only two entries, it's a simple binary vote and instant runoff votes are unnecessary. Any feedback you send will be given to the author.

EDIT 10/1/2015: Author posted a last-minute update to Condomocium.

SNEEZE Comp Open Until October 1st, 12:00 PM, EST

Just to let everyone know this is the final day to submit an entry to SNEEZECOMP. Please email me at [my screen name]93@gmail.com with your entry. I realize neglected to give a cut-off time, so I'll accept entries until 12:00 PM October 1st, Eastern Standard Time.

If you emailed me and didn't get a response within 12 hours, you might have typed in my email wrong. Don't put any spaces between Another and Wannabe.

You can now support Palaverous on patreon!

I love how these pitches tend to sound like they’re delivering such good news. “You can give me money now! Weeeeeee~!”

But yes, due to unpleasant meatspace circumstances I will not ruin your afternoon with, I’m finding myself more and more in a situation where I can’t really afford to turn my nose at possible alternative sources of income, especially if it’s for doing something I actually enjoy doing. I have coded and written essentially everything I’ve ever done in the scarce spare time I have between two jobs, and that spare time is getting smaller and smaller as of late. As I do not plan to use 3D modelling tools, at least in the near future, the donations are not for the sake of upgrading any sort of equipment but rather relieving some of the stress and pressure I’m under to help me focus on the games. This stuff takes time to write, but I also need to get into a specific mood and mindset to do that and few things kill that mood like wondering if I shouldn't be worrying about other things instead.

As you can see me repeating on the page itself, I would be extremely grateful if you could spare a buck for a humble storytelling internet hobo over at my patreon page.

Thank you.