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From: "Oliver B. Warzecha" <obw@amarok.ping.de>
Subject: Re: bad reviews for foreign language games (like Begegnung am Fluss)
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Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2001 00:07:47 GMT
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Andrew Plotkin <erkyrath@eblong.com> wrote in
<9tbrtr$scj$1@news.panix.com>:
> Sean T Barrett <buzzard@world.std.com> wrote:
>> If there is a practical concern that a comp with 25 German
>> games and 25 English games is going to produce meaningless
>> results unless we start awarding separate winners in each
>> language, and if that is then equivalent to having two
>> separate comps, one in German and one in English, then I
>> think it's in practice far more effective to make it a
>> comp rule (or perhaps a recommendation) that submitted
>> games be in English, and leave it to other people to run
>> their own German IF comp, much as there is already apparently
>> one for Spanish-language games.
>
> That's a lot of ifs.
>
> *If* I expected to see 25 German games and 25 English games entered in
> next year's IFComp, I would strongly argue for two separate
> competitions.

Well, what would be wrong with an "academy awards" style approach?
Mention in the rules that any foreign-language game can be submitted
and if somebody doesn't speak this language, he/she should abstain for
this game. You could even have a special category: "best non-english
game".

The compXX-metagame could be expanded in a way that languages can be
chosen additionally to authoring systems. And we all could rejoice and
live in a peaceful world ... or something like that. Uh, I just got
carried away. Move on.

> I do not, currently, expect that. It's a hypothetical question, not a
> practical one.

Of course, but to vote with "1" because you don't speak the language is
a little bit like... being biased against Glulx-games because I only
have a terminal-based interpreter and so I see no graphics. ;-)

> As to your proposed rule, or recommendation: _Begegnung am Fluss_ came
> in 37th out of 52. Anyone who wants a recommendation can read it
> there. Anyone who wants to buck the trend will do so in any event.

Of course. It didn't go last, so at least someone liked it. And given
there are a number of votes who gave the forementioned "1" it is better
than the position suggests.

>> Otherwise we're just inviting authors to submit foreign-language
>> games and let these authors fail to learn anything useful
>> from the results, which are simply always going to be skewed
>> by some meaningless data (guess what! some judges don't speak
>> German--I'd never have imagined).
>
> You could make the same argument for games that aren't finished, or
> games with severe bugs, or games that run only on Windows, or games
> that have graphics or sound.

As I said. :-)

> It's the same argument every year, the case has never been
> convincingly made, the IFComp stumbles along. We don't make any effort
> to call it the "Short, Non-Buggy, Finished, Portable, Nearly Always
> Text Interactive Fiction Competition" either.

Of course it is! The number of long, buggy, unfinished, one-system
graphical games is quite low and falls under standard deviation. ;)

OBW
