I tried to simplify the rules for 2009 compared to previous years. If you're familiar with the previous rules and want to get a quick rundown of rule changes, see the bottom of this page.

Mar. 1, 2009: Deadline for authors' intents to enter.
Mar. 31, 2009: Deadline by which authors' entry fees must be received by the organizer.
Mar. 31, 2009: Deadline by which authers' games and walkthroughs must be received by the organizer.
Mar. 31 or Apr. 1, 2009: Games will be released, voting will start, and the end of the voting period will be announced.

Note: deadlines for authors are at noon, Eastern US Time, of the dates in question.

1. To enter the competition, follow these steps:
• You should first submit an intent to enter before noon EST on March 1, 2009, to the organizer at the email address at the bottom of this page. It should include your real name (and pseudonym, if so desired), a brief description of your game, a working title, and the country you live in (so I can give you appropriate payment instructions; see below).
• After hearing back from the organizer, you should then send a non-refundable entry fee of $7 US to the prize pool. You'll receive instructions on sending it either electronically (such as by PayPal) or by snail mail, but either way your fee must be received by the organizer before noon EST, March 31, 2009. There will be no exceptions to this deadline (since that would hold up the whole competition). Also note that your entry fee will not be refunded, even if you withdraw from the competition or are disqualified, unless something happens beyond your control (e.g. the postal service delivers your entry fee very late).
• Finally, you should send your completed game to the organizer, along with a walkthrough (so that the organizer can test your game for finishability). If you don't want the walkthrough to be made available to the public, just say so. As with the entry fee, your game and walkthrough must be received by the organizer before noon EST, March 31, 2009.
2. You may submit only one intent to enter, and one game.
3. The Spring Thing is a competition for interactive fiction. If you have any doubts as to whether your game qualifies as interactive fiction, please contact the organizer.
4. All games must be finishable by the organizer. (Hence the need to submit a walkthrough along with your game.)
5. Games may not be based on works currently under copyright without permission from the copyright holder.
6. Do not use copyrighted multimedia assets (graphics or sound) without permission from the copyright owner. If you don't know if a song, sound file, or picture is under copyright, don't use it.
7. No shareware, commercial software, etc. may be entered. That is, while you are perfectly free to retain copyright to the game you enter, by entering you grant the competition and the Interactive Fiction Archive the non-exclusive right to distribute your game for free, forever.
8. All entries must be previously unreleased at the time of voting—that is, they must never have been publicly downloadable or otherwise publicly available. Obviously, this does not prevent you from having your game beta-tested, which is much encouraged.
9. When deciding what length of game to submit, bear in mind the rules of judging: judges are encouraged to spend as long on your game as they want, and are encouraged to try to finish it, but are not required to finish it, especially if your game requires more than about two evenings to complete.
10. If your game is in the competition, then you may not publicly discuss either it or any competitors' games during the judging period. If you need to correct a public misstatement of fact about your game, please contact the organizer, who will relay the message.

The deadline for voting will be announced soon after March 31, 2009.

1. The judging period will be announced when the games are released. It may require judges to play anywhere from one to three games per week, depending on how many games are entered.
2. Judges are encouraged to spend as long as they want on each game, and are encouraged to try to finish each one. In the end, however, they are not required to finish before voting (especially if the game takes more than about two evenings to complete). Nor, for that matter, is there any particular minimum time length that must be spent on each game.
3. Judges must vote on at least seven of the games for their votes to be counted (or as many as they can, depending on how many games there are, and perhaps depending on their computer's compatibility).
4. Anyone who is not an entrant or the organizer may judge.
5. Judges should score each game on a scale from 1 to 10, 10 being best.
6. Judges are allowed to discuss the games during the judging period, but are requested to clearly mark posts which discuss the games, for the benefit of those who want to avoid spoilers and having their scores influenced.
7. Beta-testers are allowed to vote on the entries they beta-tested.

1. There will be several prizes, including the cash taken from the pool of entry fees, but also including donations. The first-place winner will have first pick of any one prize, the second-place winner will have the next pick, and so on. For more information, including the current list of prizes, see the prize page. You may also donate a prize.
2. Note that cash prizes are handled differently from other prizes, as explained on the prize page.

1. If a rule is breached once, the organizer reserves the right to decide whether to warn the person or kick them out of the competition. If a rule is breached twice, the organizer will very likely kick the person out of the competition.
2. The organizer will have final say on all judgment calls, but may consult others in making decisions. (And, for the record, just as Adam consulted others extensively in formulating the initial version of these rules, the present organizer did the same with these slightly modified rules.)

This is not really part of the rules, and you need not read this unless you are interested in knowing how the rules this year are different from last year. But anyway, mainly due to my effort to simplify the rules, I made the following changes this year:

1. There is no longer any "earliest date" to submit your intent to enter, entry fee, or game. Just submit it anytime before the deadline.
2. The deadline for submitting your entry fee no longer depends on whether the fee is sent electronically or not.
3. I am no longer requiring that authors tell me their real name so that I can reveal it after the comp is over. This rule was unenforceable and perhaps unnecessary.
4. As a rule of thumb, I previously suggested that judges need not feel obligated to spend more than "one or two evenings" on a game. I have now changed this to "about two evenings." Note that this remains a rule of thumb; judges can play each game as long as they want before voting.
5. Previously the rules did not explicitly state that you can't use copyrighted multimedia assets. I have now made this explicit.
6. Aside from that, I just got rid of any rules that went without saying (e.g. I no longer feel the need to announce that a couple of years ago I got rid of the non-bugginess requirement) and tried to make things clearer and more concise.

[Note: On this page I have stolen plenty of phrases from Adam Cadre's original rules, plus one or two phrases from the IF Comp's rules—e.g., as involves copyright—without necessarily using quotes, which would have been awkward. Since this is all in the service of Adam's original idea and the IF community, I hoped nobody would mind. If this does bother anybody, please write to me.]