March 1, 2011:
Deadline for authors' intents to enter.
April 4, 2011: Deadline by which authors' entry fees must be received
by the organizer.
April 4, 2011: Deadline by which authers' games and walkthroughs
must be received by the organizer.
April 4 or 5, 2011: 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.
- To enter the competition,
follow these steps:
- You should first
submit an intent to enter before noon EST on March 1, 2011, 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, April 4, 2011. 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, April 4, 2011.
- You may submit
only one intent to enter, and one game.
- 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.
- All games must
be finishable by the organizer. (Hence the need to submit a walkthrough
along with your game.)
- Games may not be
based on works currently under copyright without permission from the
copyright holder.
- 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.
- 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.
- All entries must
be previously unreleased at the time of votingthat 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.
- When deciding what
length of game to submit, bear in mind the rules of voting: voters 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.
- 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 April 4, 2011.
- Voting on the games
is open to all, except for the organizer and entrants.
- The voting period
will be announced when the games are released. It may require voters
to play anywhere from one to three games per week, depending on how
many games are entered.
- Voters 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.
- Voters must vote
on all the games. (Exceptions to this will be made if warranted. If
you can't play all the games due to computer compatibility issues or
similar problems, please submit your vote by email to the organizer
and explain the issue.)
- Voters should
score each game on a scale from 1 to 10, 10 being best.
- Voters 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.
- Beta-testers are
allowed to vote on the entries they beta-tested.
- 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.
- Note that cash
prizes are handled differently from other prizes, as explained on the
prize page.
- 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.
- 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.)
[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 rulese.g., as involves copyrightwithout
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.]
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