The Gaming Philosopher

It passes!

I'm not sure whether I'll be judging the IF Comp this year. Mostly that is just because it is a time-consuming process and I'm busy, but that is a reason so banal that I would not needlessly consume your time by sharing it in such a public place. This post is about another, deeper reason. "Deeper" doesn't necessarily mean "more important", but it does mean "more interesting". Here is the deeper reason: I'm no longer sure what judging something like the interactive fiction competition is supposed to be. And that's because I'm no longer sure what my relationship to the authors is supposed to be. The relationship between reader and author can take roughly four forms. (There are undoubtedly more, but they may not be relevant to this discussion.) The author can be the producer of a product which the reader consumes . The demand that the reader makes on the author is to provide a product which pleases the reader's particul...