The Annual IF Competition

The Annual IF Competition
Competition (series of events)
Frequency	Annual
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Part of series
Website	https://ifcomp.org/
Organiser
IFDB event page	Event
IFDB series page	Series
Total entries
Events in this series
First Annual Interactive Fiction Competition, IFComp 1996, IFComp 1997, IFComp 1998, IFComp 1999, IFComp 2000, IFComp 2001, IFComp 2002, IFComp 2003, IFComp 2004, IFComp 2005, IFComp 2006, IFComp 2007, IFComp 2008, IFComp 2009, IFComp 2010, IFComp 2011, IFComp 2012, IFComp 2013, IFComp 2014, IFComp 2015, IFComp 2016, IFComp 2017, IFComp 2018, IFComp 2019, IFComp 2020, IFComp 2021, IFComp 2022, IFComp 2023, IFComp 2024
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The Annual IF Competition (also known as the rec.arts.int-fiction competition, IF Comp, or just the comp) was started by Kevin Wilson in 1995. The official website is at ifcomp.org. It was taken over by David Dyte for a couple of years and was then run for many years by Stephen Granade with the help of Lucian Smith and Mark Musante and many others. On 5th January 2014, Granade announced that Jason McIntosh had agreed to be the next organizer of the IF Comp, starting from the 2014 competition. Jacqueline Ashwell has organized it since 2018.

In 2016, operation of the competition was taken over by the Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation.

One of the parallel arrangements to the competition was the IF Beta Website where authors could sign up to have other community members beta test their work. More recently, requests for beta testing are being published directly on the IntFiction Forum.

Summary of IF Comp Results

(See also the history page on ifcomp.org.)

Organized by G. Kevin Wilson:

• IF Comp 1995:
  • Inform Divison: 6 entries. Winner: A Change in the Weather (Andrew Plotkin).
  • TADS Divsion: 6 entries. Winner: Uncle Zebulon's Will (Magnus Olsson).
• IF Comp 1996: 27 entries. Winner: The Meteor, the Stone and a Long Glass of Sherbet (Graham Nelson as "Angela M. Horns"; Z-code).
• IF Comp 1997: 34 entries. Winner: The Edifice (Lucian P. Smith; Z-code).

Organized by David Dyte:

• IF Comp 1998: 27 entries. Winner: Photopia (Adam Cadre as "Opal O'Donnell"; Z-code).

Organized by Stephen Granade:

• IF Comp 1999: 37 entries. Winner: Winter Wonderland (Laura A. Knauth; Z-code).
• IF Comp 2000: 53 entries. Winner: Kaged (Ian Finley; TADS 2).
• IF Comp 2001: 51 entries. Winner: All Roads (Jon Ingold; Z-code).
• IF Comp 2002: 38 entries. Winner: Another Earth, Another Sky (Paul O'Brian; Glulx).
• IF Comp 2003: 30 entries. Winner: Slouching Towards Bedlam (Star Foster and Daniel Ravipinto; Z-code).
• IF Comp 2004: 36 entries. Winner: Luminous Horizon (Paul O'Brian; Glulx).
• IF Comp 2005: 36 entries. Winner: Vespers (Jason Devlin; Z-code).
• IF Comp 2006: 43 entries. Winner: Floatpoint (Emily Short; Glulx).
• IF Comp 2007: 27 entries. Winner: Lost Pig (Admiral Jota as "Grunk"; Z-code).
• IF Comp 2008: 35 entries. Winner: Violet (Jeremy Freese; Z-code).
• IF Comp 2009: 24 entries. Winner: Rover's Day Out (Jack Welch and Ben Collins-Sussman; Glulx).
• IF Comp 2010: 26 entries. Winner: Aotearoa (Matt Wigdahl; Glulx).
• IF Comp 2011: 38 entries. Winner: Taco Fiction (Ryan Veeder; Glulx).
• IF Comp 2012: 28 entries. Winner: Andromeda Apocalypse (Marco Innocenti; Glulx).
• IF Comp 2013: 35 entries. Winner: Coloratura (Lynnea Glasser; Glulx).

Organized by Jason McIntosh:

• IF Comp 2014: 42 entries. Winner: Hunger Daemon (Sean M. Shore; Glulx).
• IF Comp 2015: 55 entries. Winner: Brain Guzzlers from Beyond! (Steph Cherrywell; Glulx).
• IF Comp 2016: 58 entries. Winner: Detectiveland (Robin Johnson; Web browser).
• IF Comp 2017: 80 entries. Winner: The Wizard Sniffer (Buster Hudson; Glulx).

Organized by Jacqueline Ashwell:

• IF Comp 2018: 77 entries. Winner: Alias 'The Magpie' (J. J. Guest; Glulx).
• IF Comp 2019: 82 entries. Winner: Zozzled (Steph Cherrywell; Glulx).
• IF Comp 2020: 103 entries. Winners: The Impossible Bottle (Linus Åkesson; Dialog) tied with Tavern Crawler (Josh Labelle; Twine).
• IF Comp 2021: 71 entries. Winner: And Then You Come to a House Not Unlike the Previous One (B.J. Best; Inform 7).
• IF Comp 2022: 71 entries. Winner: The Grown-Up Detective Agency (Brendan Patrick Hennessy; Twine).
• IF Comp 2023: 74 entries. Winner: Dr Ludwig and the Devil (SV Linwood; Inform 7).
• IF Comp 2024: 67 entries. Winner: THE BAT (Chandler Groover; Inform 7).

Links

• IF Comp Rules.
• Annual Interactive Fiction Competition - at IFDB.
• Interactive Fiction Community Forum at intfiction.org.
• The IFTF YouTube channel has recordings of past results ceremonies. (These events are run on Twitch.)
• Links to each years' results:
  1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019.
• Interactive Fiction Competition at Wikipedia.
• The Hows and Whys of the Annual Interactive Fiction Competition - article by Stephen Granade at Brass Lantern. (Now somewhat out of date.)
• Textual Pleasure: Parsing the Annual IF Competition - article by Lara Crigger for The Escapist, May 2007.
• Mathbrush has written a History of IFComp, Year by Year (written 2017, covering 1995-2016).