I’m super excited to be the lead organizer of the competition this year. Such a role could be overwhelming, but fortunately there are lots of volunteers and advisors who help lighten the load, for which I am grateful. (If you’re interested in being part of the team, it’s never too late to send an email to ifcomp@ifcomp.org to let us know!)

I began working with the Comp last year, first shadowing Jason McIntosh, then assisting as a vice-organizer. I’m really proud of the work we put in this past year. In particular, I love that we implemented the anonymous feedback feature, adopted from my years running the IntroComp. This new addition was really well-received by authors, but there’s no such thing as too much helpful feedback to hone your craft. This coming year I plan to focus on improving the quality of feedback that’s entered, as well as providing some incentive to improve the reviews that are written elsewhere online. Related to this, we may look into ways to increase discussion of individual games during the competition itself.

We received a lot of post-comp feedback on the sheer volume of games we received in 2018. Lots of people applauded the volume and diversity of the games that were entered, while others felt completely overwhelmed. I plan to look at some ways to make a large number of games easier to navigate.

If you missed the opportunity to take part in our post-comp survey, but you have thoughts you’d like to share as we prepare for next year, feel free to email us at ifcomp@ifcomp.org.