#ifcomp2025

Hello, friends.

We are just a couple of weeks away from this year’s IFComp games being released. Are you looking forward to them as much as we are?? IT'S SO EXCITING!!  (Unless you’re an author who is furiously testing and revising and recompiling and testing and revising and recompiling and… Good luck, authors! You can do it!)

While we eagerly await the new games to come, we’d like to ask for your help with the Colossal Fund. If you already know about the fund and are able to contribute, please go to ifcomp.org and hit that blue “Donate with PayPal” button!

If you’d like more information first, keep on reading…

The Colossal Fund raises money for the cash prizes that are awarded to the top two-thirds of IFComp entries. We use 80% of the funds for that, and the remaining funds are used to provide support for the programs and projects of the Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation, including the Interactive Fiction Competition, the IF Archive, the IFDB, the forums at intfiction.org, and other projects.

This year, we are shooting for $8K.

We’re now accepting donations for 2025! The donation button is live at IFComp.org. See your name listed on our donor page (or listed as “anonymous” if you prefer)! Our fundraising deadline is October 15th - the last day of competition voting. 80% of the proceeds (~$6.4K if we hit our goal) will be distributed among the top two-thirds of IFComp finishers. 

What does this mean for authors? Because we’re dividing the money among the top two-thirds of games, the exact numbers depend on how many entries there are. If we have 75 entries, then we will divide the money among the top 50. If we hit our goal, that would mean that the winner of the competition will be offered a prize of $357, second place will be offered $343, third prize $329… and so on and so forth until 50th place, which will be offered $10.  Our goal is to distribute prizes across a broad range of IF styles and ideas. Any game which does even moderately well is offered a decent prize. (If you wanna get nerdy, there's information about the formula with a link to a Python script here.)

How do I donate? Please go to https://ifcomp.org and push the big blue Donate button.

Is my donation tax-deductible? Yes, to the extent allowed by law. (Consult a tax professional.)

Does the Colossal Fund replace the usual IFComp prize list? Nope! These cash prizes will be in addition to the usual IFComp prize list. We do need more of those non-cash prizes as well! Please visit our prize page to see what objects and services others have donated, get ideas from donations given in previous years, and see how you can contribute.

The 2025 Interactive Fiction Competition has officially begun!

For the next six weeks, players and judges around the world will be diving into this year’s crop of brand-new interactive fiction. We’re delighted to share that 85 entries(!!) have been submitted this year. We're excited to see so many authors tossing their hat into the ring.

As always, you don’t need to play every entry to be a judge. You only need to play and rate at least five entries to submit a ballot. Whether you’re a seasoned IFComp veteran or joining us for the very first time, we welcome you and hope you’ll find plenty to discover and enjoy!

What's New for 2025 You can now choose whether or not to see content warnings. Authors still provide them, and they'll be shown by default, but if you’d prefer not to see them (to avoid spoilers or for any other reason), you’ll find a setting at the top of the ballot that lets you hide them.

The Colossal Fund We’re excited to share that this year’s Colossal Fund is already halfway to its goal! Thanks to the generosity of donors, we’re well on our way to ensuring a strong pool of prizes. If you’d like to learn more about the Fund and how to contribute cash (or other prizes), visit https://ifcomp.org/about/prizes

Our Awards Ceremony As in years past, we will celebrate the conclusion of this year’s competition with a virtual awards ceremony, where we announce the results and recognize the authors. The awards ceremony will be held on Twitch at 4:00 PM Eastern Oct 18. To confirm what time the awards stream will be for you in your time zone, check here.

On the Topic of the UK's Online Safety Act This year brings change for many authors and all of our UK judges: the United Kingdom’s Online Safety Act (OSA), which restricts access to a wide range of content that could be harmful to children. We spent considerable time investigating whether a third-party provider could offer age verification for our UK users without us needing to retain sensitive information, but we were not able to implement a workable solution before launch. We are still pursuing that possibility, but it may not be in place until next year’s competition.

Until earlier this week, we thought we’d need to geoblock all entries for UK users. That was something we very much wanted to avoid. Fortunately, we were able to put in place a more limited, case-by-case approach. With 85 entries, over two dozen of which arrived after we learned of this option, it was not possible to thoroughly play every entry beforehand. Instead, we based initial geoblock decisions on a mix of author-provided content warnings and notes from our Curation Team.

Ofcom has published guidance to help organizations navigate the OSA, including exceptions to the law. At the recommendation of our attorney, we are utilizing their guidance to inform our decisions as we review entries. All authors whose entries were selected for geoblocking in the UK were notified and invited to discuss their entry with us if they felt their work was acceptable for all ages under the OSA. After reviewing additional text from entries, and weighing that text against exceptions provided by the OSA, we lifted geoblocks for several authors.

We do not love restricting content and we understand that many in the community are frustrated, but we are obligated to comply with the law for UK users. For transparency: as of the time of this post, 24 of 85 entries are geoblocked in the UK. It is possible that this number may shift slightly in the coming days as more authors reach out to us.

In response to a question we’ve already received, we do not intend to make a new Author Rule to address the OSA. It is a law external to the IFComp, and it does not affect all users. As case law develops, and as the broader internet learns to navigate the OSA, authors will likely get a clearer sense of what may or may not be restricted. We may also be able to implement age verification for users who wish to take advantage of it. Regardless, our preference remains the same: authors should write whatever they want to write to tell the stories that they wish to tell for the audiences they wish to reach.

Generative AI in IFComp Another evolving area is the use of generative artificial intelligence (GAI). The community remains divided on its role in interactive fiction, and the technology itself continues to change rapidly. Our stance for the past two years has been to require transparency but to otherwise allow GAI. On the entry form, authors are asked to declare most uses of GAI in their work. After last year’s competition, we expected to see a flood of feedback about AI in the post-comp survey. In reality, only about 10 percent of respondents mentioned it. Based on that, we kept the same policy for 2025.

We plan to use this year’s post-competition survey to float some ideas about new approaches on GAI in the competition, including possible rule changes, and invite your input. The survey will also include space for you to share rule ideas of your own. We recognize that it is unlikely that we’ll land in a place that makes everyone happy, but we’ll endeavor to do our best to find common ground. We intend to finalize decisions for 2026 by the end of this calendar year, so that authors have plenty of time to plan.

Anything we haven’t covered? Still got questions? Email us at [email protected]