[Friends of IFTF] News from the Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation!

[Carolyn VanEseltine]

Dear Friends of IFTF,

The Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation launched with flying colors!
(Green and black, to be specific.) Although we've been a bit quiet in
public, there's a lot of activity going on behind the scenes.



IFTF has taken stewardship of the annual Interactive Fiction Competition
(aka IFComp)! This means that IFComp effectively owns its code and
copyrights, which greatly increases the security and stability of this
22-year-old event.



This will be another prolific year for IFComp. We're accepting games right
now, and so far we're we're expecting around 45 games (even with allowances
for authors who don't complete games in time).  The player base will be
much larger - over 20,000 people played games in 2015, and we're bracing
for an even larger crowd this year. To facilitate this year's competition,
Jason MacIntosh has recruited volunteers to assist with entry verification,
ballot review, tools development, and communicating with authors and
judges. Games will be released to the public on October 1.



IFComp is also accepting prize donations <https://ifcomp.org/about/prizes>
for 2016. So far, there are 20 prizes in the pool, ranging from books and
games to money and gift certificates. If you'd like to donate a prize for
distribution to an IFComp author, please email Jason McIntosh at
ifcomp at ifcomp.org.



We've been moving more slowly on other projects, both to give proper
attention to IFComp and because we want to do them *right*. We're in the
process of putting together a committee for the IFTF Accessibility Testing
Project (aka the Testathon), chaired by #a11y expert Deborah Kaplan. Once
the committee has sorted out our tools and methodology for the Testathon,
we'll put out a call for volunteers and get this ball rolling!



We're also in the process of building the Twine Committee, chaired by Twine
creator and IFTF cofounder Chris Klimas. Rather than focusing on
development of the Twine application, this project will encompass the
entire ecosystem surrounding Twine, such as related software and utilities,
documentation, discussion forums, and websites that host and archive Twine
works.



Speaking of Chris Klimas, he recently appeared on Ken Gagne's podcast
Polygamer. It's a fantastic 70-minute interview covering everything from
IFTF itself to Twine to broader interactive fiction topics, and you can check
it out here <https://www.polygamer.net/2016/08/24/pg50-iftfoundation/>.



One last thing: IFTF is now registered with Amazon Smile! If you shop on
Amazon via smile.amazon.com, you can choose "Interactive Fiction Technology
Foundation" as your charity (here's a convenient link for that purpose
<https://smile.amazon.com/ch/81-1920375>) and IFTF will receive a
charitable donation each time you purchase through Amazon Smile at no cost
to you. IFTF is also registered with the PayPal Giving Fund, which allows
for one-time donations or regular donations to IFTF without any PayPal fees.



Thanks for your support, and have a great day!



~Carolyn VanEseltine

for the IFTF Board of Directors
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