People who know and have done a lot of IF, and who either love organisation and oversight, or are highly driven by cause, and/or who exhibit a mixture of all of the above qualifications, have formed the non-profit Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation
Its homepage is http://www.iftechfoundation.org/
Its facebook page is https://www.facebook.com/iftechfoundation/
The way I read it, the foundation's plan is to help look after the tools, services and culture of IF in a way that should take the pressure off a random collection of individuals to have to do so. In this light, I'm reminded of how all the individuals have done pretty stellar jobs holding the structures aloft to date.
I guess most people involved in making IF, including myself, have pointed their attention at the bits that interest them and tried to help keep those bits going, or contribute to them or maintain them. And sometimes there have been bits You are interested in personally, but which you don't have the skills to help with. At a low level, the do-what-you-can and hope-for-what-you-want experience has probably been a bit frustrating for everyone involved. I don't expect a pile of instant solutions from the new foundation, but I'm glad and grateful that the IF folk who feel they can or want to or must address such issues are thinking about the long term.
I like helping people with things I can help them with, but I hate organising stuff. Just thinking about itARRRRRRRRGHHH!
Interesting news, it's good I've noticed your post. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteIt's a good beginning, but 'donate please' button on the center of screen on their site looks pathetic and says a lot about this organisation. Especially when you know nothing about this site and people who worked on it. You know nothing, but you already see 'donate' and 'subscribe' buttons. Interactive fiction writers should understand why this is bad.
Thanks Dark. Well, the button is above a link to a page about 'What will we do with your donation?'. The directors also have their bios in the About IFTF tab. I think that's a pretty good set of info on the page of something that has just appeared online in the past couple of days. Almost all the directors have solid established reputations In IFdom, and you probably couldn't get higher cred than Zarf. So, I don't agree with your idea that donations would be going to who knows where for who knows what. In terms of more detail, I'm fine with that coming later - again, because this has only just started.
DeleteThanks for the answer.
DeleteThe key point is 'established reputations In IFdom'.
Most of people don't really know what IF is and, more over, obviously, who is Zarf.
They see 'Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation has started it's business', they think 'Oh, maybe there is something interesting?', they go on your site, they see 'donate' button and references to people they don't know, they think 'Oh, fuuuu...it's yet another charity site! They just started, they said they are non-profit, but they already need your money' and they quit, simple as that.