I must say that I'm not quite happy with the situation.
When Whizzard announced the competition deadline, I took it for
granted that Volker wouldn't make the entries publicly available until
after the deadline. Working under that assumption, I've been planning
to upload my entry as close to the deadline as possible, and I suppose
most of the other competitiors have as well. I was very surprised when
magic_toyshop.z5 turned up in the competition directory.
As it is now, one of the entires has been given a month's head start
over the bulk of the others. This isn't really fair. One can of course
argue whether it's an advantage or a disadvantage.
On one hand, the "early" games get a lot of extra exposure and
attention. Even though the judges are honour-bound (and of course I
don't question their honour!) only to consider each game for two
hours, how can we stop them from being influenced by the discussion?
How can we stop them from _thinking_ about the game for that extra
month?
On the other hand, publishing early is of course giving away some of
your advantage. Other authors can avoid your mistakes or be inspired
by your brilliant writing, and so on.
But regardless of this, I think it's important that the entries should
be given fair and equal treatment. IMHO releasing one entry a month
ahead of the others isn't quite fair. It certainly isn't equal.
Magnus
P.S. Of course, this shouldn't reflect in any way on the author of
"Magic Toyshop", who's followed the rules to the letter, and who
(presumably) didn't have anything to do with the decision to
release the game