Emma Joyce has written a handful of small IF games, one of which once won a contest by virtue of being the only entrant. She has also written a number of reviews for IF games, including some of last year’s semi-official XYZZY reviews for the Best Story nominees.
The Best Setting finalists were Choice of the Deathless, Horse Master, Robin & Orchid, their angelical understanding and Coloratura.
Katherine Morayati is the author of Broken Legs, which took second place in 2009’s Interactive Fiction Competition and was nominated for several XYZZYs, winning Best NPCs and Best Individual PC. By day and by night, she writes about music (as Katherine St. Asaph, which is a long story that involves Steps) for a whole bunch of places. She promises she will finish another game soon.
The Best Writing finalists were Coloratura, their angelical understanding and You Will Select A Decision.
Joey Jones is the co-author of philosophy romp The Chinese Room, and Calm, a post-apocalyptic tea-drinking simulator. Interested in pushing the boundaries of parser fiction, he was behind the meta-fictional IFDB Spelunking and is currently working on a much expanded re-release of the adverb-only blank verse game, Danse Nocturne. His interests include literature, foraging, and the abolition of paid employment.
The finalists for Implementation were Trapped in Time, Depression Quest, their angelical understanding, Coloratura and Robin and Orchid.
Carl Muckenhoupt was the creator of Baf’s Guide to the Interactive Fiction Archive, one of the first websites devoted to IF during the 1990s and the ancestor of IFDB. In 2001, he wrote The Gostak, one of the more extreme experiments in IF. Today, he works as a programmer for Telltale Games.
The Best Puzzles nominees for 2013 were Captain Verdeterre’s Plunder, Coloratura, and Threediopolis.
Iain Merrick discovered the IF community back when Curses was the hot new game, rec.arts.int-fiction was a hotbed of discussion and the IF Archive was on ftp.gmd.de, and he’s been hanging around ever since. He wrote an HTML-TADS interpreter called HyperTADS and a Glulx interpreter called Git, which seemed like a good name at the time. And no, he hasn’t finished writing Tourist Trap yet. Right now he’s working with Steve Jackson and inkle studios to bring their Sorcery! gamebook series to Android.
The finalists for Best Technological Development were Twine 1.4, Versu and adv3lite.
Paul O’Brian was editor of the IF review zine SPAG from 1999 to 2005. He’s written hundreds of reviews, including reviewing (almost) every IF Comp game from 1996 to 2004. As an author, he’s a two-time winner of the IF Competition and received the Best Use Of Medium XYZZY Award in 2002 for his game Another Earth, Another Sky. But what has he done for you lately? (Well, he did write you this review.)
The only finalist for Best Individual PC was Coloratura.
Deirdra “Squinky” Kiai created the IGF-nominated stop motion musical extravaganza, Dominique Pamplemousse in “It’s All Over Once The Fat Lady Sings!” (XYZZY Award winner, Best Supplemental Materials), and is also responsible for The Play (XYZZY Award winner, Best Story), Impostor Syndrome, and Life Flashes By. They are currently in graduate school at UC Santa Cruz, where they are working on an intentionally awkward computer-assisted interactive theatre performance with audience participation.
The Best Story finalists were Coloratura, Horse Master, Solarium and ULTRA BUSINESS TYCOON III.
Jimmy Maher writes The Digital Antiquarian, a blog chronicling the history of computer gaming with a special emphasis on text adventures and other narrative-oriented works. His work of interactive fiction The King of Shreds and Patches was co-winner of the 2009 XYZZY for Best Setting and is now available in versions for Kindle and Android as well as desktop. His book on the history of the Commodore Amiga, The Future Was Here, was published by the MIT Press in 2012.
Wade Clarke is the author of Leadlight (IFComp Golden Banana Winner 2010), Six (2nd in IFComp 2011, XYZZY winner for Best Implementation) and Ghosterington Night (Winner of Ectocomp 2012). He has produced cover art for Fan Interference, Ted Paladin and the Case of the Abandoned House and Threediopolis and music for Andromeda Apocalypse and Kerkerkruip. He has betatested a good number of games and written 100+ reviews on The Interactive Fiction Database. Wade’s homepage is at wadeclarke.com.
The finalists for Best Supplemental Materials were The Sixth Sleep, 18 Cadence, Coloratura, Depression Quest, Dominique Pamplemousse and Hill of Souls.
C.E.J. Pacian is a time traveller from the 20th century and hobbyist game maker, probably best known for authoring Gun Mute (XYZZY Award winner: Best Puzzles) and Rogue of the Multiverse (XYZZY Award winner: Best Individual NPC).
The Best Individual NPC finalists for 2013 were Bell Park, Captain Verdeterre, Coloratura, Faithful Companion and Horse Master.