Is a minefield as there are very few writers who can pull off nice, descriptive, yet believable and fun action packed sex scenes without the use of visuals IMHO. Though if you consider yourself one of the very few who can I’d say go for it. Though as it would restrict your app to 18 plus if and when you publish it I can understand not going for it.
Is the Bioware standard and fairly acceptable, except for the compulsory thing. Personally I’d go with 2 and make sure there is also an option for a platonic relationship where appropriate and in game warning where sex is a requirement for success of the romance, e.g. have the character dump the player if and when the player indicates he or she does not desire such a relationship with that character, it happens all the time IRL so you should be able to get away with it.
IMHO only necessary if you decide on option 1 if you go with either 2 or 4 this is redundant.
4 Safe and boring but makes some sense if you want the absolute broadest audience you could possibly get. Though personally I do tend to dislike most pseudo romances where I cannot at least kiss the guy or girl of my character’s dreams.
5 Won’t actually do anything to protect you from any overzealous, self-appointed “moral guardians” as you can count on the fact that the people who are not supposed to have the explicit version will especially endeavour to get it.
@ishantrissi The misunderstanding is probably my fault. When I said ‘either chaste or otherwise’ I was trying to figure out a polite way to say 'Although my first play-through is usually with a chaste character, I like to have an option to play a character who sleeps with every other character possible, just to see what happens - but I do prefer to have the option to 1. specifically have my amorous character bed the character or characters in question (with all the consequences of that action) and then 2. fade to black so my MC, not I, can manage the detailed bits.
Does that make more sense? Although, if you prefer not to have an 18+ game (which would be my preference for my own works, generally), you can always go for an archaic, period-appropriate euphemism or two with a nice fade to black!
The entire subject kind of reminds me of animated features in the 80s and 90s in the U.S., where censors would object to things like guns with bullets (instead of laser guns) or scenes which depicted someone dying. The second was once solved, in the case of a fatality through a fall when a rope was broken, by just showing the end of the rope silently swinging… and that, to my mind, was more psychologically impactful that a big, splattery death scene. Maybe a similar philosophy would work with the romance scenes, if you want to keep things more appropriate for a broader age-base?
If I am understanding 3 correctly, then I would prefer that. At the beginning of the game choose whether or not to allow descriptive adult content or just merely fade to black.
That would be my choice since it offer’s stuff for nearly every preference.
@ishantrissi it is possible for a random game to be submitted to us without prior contact, and for us to review it and decide to release it as a COG instead of an HG. It’s just that it hasn’t happened yet.
In particular, it takes a while to wrap your head around our design philosophy. While we talk about it on the blog, that doesn’t mean that people understand it until we’ve hashed things out on a small scale.
For example, @JimD is going through this process right now with Wise Use of Time. Yes, he wrote the epic Zombie Exodus, and he understands the ins and outs of ChoiceScript better than most, but right now we’re working through teaching him what we think makes a good game from a game-design perspective.
Point being, I expect that at some point someone will submit an HG and we’ll release it as a COG, but it will be very rare.
@jasonstevenhill, I was going by the quote on the official page which states that
…lEstablished authors can publish games under the “Choice of Games” label. Authors with published works to their name can apply to write and publish a game under the “Choice of Games” label.
We’re particularly interested in seeing pitches from authors with game-writing experience, but we’re also happy to see the CVs of fiction authors. At our discretion, we may invite authors who have published games under the Hosted Games label in the past to pitch subsequent games for the Choice of Games label…
I believed that since you cannot pitch without a cv that it was impossible for a beginner to be asked.
I also concluded that by saying that authors who have published hosted games in the past may be invited, implied that you had to have something completed before choice of games would accept.
I apologise unreservedly if that is not the case, I also apologise for what was probably a few leaps of judgement that were not completely backed up, I would suggest clarifying the section that says you can be invited to pitch an idea after publishing a hosted game: I assumed once again that this was the only way…
@ishantrissi I didn’t say anything about anyone pitching to us. I said, if someone turns in a game for publication by HG, and we look at it and say, wow, this is awesome, of course we’re going to publish it to COG. Why wouldn’t we?
that kind of stuff is beyond my comprehension! I’ve pretty much come to the conclusion that any such scene will be like the ones in choice of the vampire
@ishantrissi
I’m a sucker for the Regency era so this game will be on my watch list.
My choice would be: 3. Game contains choice at beginning to play with explicit scenes or without. More than likely I would choose the explicit scenes as I am well over 18.
Found an error: When choosing to be a writer I still get the painting options at the end of each of those sections:
So what subject had you chosen for the topic of your painting?
Mythology
Nature
Architecture
@jcury, would you rather have updates every 3/4 days (mini) or fortnightly updates (much bigger)?
General Question for everyone: While a response on the stance of CoG towards Kickstarter Projects is not going to come for months I was considering doing one for this game…
Basically the game will always be as described in the opening post, but I would be able to change that for the better and make it even bigger and longer than predicted and add more characters and side stories - if it got funded.
Rewards for backers would probably not include the finished game as jasonstevenhill mentioned that they have no current rule on how to allot licensing fees on a hosted game in that scenario (I have inquired but a reply will take time)
Instead they would include stuff like creating an additional romance option and so on…
I would love to hear opinions on if you think this is viable…
I really enjoy the demo!
For the writing option, would it be possible to be a poet ala Lord Byron or something? If not, it’s cool. It’s really fun. Slightly disappointed about what happened with the female version, but this is still great!
The two male LIs look really fascinating, can’t wait to hear more about them.
