Hey that’s the nature of writing for an audience. If the readers have a preference, you can choose if you wish to meet those or not, but everyone is free to leave a review.
As long as it’s not discrimatory/hate speech, you can definitely make a story to be published under HG with the things you’re talking about including genderlocking if you wish. In fact there are some world war stories on the site if you wish to look that fit what you say “would be rejected”. If you want to write for COG, that’s still fine but the amount of work for the author to write several different stories of which only one is likely to be read (see comment above) will get exponentially larger. COG is a brand that tends to publish for established authors. They need to use their time wisely in order to make enough money for things like food and electricity. So why wouldn’t they prioritise their time with settings that can be adjusted for either gender, orientation or race? Besides, not everyone wants to read a real life story where they’re being descriminated against. If I’m going to be a female warrior, I really don’t want every second person I speak to refusing to have anything to do with me and trying to send me home. Sometimes I just want to play the story.
I’m curious, which branching games do not lead to the same ending? How many authors create completely different endings and not just minor variations on the same path?
Mine for starters- Wizardry level C. It has several very different endings although I believe some of them can be difficult to find.
My day off is also very branchy I believe.
Iron destinies is relatively linear after the beginining but has several completely different story lines.
From memory Life of a Wizard branched as well although I haven’t read it in some time, but I do remember it having high replayability
Metahuman has a number of different ways to resolve the ending scene as do many others (they’re in the category of semi-linear as they branch towards the ending)
Anyway that’s a few from the top of my head, there’s probably others. So why are the very branched ones in the minority? Because it cuts the play through length down. It also means to add to the story becomes exponentially harder as the branches are going off in all directions and the word count becomes very high. As an example, mine has a playthrough length that I think ranged from about 9,000-25,000 words with the average somewhere in the teens. This is considered “short” for a game even though the total was up above 100,000 words and the reviews reflect that. People often read it once and then leave a poor review. You gotta understand, this is writing for an audience, not just for myself, so you’ve got to take this into account.
Well we can agree to disagree on that one. I’ve usually got a pretty good idea as to whether a story is going to interest me by the end of a demo. And you do know that the reason why they’re in app purchases is to let people have a demo right? Otherwise you’d have nothing but the blurb to judge it by. In places where demos are actually allowed, (such as steam) they do have demos available.
Anyhow, it seems as if you’re here just to argue. What do you suggest if you have something constructive to add?