This is an interesting question, and one that I actually found myself thinking about in the past few months on what games draw my attention, what ones don’t.
I find that in general I am starting to get less interested in games that are labeled “high fantasy” or “low fantasy”. I think at least for me it’s over saturation of games with these particular settings.
Where games with ‘modern day’ or ‘sci-if’ descrptions tend to capture more of my interest. For me I think it’s just fatigue of high and low fantasy settings.
Now I’m trying to imagine a slife-of-life story set in my hilariously dark sci-fi setting. I think it would only work as a black comedy where the MC blithely endures horrific experiences without even registering them as suffering, because spending millennia in virtual reality watching bile-coffee adds just to afford a liver is a regular part of everyday life in this world.
But back to the actual topic, I see no evidence that CoG audience is getting tired of fantasy games. Fantasy is by far the most successful genre around here, to the point where I kinda wish people got tired of it and checked out some other genres. Alas, not even I’m particularly tired of fantasy, just maybe of certain tropes and conventions that many such stories share nowadays.
Do we have a COG where your ‘slice of life’ is 24/7 trouble? I think it’s hard to write an IF, or any book really, where you don’t give your readers time to breath.
Moreover on the fantasy aspect of things, there will always be a market for one. It may shrink or increase, fluctuating as time goes on, but there is always a public like me who just wants to enter the wardrobe and enter any kind of world that is not our own. I don’t have the numbers here, but fantasy/superhero COGs will always be sellers.
I would LOVE to see a Deep Space Nine style space station slice of life game (minus the shapeshifting wars and being a prophet thingies). Sci Fi rarely does stories where the stakes aren’t universal ending and you can just live in that world. Same with doing say a Stardew Valley style thing on an alien planet akin to Tatooine or Pandora (Borderlands version) where you can have danger and adventure but it’s not universal destruction levels…
That sounds unsustainable in any story. In any event, all I meant was that “grand adventure” is not mutually exclusive with “slice of life” (like, say you’re a professional adventurer). At least from where I’m standing.
Hm. But wouldn’t it be not slice of life if it happened during the adventure? Coming home and resting could be. Getting into shape and ready to go back out could be. Hell, even training to become or adjusting to retiring from being an adventurer could be. But in the middle of the adventure I don’t think could be classed as slice of life. Even if that’s their every day life, it doesn’t fit the theme really of being “everyday” life, which most slice of life is. “A Day in the Life of an Adventurer” is still going to be (necessarily, I think) an adventure story. An adventurer and their profession can’t really be swapped out for a school administrator, a plumber, a waiter and they can’t be swapped in the other direction either and have it be slice of life (as opposed to fish out of water.) The nature of the job keeps it from being “everyday” even if it’s every one of their days.
I hope that made some species of sense. I have the feeling that it didn’t get across what I’m trying to say all that well.
There could be a slice of life story there too, you just dont focus on the usual conflicts of an adventure but the everyday low stakes drama such things usually skip over.
Episodes where you focus on how the one member of the troupe gets up and cleans the group’s gear and haggles with shopkeepers and combs the bars for leads on the next adventure (showcasing all the times this doesnt actually lead to the next adventure), etc.
You could have a slice of life episode within a larger adventure. But if you have gone on an adventure in the story, it’s likely more of an adventure story. We could pontificate about all manner of extremes to stretch the definitions but I’m not really sure how valuable that is unless it is generating ideas for people rather than just being someone’s project to pick apart the genre.
Yes, and as I said, neither of those are likely to be during the adventure. Those are after or before or taking a break from adventure activities. When the characters are in the thick of it, it can be nothing other than an adventure story because it’s about the adventure. When they are not, yes, it can be a slice of life story about adventurers. What makes it slice of life is that the plot is “everyday” not “a normal day for this specific type of character, who slays dragons.” That, if you wanted to do a story about a dragon slayer as she’s slaying dragons, would be more of a “a day in the life” type of plot. Day in the life of doesn’t necessarily deal with common, everyday concerns and small stakes like slice of life does, so could cover pretty much anything.
Not IF but have you watched Babylon 5? They do the whole war of the worlds thing, but there’s a lot of smaller stories buried in there too. (I actually prefer it personally to DS9). Season 2 is better than 1 IMO but you kind of need S1 for context.
Personally, I’d love to see a fantasy story involving a group of wizards – perhaps a vast, secretive, “underground” organization – set in a present-day American setting.
It’d be nice if the story had a young kid for its protagonist.
And it would be even NICER if, in the story, the kid wanted to be something WAAAY out there, and perhaps even FORBIDDEN – like, necromancy, ferinstince! – and yet was, and remained, thoroughly GOOD.
What a challenge THAT would be!
I would also very much love to see a CoG title where the protagonist is a young boy (“young,” as in the 11-13 age range) who has to deal with something unknown, horrifying, eldritch, and Lovecraftian…
…But preferably, with a good chance of winning out.
Yet another CoG story I’d love to see would be a kid-colonist on an exoplanet orbiting Proxima, Alpha, or Beta Centauri.
Think of it! All of a kid’s wonder and curiosity (and impulsiveness) confronting –
New and exotic creatures (“It followed me home! Can I keep it?”)
New illnesses (“Hmmm, stripes on the skin,” said Doc. “Never seen that before…”)
Strange new phenomena (“I’m telling you, the air turned purple!”)
Elements of other civilizations (“There were people down there! And they have green skin!”)
…And so forth!
On another matter:
If a protagonist has both a secret life and a mundane life (think of a superhero and his secret identity), then episodes of his “mundane” life will be “slice-of-life” almost by very definition.
Oh, all right. A CoG title where the protagonist is a young boy or girl.
While there are distinctions many people use CoG to refer to the company as a whole and, as a company, CoG certainly does publish gender locked games, just under different brand labels.
