Are hosted games truly that popular with the CoG community?

Hosted Games HG Questions
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I apologize if this has been asked before, I’m new to the CoG community (literally only a day or two old).

Hoping to test my writing hand with my technical skills, but I would think this would be rather challenging to do without editors? Wondering if the HG community is large enough to offer opinions and beta runs?

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It depends on how much people like your stuff. A HG title that isn’t very good or is in an obscure genre could get little attention from beta readers. Whereas the most popular could literally have thousands of posts in their threads full of both helpful input and chatter about the story at large.

Also, welcome!

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oh it is you should try all for better exp

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98% of my time here is spent on HG titles/projects. Go for it.

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go for it iam on fire

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If anything, this forum is more interested, at heart, in HG/WIP than it is in the Choice of Games line.

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I’m generally more interested in Hosted Games than CoG titles. HG usually has topics that I like more

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All my favourite titles have been HG rather than CoG so take that as you will. Just a coincidence I’m sure.

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Yeah I’ll agree with @Blazerules. All my favorites are HG’s. The CoG games have a very consistent level of quality while HG’s vary a lot. So while most of my favorite CS games are released as HG’s also most of the ones I really didn’t like were also HG’s

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Welcome, @Ripwolff!

Tons of people on here, and I count myself among them, love HG titles. If you feel like you have a story you want to tell, then you should definitely work on it and post a demo once you’ve gotten far enough into the story so that adequate feedback can be given. (a first chapter, maybe two, would be good.)

Make sure to include what kind of feedback you’re looking for. Also, this thread might be helpful to take a look at.

Also, if you haven’t really done anything with Choicescript, I suggest taking a look at this thread:

There may be a more current thread, but this one has a ton of links to check out.

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As a whole, I’d say that yes, they are more popular because:

  • They are often developped within the community, meaning there is likely more trust towards the authors. Moreover, you can see how the game progresses, which (in my opinion) is very satisfying).
  • Said authors are very present during the development of their games. There is a certain appeal to being able to talk directly with the authors.
  • Some of the most popular series (the most obvious one being The Lost Heir trilogy and the Infinity Series) are are among the most popular, if not the most popular, games of the company.
  • As a contrast, HG is submitted to far less restrictions when being published. Some of them even come out of nowhere. They are not as constant as the normal CoG games.

However, I’ve noticed that in the past year this opposition has become more and more pronounced. You have excellent games that are sometimes better than the CoG ones (no offense, just my opinion) an others that are just railroaded stories with barely anything interesting.

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I don’t know what the sales numbers are like, but I would definitely say the online community (the forums, Tumblr, and Discord) are by far more interested in HG games than COGs. I would even bet that the most popular HGs (Wayhaven Chronicles, The Lost Heir trilogy, etc.) have more followers/fans/outsell all but the most popular or long-running COGs.

As others have said, if you go to the top HG WIPs of all time (you can click on the Works-in-Progress category to do this), you’ll find threads with so many replies (over 10,000) that they had to start new ones because they reached the limit. That’s a lot of attention!

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Already seen many good replies and can’t really add more to the discussion than: believe your instinct and don’t make the error to look down on the HG titles just because the brand is different (If you like the story/setting that is what really matter, I assure you seeing “CoG” in this cases don’t make it automatically better :wink:

Also I suggest if from the start you find an author you like the style /way of writing. Just stick around and see what other works he made. Make more easy to enjoy than go from one title to another randomly

About if the HG are more popular than the CoG titles I can’t really say, personally I just go for personal preferences (The fact in this case the authors are pretty much members of the forum is maybe the appealing part and seeing the WIP (Work in progress projects on the dashingdon site) taking form and be released over time (months or even years) give a good sense on the work put in this games.

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Wow, the sheer amount of replies is encouraging. Thank you all for your input and feedback. I can’t remember that last time I’ve seen a forum this active.

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Thank you all, you’ve convinced me to move forward with a new type of writing and aim for an HG release.

I’ve spent a lot of time with community technology, and I just want to say that you guys should be proud of the community you’ve built, it’s rare to see such an engaged group of people anymore.

Here goes nothing!

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Best of luck.

You probably already saw it, but CSide is a great tool to write games with

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Been using the choicescript ide, it’s really good, just wish it was a little more optimized. Except for it being a memory hog, it’s a fantastic tool! Thanks for the recommendation!

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