First of all this is my first day on the forum and I want to say hello to the amazing Choisescript community. So hello to all you cyoa lovers out there!
As for the topic of this post I have two separate questions
Can I make a game based on another author’s setting\universe and hope to publish it on Hosted Games? I have read rules for CoG authors and it says that you can not pitch such a game to be contracted. But. There are several copyright statuses that allow to gane profit off of lore you do not own.
Let’s say I want to make some kind of Wizard of Oz reimagination. I definitely want to make it. As of 2021, twenty-six Oz books and five films are in the public domain. So it is allowed by the law. But how do CoG look at this matter?
It is bold to assume that I will actually finish my game but let’s assume it is finished and published. Whether it s successful or not I might want to rewrite it on another interactive fiction engine such as twine or even make traditional fiction book out of writing used in the game.
According to the rules mentioned earlier you are allowed to further continue developing your idea for the game but can you reuse the exact same idea and transfer it to another media?
Hope my questions are detailed enough and thank you for your help clarifying them! Have a nice day everyone.
You can make a novel out of your existing game, you can make a sequel on another Platform, but not the same Game, with choices on another Platform or engine
Thank you for your answer! It’s not that I think that I might have the desire to go through the coding process all over again using another engine and logic XD My concern is that if countless hours of creative work will go down in the awful abyss of unpopularity on choisescript platform there is a possibility to adapt my writing for another media, where it can be seen by more people and possibly be enjoyed by them
Do you think a visual novel format is different enough to be allowed?
If you published a game with Hosted Games, you would not be able to adapt that game in a choice based game format. My understanding is that this includes visual novels. If you wanted to do a sequel to your published Hosted Game as a visual novel, and you had retained your IP rights, this would (I believe) be OK as long as it was new content.
For example - I made some short interactive stories about characters from my published game Crème de la Crème in Twine and Ink. That’s fine. But I would not be able to adapt the actual published content of Crème de la Crème into a new Twine/ Ink/visual novel game.
You’re likely OK with work based on public domain content. There are Hosted Games inspired by The Wizard of Oz and Pride and Prejudice, and as far as I’m aware they were published with no issues.
Your answer is extremely helpful, thank you! Also that link done much help with forum navigation, hope this will prevent me from asking unnecessary questions in the future
One more if you will. I’ve digged through topics by searching translation related themes and still not sure. What I got is that CoG not interested in reaching foreign audience via translating their games. Might one make an english written Hosted Game and then separately develop it using their native language and another if engine?
With regards to writing a story based off an existing property, that depends on if it is public domain. In your example you could write an Oz story if it was the original book (there’s already one up on HG that did that) but you CAN’T write one based on the movie. If anything is not public domain, you need prior permission from the author/publisher before going ahead. (Examples of games up on HG that use public domain source material as inspiration: Who was the real Robin Hood, The Saga of Oedipus Rex, The Harbringer’s Head, The courting of Miss Bennett,NE by NW Oz, Highlands, Deep waters, A study in steampunk.)
You can make games and publish them where ever, AS LONG as you don’t make any money from them. So you can make a game in another language, but it won’t be published on HG, you can’t translate existing games without permission from the author and COG (which probably won’t be given, you’d have to ask), and you can’t publish it somewhere else and ask money for it.
Sorry just reread that: If you wanted to publish the same book that you have written and published on HG in another language else where on ink, I’m not sure. That’s a question for COG.
