CYOA story online: All Your Magic Are Belong To Us

Off-Topic Other Interactive Fiction
21

Sorry, I apologize. I like when people give prescriptive/positive feedback, and mine here was not up to the standard that I would like myself.

But yes, my advice is to change the title.

Basically, there are many in this forum and elsewhere that will not understand. I mean, I knew that reference, but it did not come to my mind when reading the title. I just thought: “wow, if they can’t even get the grammar of the title right, then I don’t want to get a headache by trying to read the story”.

So, sorry about that. A book shouldn’t be judged by its cover (or it’s title?). But, in this forum there are tons of amazing WIPs that I haven’t read (I haven’t even read many of the famous titles in CoG/HG, such as Tin Star). I’m happy to read a WIP and help with the grammar IF I know the author. If I don’t… as I say, there is just so much content in this forum (and, I have no idea about this game, as I didn’t read it… the title suggested to me poor grammar, so I steered away… for all I know it could be one of the best games ever written, but my own subjective predisposition made me skip it).

@joseki, given all the comments so far, you might really want to consider changing the title (I just fear how many readers you might be losing just because of it…) I also want to note that when there is a mis-alingnment between humor/reader expectations and a game, the result can be poor… I’m thinking now of Startship adventures:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.hostedgames.starshipadventures&hl=en

This game had several established authors in this forum involved, yet many readers didn’t get the 50’s sci-fi humor/criticism. We loved writing the game, but it was a commercial flop, because of this miss-alignment. So, you could produce the best game ever, and many people might not read it just because they can’t even get past the title… or start reading it and bounce off badly, as they don’t understand the humor in the game.

Hope this makes sense, and please understand I’m trying to provide constructive criticism (I know it might not have come out well before…)

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22

FWIW aside from the typo errors my only other advice is in agreement with the others; the current title is too jarring and may come across as unprofessional and does not do service to the quality of your work.

I personally cannot reccomend a good title (I mean, maybe “The Magic and Mystery of Green Lake”(?)) But perhaps
“The Legend of Green Lake”
As the title and
“All Your Magic Are Belong To Us as a sub heading or chapter title”?

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23

So, the title might become All your magic belongs to us. This way we keep an upper layer that follows an event in this book and might span across other adventures in the future.
Also for those with a certain taste, might ring a bell toward a nostalgic feeling of that reference.

We’ll make a decision in the next few days (the url probably won’t change for now).

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24

FWIW I’d be twice as likely to play a game with the current title, because I do get the reference and it tells me something about the tone (comic, referential) as well as genre.

Changing it to remove the reference just leaves a generic fantasy title; and people who do suspect the reference will not necessarily have a warm feeling about a grammar-corrected version (since that removes the actual joke).

People are right to warn that it will cost you some players. Most creative choices do. Better to make those choices and won the consequences than to try to please everyone and end up with something generic…

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25

Thanks for chiming in! We will try and see if some sort of middle ground works, like “All your magic belongs to us”. If not, we will likely stick to our original title.

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26

Concerning the title: … I am of the school that @Havenstone teaches at … people like @rose-court and myself will find nostalgia within its meaning …

It seems to me that your focus for this game is narrow and not broad; you’ll be intentionally marketing the game to those that “get the title” and thus, compromising the title in an attempt to gain a few extra nibbles is most likely not the way to go.

As to @Jacic and @adrao’s posts, I think this is exactly why you need to keep the title the way it is… your market for such a story has a built-in expiration date - you might as well focus market it to those you are developing the game for in an all or nothing manner to maximize your audience.

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27

One more thing before I go, @joseki it’s totally okay to feel frustrated by the title issue. Rarely are such issues easy to deal with. It’s obviously not what you guys—or any author—would want to be the focus of the game, but I am glad that you seem to be taking all of our advice so carefully.

With that said, I would like to gently encourage everyone to shift their focus onto the game itself.
I think discussion of the game, its story, and atmosphere will give additional insight on what to do in regards to the title, in addition to being the most important aspects to discuss overall. :slight_smile:

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28

This is turning into an interesting philosophical debate (I want to emphasize this word, philosophical, as I am really taking this discussion to be constructive, about game design and promotion, so, please take everything that I say in that way, and not as an attack on anybody, as I don’t necessarily know what is best, and I understand different people get into making games for different reasons).

So… you can make the game you want to make, and some people will play it (Starship Adventures is still being read… and it could be that the limited -and rather poor?- ratings it has is down not to the confusion about what the game is about, but our poor writing style as a group, so I get that).

But, do you want a very limited audience to read your game? I mean, how many people would you want to read your game to consider it a success? (and I understand you might not measure this in money terms, you might just want people to read it… it could be that you are not even bothered by how many people read it, though given that you are asking for advice on this forum I am going to guess you do care). Check the number of downloads of various CoG/HG in Google Play. There are some very good CoG/HGs that have been downloaded ~1000 times (ok, its a range of 1000 - 10000, but out of this only 20% of people will have gone to read/play the entire story, so you have 200 - 2000 people). Are you comfortable if your game is ever just read by that number of people? (if so, then please go ahead… and I could be wrong and word of mouth spreads… but this is a random thing, you never know if it will happen… and there is just SO much content, and SO many games out there… I mean, if we are talking interaction fiction and games, this is a good website that publishes regular news: http://gamebooknews.com/)

Often, as discussed in this forum, it seems that certain themes work well (superheroes, zombies, fantasy, etc), while others struggle (sci-fi, etc). This does not mean you shouldn’t make the game you wanted to make (I made Highway Wars because I wanted to, knowing it was probably outside the popular genres… it does ok, though nothing to rave about).

But, if you have a good game, I believe in investing a bit of effort in getting the “cover” right (again, I am not going to claim that I’m the best at choosing my titles, and most of my games have changed title going on the suggestion of my beta testers).

So… I guess maybe my suggestion would be to get people to playtest your game, and then give them options on titles? What do they think represents well the game? Also, run some surveys of people, and ask them whether they would read a game with this or that title?

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29

I really like the title, because I know exactly what kind of humor to expect from it. I can see how it would look like a translation issue if you didn’t recognize that it’s a reference to the Zero Wing meme. (Which exists because of poor translation, so that’s funny to me.)

I don’t usually play stuff where I have to be male, just as a personal preference, but the humor is what moves this into play for me. If I hadn’t seen it previously, a more generic but grammatically accurate title wouldn’t overcome my disinterest in the POV.

I don’t know how helpful that is, but it’s my two cents. Will play the game when I’m not at work and let you know what I think!

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30

On a closing note to the title topic, I think you said it best on this post: please read and enjoy the book, everyone. After you know more about it, please do come back and tell us if the title fits and any other feedback you might have.
This is a tremendous help to us, so thank you in advance!

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31

Must just be the nostolgia factor for cyoa paperbacks I read as a kid talking then :grin:

Also just be a bit careful if you do any advertising as such to drop the cyoa part (you might get away with it on forums as long as it doesn’t come to their attention, but actual ads and such like or if your game becomes well known, probably not), as the company that owns that particular phrase has been known to get quite stringent about preventing its use outside their own branding.

Sounds like you’ve taking on board the comments as constructive rather than offensive, and that’s how they were meant. Some of us (like adrao and myself) are particularly sensitive to the impact of misaligned audiences and title vs expectation issues by working on a project (starship adventures) where this seems to have happened. In saying that, both of us have since written games that have been for a more focused audience, rather than casting as wide a net as possible (Highway wars and Oedipus) so in the end, it is the author’s decision to do what they want with their games.

This is primarily a WIP development forum for CS games and we pick apart each other’s projects regularly in order to try and make them the best they can be. The unwritten rule is that you don’t have to act on any advice, so it is up to you and I think you’ve heard a lot of the pros and cons of keeping the title as is by this stage :slight_smile:

I actually did like the turn to page… bits on the game even though they have no real world application on a computer platform as a game flavour.
Hope you stick around.

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