When it comes to the different defintions of interactivity, I meant all of them, but particularly definition 1 and definition 3. The definition of passenger is, after all, someone who doesn’t steer the vehicle in question and if you play/read a very “narrow” cog or hg where it seems like the story will basically move along on the same rails, so to speak, and with (at least mostly) the same outcomes whatever you do, it would certainly make me as a player/reader feel more like a passenger. So I think that both forms of interactivity are important, they certainly both feel important to me. Being able to shape your MCs the way you want them to be, whether by self-inserting or creating and “acting out” a particular kind of personality, allows you more control over the personality of your MCs and how they are in general and make them feel more like your own characters, as compared to a character that you (at best) “borrow” from the writer. Having more choices that make a significant difference to the plot, in turn gives you more a feeling of control over the plot and that plot will respond to and change according to your choices, so that you can in some sense be said to steer the plot in a certain direction…
And so they can be said to be two different aspects of interactivity that, at least when done right, together will ensure that you as a reader feel like you’re in the driver’s seat, so to speak, of the cog or hg in question. The second defintion of interactivity is to a large extent about ensuring about ensuring that a cog or hg “reads right”. Just like you can’t have, for instance, have a rap record without any rapping, if you don’t get any choices in a cog or hg game, there wouldn’t be anything to separate it from a regular e-book as far as I can see, at least unless you don’t use randomization instead. And without the cog or hg giving you any choices, the two other forms of interactivity would,as far as I can see, also be basically impossible. But the way I see it, that second form of interactivity is not sufficient for a cog or hg to be really interactive. Instead you need at least one of the others to be present for a cog or hg to be really interactive and I’d argue that you need at least a certain baseline in both interactivity 1 and (at least)interactivity 3 as well for the interactivity to not be lackluster or worse.
And yes, I’ve heard it mentioned before that the majority of people who buy a cog or hg barely or hardly replay it. But I am bit curious if there’s any actual data on that and, if so, what the sources are for that data. Both because it’s always good to look more closely at the reliability of any such sources, just in case and because having direct access to such sources may also lead to a better understanding of what is going on.
Although I don’t want to minimize the importance of any sources indicating that most buyers barely or hardly replay cogs or hgs, I do think it’s important to make a distinction between casual buyers who don’t necessarily buy more than one or two cogs or hgs or cog or hg series and the fans, who are frequent buyers of cogs and hgs and, I guess often are important drivers of the cog and hg market and, I think, also an important group of customers. Although I don’t have any “official” data to back this up, I have a strong suspicion that interactivity, in the sense of being able to create your own MC and/or cog and hgs being wide is much more important to them than the casual buyers. As far as I can remember interactivity and/or replayability(which is strongly connected to interactivity 1 and to) have been stated to be really important by many of the redditors in both the COG and the HG reddit and considering the outlook of people who frequent this forum, I have a hard time believing that this is much less of a concern here. So although it may very well be, at least when it comes to the total number of people buying cogs and hgs, that I’ve overestimated the number for whom interactivity 1 and/or 3 is an important issue, I still think that there’s plenty of people, particularly among those who really care about cog and hgs, the true fans, who care deeply about it, enough for it to be an important issue to consider. Excactly how important it should be, on the other hand, is another discussion. And as long the level of interactivity in cogs and most hgs doesn’t still doesn’t seem to go below the treshold of how much I think it should be and often far beyond that, I’ll still be happy with the current stat of affairs(at least when it comes to interactivity) and fortunately I don’t see any sign of that changing soon.
P.S: If you’re curious about why I don’t rate your COG higher, @Havenstone I’d be happy to tell you more about that, but probably outside of this thread, since I don’t want to derail it too much.
