I believe this is key to understanding the genre of Interactive Fiction in general, not just a Choice Script game.
First-person shooters have stories written for them. Sometimes these stories are very well-developed and often written by experienced and acclaimed authors. Tom Clancy is the author that comes to mind immediately, but there are others as well.
What differentiates a First-person shooter story from an Interactive Fiction story are the end-goals and “end-states”. A First-person shooter’s goal is to shoot and loot. No matter how complex or in-depth the story you are following, in the game, the goal will always be to shoot and then loot your way through the story.
Don’t get me wrong … Tom Clancy’s Division and Division 2 stories are well done … so well done that they are being adapted to streaming series on Netflix. The Last of Us is a genuine hit on HBO, and up to the most recent episode, the show followed the game’s story without deviation.
The First-person shooters often offer MC customization, and the level of customization rivals, if not exceeds, the level offered in Choice Script games. You would think that such a feature in a game would attract almost every self-insert gamer that can buy the game.
Yet, because there is a singular goal, these games do not appeal to most who seek interactive fiction in its many forms. No matter if the gamer chooses a virtual novel, or a choice script game, the multiple goals baked in is what attracts, hooks, and retains the gamer.
Personally, I don’t mind set backstories (they’re usually the crux of the story). And I don’t mind a set personality trait, if the story requires it (ex. I’m not an adventurous person, but some IF requires my character to be, and that’s fine). But I want to grow my character up from that starting place. There are lots of aspects of a person that don’t directly control the plot, but indirectly affect it (ex. The adventurer can be a rough cowboy type, or a bubbly party girl. The plot would play out the same way). You can’t get this with a purely set MC. So I’m on camp “set what’s required for the plot, leave the rest up to me”
The author places themself at the mercy of the reader the moment they refer to them as “you”. It’s next to impossible for a reader not to take it personally when you refer to them so directly. An obvious benefit to this is that it allows for very easy and instant immersion. The drawbacks are more subtle, but they all stem from a lack of narrative control from the author.
I think a lot of authors get into choicegames without much experience in or understanding of writing in 2nd person tense. I was certainly one of them! For those who enjoy it, all the power to them, but for me, it’s creative castration.
The future demographic of these games is inevitably more mature and almost certainly more female (to replicate traditional fiction audiences). It’ll be interesting to see how “choicegame expectations” change accordingly. For those paying attention, they already have!
The expectations of reader vs writer is always going to determine what is possible for a reader to do versus what a writer is capable of doing with the type of interactive medium. It would be virtually impossible for someone to take a interactive RPG like Skyrim or Fallout and convert it into a physical book, for example. The closest thing to that would probably be the Fabled Lands and Steam Highwayman books and they take a lot of planning to give a reader such flexibility as to choose how the story begins and ends as much as continues. AI Dungeon and ChatGPT show that AI can possibly reach that level of decision making, but without the flexibility and style of a human writer something would ultimately feel lacking (added to the self imposed limits placed on the AI in terms of what content and context they are allowed to make).
Stuff that is set in a game can be annoying but it often means that something else can be possibly more flexible since the writer isn’t having to factor in both aspects. An accurate Pride and Prejudice game as what exists on the Hosted Games app would need to be totally different if it offered player the choice to be a male character- it would likely need the ability to play as Darcy or Bingley instead of an Elizabeth style character. Even if it was still female only but there was the option to play as a character like Jane or Lydia it would have required a lot more effort on the part of the writer to essentially create an entirely different story. Of course we have an example of this with the Cinderella and Prince Charming story so one can see the appeal, but as stated that requires more work by the writer.
It is a tricky question but I think ultimately it is up to the writer what they are comfortable doing rather than us readers.
I never play self inserts, I tailor the MC to what I think fits the story the best, there is more freedom in shaping a MC and seeing the world react to different types. That for me is the beauty of choice of games.
Again, it IS personal preference, if I don’t like the main character no matter if they come from an if or a classic console game, then my enjoyment is automatically hampered by that fact. It is the sole reason why I personally cannot read certain books(or games) or drop one because more often than not I’m not a fan of the protagonist and find myself thinking “Wonder how the story would turn out if MC reacted differently.” Neither is good or bad, but the power of choice is what I’m looking for in a choice game, the whole stat based aspect of the genre isn’t what I’m interested in, it’s the ability to see the MC interact with the cast/world in a way that I want.
A set MC for me means = set personality, set reactions to events with no player input.
Not = set background story, set family, set occupation, set cosmetic features that lean into MC’s past (like the gloved hand in Golden Rose for example). If anything, it’s a powerful foundation to any MC, self insert or not.
Personally, I have seen more ire by (presumably) male players because certain games, mainly in the Heart’s Choice line, were not catering to their expectations of what an appropriate romance for cishet guys should look like. I would also say that, from my experience, female readers tend to be more open to male POVs considering that’s what they largely grow up with.
Back to the topic: I don’t generally mind preset characters as long as I still have certain ways to shape them, their personality, or the ways they react to people, things, and conflicts. To be fair, though, it would definitely put me off not to be able to choose the MC’s first name. There are definitely good reasons why the MC’s name could be pre-determined but it should be more than “because the author felt like it”.
For example, in Mind Blind, we are established as Nick Wiseman’s sibling with a preset backstory. However, we can decide how we feel about our brother, our parents, and our circumstances (ranging from being largely accepting to being deeply traumatized). There are also certain trait flags that are remembered at later points, contributing to the feel of our MC as the person we have shaped them to be.
Probably I was one of those! Whilst you are definitely not wrong I would point out only three out of numerous games on HC offer a M/F option, so that they are probably lacking choices to begin with. I should say that I have enjoyed several female only games on there though (Pirates and Werewolves to be specific).
Personally speaking, I just find Heart’s Choice romances a bit… well, boring. There’s just nothing to grasp there for me, they feel either vanilla or very… quick to fall out of my memory.
MCs there fall into same pitfalls that often befall their older sister, Choice of Games. They’re both set and too… general, too generic. There’s almost nothing to grasp in some games and thus I prefer games from CoG line that limit MC and their character in some way, give them anchors and something to grasp onto. A good example of such an MC would be Mecha Ace one. Their strong sense of personality and different reactions to their character and values from other characters make the game feel alive to me.
I totally agree with the feeling for those two branches of publishing, but I don’t think that’s necessarily due to the protagonist not having enough to work with. I think that’s mostly due to the very intense style guidelines that at least CoG-published games have to abide by (don’t know how bad it is for HC; it’s at least not quite as bad as CoG but obviously still way more strict than HG). There is a certain push for broad appeal there, absolutely, but I’ve actually found much of the CoG lineup’s MCs to be too set, like having a very distinct and immutable, if kinda generic, personality that I can’t affect meaningfully, and that’s where I really need a character to not be predetermined (unless it just ends up working out for me like Fallen Hero) to feel like I have any agency.
I’m really interested to hear more about this! I’m wary of pushing anyone to name names or for this to become a bashing thread because goodness knows that’s tedious, but when you say the personality is immutable, what kind of writing makes it feel like that? The game making assumptions about how your MC’s feeling, or that it feels like the game isn’t paying attention to the feelings/opinions you’ve expressed? Or that it doesn’t let you express them in the first place? (Or something completely different!)
It’s typically the more YA-type stories that are like that, but often there’s like an underlying YA protagonist in the character. I don’t really know if I could be more specific, but like there’s a constant optimism, extraversion, and high expressiveness that I feel for those stories. I’m sure I’m really only noticing as I play more or less as myself (within the context of the story; basically I just make choices that feel right for me), and I’m quite the antithesis of all of that. Even when there’s the basic opposed pairs, there’s often not enough flavor text changed from it, or like the author kept too much of that baseline, so like a character that, based on stats, should be “stoic” ends up constantly expressing a significant amount, much more than they keep quiet (or however “stoic” is defined for this story, since there’s like a 50% chance it is code for “cold-hearted asshole”).
Sorry if that isn’t much help. Doing my best trying to go off of what I recall. I think more recent stories under CoG have been better (in that aspect at least), but there was a big period (if I had to give years, maybe like 2016 to 2020?) where they were often like that to my perception. Again, I’m sure it’s due to my being very not that, so I don’t figure it’s gonna be very noticable or otherwise a problem for most people. Now that I’m thinking about it, it’s entirely possible that it’s me noticing the character being neurotypical. I dunno, just a possibility I came up with, that it’s more to do with me being very autistic and the MC not reflecting that.
80 days is amazing! It’s a game I keep coming back to and IMO well worth people’s time if you haven’t tried it yet. There is a strong voice and theme behind it that is hard to get without a preset character. (It is also a very customisable IF of an existing novel.)
I know I’ve brought this game up a few times but Zozzled is an amazing game with a preset character who has a very strong “voice” that just works with the style of game it is (and is probably why it won IFComp 2019). It is “unfortunately” parser and puzzle based, so may not be the cup of tea for a lot of non-parser players, but if you’re open to trying it, I’d definitely recommend it to see what you can do with that style of game. (They also have a cheat sheet if you get stuck on a command or puzzle which I did need myself! So don’t let not being familiar with parser put you off completely.)
I honestly don’t mind set main characters. Sometimes it’s even better, because it allows authors to give the MC a cohesive character arc, similar to how the companions would get one.
Where I tend to draw the line is if the story always ends up at the same place, or doesn’t react to the decisions you make, because the MC is set. That’s when I start to think, “Why didn’t you just write a book?”
I personally don’t mind if certain details such as family, past, or “party members” are set in stone, as this is the case for many titles such as “Pon Para”, “Fallen Hero”, “I, The Forgotten One”, etc. That being said, I really dislike an MC who has major traits (personality, name, appearance, gender, sexuality) set in stone like in “Balance of Superpower” and “Guenevere” (nothing against those authors). As many have said, the vast majority of Choice/Hosted games have a good degree of character creation/customization and have thus set a sort of precedent.
It’s simple really, as others have pointed out, COG is part of the a CYOA genre, customizable characters and choices are expected with that territory.
Games like The Last of Us and Final Fantasy are not roleplaying games (FF is a jrpg), they have set characters and a linear storyline. People expect this.
I find COG is more similar to Western RPGs, i.e Baldur’s Gate, Pathfinder, Dragon Age, Pillars of Eternity etc.
It seems that main characters with semi-set motivations and personality (and semi-set to hard-set backstory), with customizable appearance, gender (this one depends: I don’t mind genderlocked main characters, but others do), orientation, etc. are more liked than hard-set main characters or completely fluid main characters, as a trend (there are exceptions though), and I am inclined to agree with this. For me, hard-set main characters work best for mythology-based/based-on-existing-work games where you’re playing as a character from that work (like Oedipus Rex, Elizabeth Bennett, or Guenevere).
Jrpgs are roleplaying in name only. In most jrpgs there is little to no roleplaying and many protagonist are either set characters or silent characters. Jrpgs in context usually consists of leveling up, turnbased combat, linear story and a cast of colourful characters.
Compare Dragon Age to Final Fantasy. While both have RPG in their title. Dragon age is a COYA game while final fantasy is not.
Which is why I said COG is similar to Western RPGs.
Whilst you are definitely not wrong I would point out only three out of numerous games on HC offer a M/F option, so that they are probably lacking choices to begin with. I should say that I have enjoyed several female only games on there though (Pirates and Werewolves to be specific).