Well, some readers may not want to speak all the languages, depending on what that might affect in your story. Not that you should compromise your artistic vision if seeing sections of your game in conlang is what you really want.
I mean, it is what I want. I am a conlanger, not a Choicescript writer. Been a conlanger for 8 years, only even known of Choicescript for a few months. If no one has any interest in that, I may as well not make the game.
@geldar I think conlanging can be tasteful flavouring in mild doses. Single words and phrases that can be roughly inferred in context.
But if you include too much conlang, or even any at all, you will probably put off readers that are not fantasy/sci-fi/speculative fiction hardcore nerds. The more you include, the more you’ll put off people.
I don’t think that’s a bad thing. I believe there is more value in a specific, compelling vision with power and uniqueness than a competently executed piece that trods familiar ground.
But it might damage your general chances of commercial viability, if that’s something that’s greatly important to you. Not every intricately worldbuilt story will rack up Lord of the Rings numbers, and the more unique your story, the greater probability someone will find something off putting in it and choose to leave it alone.
It’s up to you to choose your trade offs.
5 Likes
I figured people would prefer conlangs over naming languages… guess I was wrong. In that case, I probably shouldn’t make this game. Sounds like no one would like it.
Ultimately, while we can only give our best guesses, there are always exceptions. A smaller audience is not no one.
Why not post a demo and look at the feedback you get?
1 Like
Have barely started writing and the languages other than your MC’s native language would only start to show up at least a third of the way through, maybe even halfway.
There is an audience for any story, and every story has things about them, that some people dislike.
A lot of people won’t care at all, and for some, the conlangs will be the main selling point.
Unless earning money is your main goal, you should make whatever story you want to, and not care too much about what is the most popular.
7 Likes
Some people saying they wouldn’t like it is not remotely the same as “no one would like it.” And thank God, or else my game wouldn’t have sold at all.
The Greek-derived terms with which I peppered Choice of Rebels aren’t a conlang, but they’re similarly unintelligible to plenty of readers. I’ve had no shortage of bad reviews like: “A tad boring. The language uses many new made up words which describe things, which you keep on having to lookup for reference, interrupting the flow of reading it.” (Currently one of the top four reviews I see when I open up the Play Store).
But of course that’s not the whole story. Plenty of people bought it and liked it (many no doubt despite the gameworld having its own distinctive vocabulary, but that’s fine). It’s been a success even though lots of people didn’t like my authorial choices.
Like you, Tolkien started with the conlangs (which as an aside is a good reason he didn’t have even more elf races–developing a new dialect for each one would have eaten his whole life). His story wasn’t about the languages, but featured them heavily. That was his passion.
No doubt that cost him some readers from his day to this. And I don’t think they’re why LotR was popular. Most of his fans would surely have enjoyed LotR just as much if Quenya and Sindarin were gibberish with a few snippets of sense (“dor” means “land of”!) rather than fully realized languages.
So yeah, don’t add a conlang as a measure to make your game popular. But if you love conlangs, don’t be afraid to include one just because some readers won’t like it. “Some readers” will dislike any creative choice you make.
If you want to find a big audience, try to leaven the potentially unpopular stuff you include for your own satisfaction with other more broadly popular elements. (Like Tolkien did, by mashing up his professorial passion for languages and Beowulfian myths with the bedtime stories he told his kids.) But make sure it’s all stuff you enjoy, as Tolkien certainly enjoyed hobbits and Bombadil. If you’re writing solely for the tastes of an imagined audience rather than your own tastes, you’re likely to be doubly disappointed–you won’t enjoy what you’ve written, and there’s a good chance that others won’t either.
26 Likes
This thread is not a representative sample of a general audience. Just because a trope annoys some people here doesn’t mean the general audience won’t tolerate it.
Almost everyone I know hates love triangles and yet this trope remains popular in mainstream media, for example.
I’m not saying don’t listen to criticism but also don’t forget to take things with a grain of salt.
18 Likes
Calling conlangs gibberish is a bit harsh as well, I think. Like, the whole point is that it’s not gibberish, it has an actual structure and rules. I wouldn’t call a language I don’t know gibberish just because I don’t understand it.
3 Likes
This has actually come up as a point of contention for me in both a pair of published CoG games and a WIP, where the primary means of introducing the MC to expected love interests is to either kidnap (the space pirate CoG whose name I can never remember (Future Zyri edit: It’s called Reckless Space Pirates, come on, Zyri, you’re smarter than this) and the Price of Emeralds WIP), or “rescue” them but then proceed to hold them hostage and demand that they take up a ne’er-do-well lifestyle in exchange for saving their life (Treasure Seekers of the Lady Luck).
No disrespect to the authors of these stories… but why am I supposed to find being taken, or otherwise being held against my will, to be sexy? Why should I ever want to hook up with my captors? (Or in the case of Lady Luck, my leash-holders, because the means of keeping the player on track with the plot is having them be stuck in a literal slave collar that the ship captain has no compunctions against using if you try and set your feet against what they want.)
I know I said earlier that I judge romance by personality first before looks, but if I’ve just been forced at metaphorical gunpoint to become a criminal whether I like it or not, I don’t really care what their personalities are, either, I have officially written off EVERY RO in this story as “extremely not worth it.”
15 Likes
Interesting that these are in the exact same category for you, since I actually do find the former to be sexy (which I know is not a universal response), but I hate the latter just like you.
3 Likes
And, hey, that’s valid. It’s a gripe for me, but I don’t have any issue with other people enjoying it. My real problem simply comes from the fact that in every single one of these stories that I’ve read so far:
A. I’m supposed to like being a kidnapping victim - I do not, and will actively seek out the option to escape or otherwise foil my captors’ schemes out of spite.
And when I go about hunting those aforementioned options down:
B. The story treats it like I’M the oddball for not wanting to sex up the people responsible for my unlawful detainment, instead?
Like, if I ever got kidnapped, forced into a slave collar, or forced to become a criminal against my will in real life, I’d be pretty terrified to start, and then extraordinarily pissed after the fact. My character didn’t hesitate when the option to blow a hole in the captain of the Lady Luck’s sternum came up at the story’s climax - yeah, he alienated the entire crew and startled the living hell out of the space cops that he had sold the crew out to, but I feel like, in that moment, he was probably too livid with his situation up to that point to care how bad he may have made himself look to all who were present. It was his one, perhaps only, chance to break free and get back at his captors for jerking him around, and let it never be said that he’s an indecisive soul!
…Plus, why would he give a shit what the crew who slapped a slave collar on him and forced him to assist in their schemes think of him, to begin with? If that were really a concern, he probably wouldn’t have shot their captain.
17 Likes
Huh, I never got the impression I was supposed to like being kidnapped in any Choicescript games. Definitely seen the lack of an option whether to accept it or not (though mostly in Twine and Ren’Py games) and it’s always been that the MC doesn’t accept it.
2 Likes
Yeah, it’s a bit more on the nose with the three games that I mentioned:
In Lady Luck, the initial excuse for the slave collar is that they have sensitive stuff on the ship and can’t be certain that you won’t try and tamper with it, but if you start setting your feet super hard about becoming part of the team and being involved in their heists, then the captain drops all pretense of politeness and uses the collar as a means of forcing you to do what they want, and the narrative kind of treats you like a bad guy for continuing to resist after the fact.
In Reckless Space Pirates, there’s a few scenes where the pirates, who, up to this point, have been very unarguably hostile towards you except for maybe two of them, suddenly start trying to act buddy-buddy with you. This is right on the cusp of the point where you finally get the option to try and escape, mind. While, granted, the unambiguously good ending of the game comes from escaping and foiling their schemes (after all, they’re out to make a profit off of basically selling the children of a race of mushroom people), I’m gonna hinge a bet that it’s also the harder option, because you have to jump through a bunch of hoops and hope to hell your skill checks pass, and that staying with the pirates would have been easier.
In Price of Emeralds, I and several others brought up some valid reasons why it kinda makes no sense for the MC to want to jump into the crime life, namely: yeah, sucky job, sucky social life, but that does not necessarily a criminal make. And, again, most folks probably wouldn’t take too kindly to being kidnapped and forced into the whole deal, you know? The author’s response was to add an incredibly bullshit game over sequence where refusing to join the heist team results in all blame for the crime landing in your lap, nobody hearing your side, all the people in your life turning against you, and you rotting in prison under false accusations. Basically everybody objected to that, and the author is very likely going to roll it back for something a bit more tame, but still,that was a hell of an update.
6 Likes
There was definitely an either/or situation in Lady Luck, but I didn’t feel like either option was intended to be something we wanted to do, just the lesser of two evils.
I didn’t get too far in RSP before I decided it wasn’t interesting. Kinda forgot the entire plot because I knew I wasn’t going to play it again.
Don’t think I’ve ever played Price of Emeralds.
2 Likes
Price of Emeralds is only like… Oh, prologue and two chapters, something of that sort? It fell off the main page due to inactivity by its author, but it’s still relatively recent on here.
I agree about the either-or situation in Lady Luck, I absolutely could have just chosen to play nice and THEN work out a means of escape, I just tend to get in my own head when I play these games and I started thinking in more, “what would I legit do” terms versus “what would probably make more sense to do.”
Basically all you need to know about RSP’s plot is that the pirates, in question, kidnap you for [reasons] that are vaguely covered in the first chapter but involve you getting pretty drunk if I recall, and from there, they plan on making a profit off of selling a foreign species’ children for money - it’s not that they don’t know, per se, that they’re selling kids, it’s more that they don’t care. At some point, you can break free, turn to the very species being victimized for profit, and completely dismantle the whole scheme, but it’s tricky to do.
2 Likes
Well, I started playing Price of Emeralds now, and… decided to stop as soon as there was no option for healthy communication in relationships. Don’t think I even hit any major plot points.
3 Likes
Very true. Had I played RSP nine years ago when it first published, I probably wouldn’t have had any issue with how it was written, versus my opinion on it in today’s times. That said, for a quick little space adventure, it could’ve done worse.
2 Likes
So far the only major plot point at all is that you get wrapped up in a heist by accident, and because the team works for shady benefactors, you’re kinda stuck now that you’ve gone and gotten yourself wrapped up in things. At least for now, the author did make it clear that future updates will allow for players (like myself) to escape at some point if they so choose.
2 Likes