Fiction Genres: (Poll) What genres do you look for in CoG/HG?

[NlaEid]

I like medieval type COG HG but its not here? !?

[Eiwynn]

@Eric_Moser

“What shelf would my story be on if it was stocked in a bookstore?” Because unless you’re a huge name and get placed on that front table by the entrance, you’re only getting on one shelf!

Or “What shelf do I race for first when entering a bookstore?”

With digital purchases and the ability to tag titles, this limitation isn’t as harsh as it used to be decades ago.

Even in the brick and mortar stores here in the Pacific Northwest, you see cross-pollination - especially between the YA and associated Fantasy/SF/Thriller types of categories.

Since my project is a true cross-over, as evidenced by my testers categorizing it differently on their own, I kinda find this polling to be misleading.

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@MizArtist33

Buh. This is why I dread having to pick a single genre, especially when it comes to our game. Hard to sum up an “urban fantasy about young adults with humor, action, and also maybe some mystery and some mythical elements” type series in one or two words.

Can’t think of any one I would discourage, though. Sometimes I’m surprised by what catches my interest and what doesn’t on here.

Very well said. I guess I should read the entire thread before expressing my thoughts.

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Concerning the Romance: If it is well done, it will do nothing but add to the game, whichever “category” it belongs to originally. There is a huge market of VN and Oteme fans, a lot that cross-pollinate here, so it is expected to see a community interested in seeing this aspect in all titles and in the authors’ attempts to give the community what it wants.

The thing is, not all of us have experience writing this material (I include myself here) so when and if we do write these elements of romance into our games, we should be extra careful to “do it right” … that means, getting proper feedback and help during production.

Edit - One last thought: After the contest in January is over, I bet we will see interest peaked to those entries that did well. I’m already seeing quite a variation on types being floated, from high fantasy to historical, so I suspect many of us will be inspired by our co-authors/developers.

[Sovereign2Lilith]

I like romance, but it’s so niche. It’s hard to please every gender MC (unless you don’t specify the MC’s identity) and people who only like males/females and also account for different NPC personalities, especially if you restrict the NPCs by making them anything other than Playersexual. A good romance has about 4-5 romance options that are all of the correct gender and orientation for the player (which is why I only play otomes). If the game is only about romance and I don’t like any of the ROs, it’s not worth playing the game.

I think that superhero stories are overrepresented, but there’s no superhero option.

Historical games are also very niche as different genders and races may have had very different experiences, and I understand genderlocking, but I won’t play the game if the MC can’t be female.

I think thriller would be closer to horror than to action. I like thrillers and the suspense and sense of something wrong, but not all the random explosions and violence of action movies.

I don’t see how mysteries would work in CoG as once you solve the mystery, there’s no replayability unless it takes multiple plays to fully understand the story or the author completely ignores continuity and has a different big bad every play through . Mystery elements would be good, but maybe not as the entire plot.

Horror is good in movies where if the movie is a hour and a half long, you know you get about a hour and a half’s worth of content. If I keep dying (especially in the demo)in a game and there is no save system or the games not very good, I won’t keep playing. There being no sense of danger or discovering what you do doesn’t matter on the replay is also not good.

Fantasy or maybe slice of life main genres with elements of some of the other genres is what CoG usually does best.

[Mary_Duffy]

I don’t want to actually you, @Eric_Moser but a WIP is pretty much, as a rule, not going to become a COG, unless it’s being submitted to the Contest.

[River]

I feel weird picking Romance for any of them, since a lot of the times Romance isn’t the main focus of a story but more of a subplot or an optional thing. It’s also a little hard to know what constitutes as a romance. When the story is relationship driven (like the relationships between the characters is what drives the conflict)? When the goal is to get with a specific person in x amount of days?
idk, when I think of “romance game” I rarely think of a text based game fitting the criteria ><

[Eric_Moser]

Oh I know. I was just being as inclusive as possible, including the CoG writers on the forum and the folks entering the contest with hopes of winning!

I could have (and probably should have) phrased #1 as “writing a WiP” and left if at that, since I know some folks write with no goal of publication at all.

[catorrina]

@Sovereign2Lilith

I think thriller would be closer to horror than to action. I like thrillers and the suspense and sense of something wrong, but not all the random explosions and violence of action movies.

I disagree. Horror elicits a different emotional response, and covers different themes. There can be thriller elements in horror, but one does not require the other (arguably neither does action and thriller, but I’m more likely to expect a car chase in something billed as pure thriller than an axe murderer, and I’m less likely to be disappointed if the eldrich horrors don’t force a Race Against Time as opposed to the action hero cop on the run).

@Sovereign2Lilith

I don’t see how mysteries would work in CoG as once you solve the mystery, there’s no replayability unless it takes multiple plays to fully understand

There’s this approach, where you don’t really get all your questions answered on one run, because the approach you took meant you didn’t have time to exploit X building or work with Y character. There’s also the fun of going back through and catching clues you missed on the first run. And there’s games where I love the characters and want to relive the story.

I know how most Sherlock Holmes tales end. I still reread them, and I don’t even get to change plot elements when I go through them again.

@Sovereign2Lilith

There being no sense of danger or discovering what you do doesn’t matter on the replay is also not good.

This sounds like bad horror, not horror as a genre. And you don’t need death to be scary. One of my favorite tabletops blatantly tells you that your character is completely immune from death until the final round, at which point the characters are guaranteed to die. So already you’ve cut out a fear of death and spoiled the ending a bit. By giving us good build, atmosphere, and consequences beyond our character deaths, well… I still have nightmares at the end of the session.

Same with gameplay: if I’m immersed in the character and the situation, I can be terrified, even if I don’t die (death being more an inconvenience in games anyway). Even if I know what’s coming. Anticipation can still bring adrenaline, and if different choices change the plot tempo then there’s still very much of that.

[ChaoticJackal]

In response to the points above, this is a reason why incorporating multiple character builds with their own overarching plot is a great way of creating gameplay immersion in the universe you create. It would be absolutely pointless and redundant to create multiple builds only to have them attempt to solve one type of mystery. Mystery and horror can be the main foundations of your universe and you can still create a large degree of replayability if you create subplots within the main plot of each character build. It’s tedious to work out in code, but if you really wanted a great game, then I see no reason why people should shy away from the workload if the end product is something you could be proud of.

[kaos]

I like how the most people say, they would place a story in a fantasy setting and that they are interestedin fantasy stories, but then think fantasy is over-representet.

[Havenstone]

Economic self-interest, obvs. I want less competition with my fantasy story.

[derekmetaltron]

I love Time Travel stuff so I suspect that is what I would use for my story if I made one. Happy to see we do have a Time Travel with Dinosaurs story coming up.

Pure Historical are also nice. I feel like we tend to have a LOT of historical style stuff focused on the Regency/Victorian period, would be nice to have other periods shown off. There hasn’t been a great WW2 themed Choice story since Marine Raider, and I’ve toyed with a Paris Resistance game before.

Love Super Heroes stuff, though I would probably say there’s a fair number of games covering that in various degrees.

I would like more romance focused games, especially ones not predominantly focused to the female gender as Affairs of the Court evidently was.

I will say that I think it’s nice that most genres do have at least one decent game to represent them.

[Alexandra]

Just a guess: I think people want to read fantasy stories but are frustrated by the quality they’ve found. We have so much fantasy it’s hard to distinguish what’s worth our time. Writing more good fantasy (which everyone writing is trying to do) or having less fantasy overall would both ease the problem. And fantasy itself is such a broad category people might have different reasons for answering the two questions the same way.

[Havenstone]

PS - and while we’re talking about economic self-interest, why didn’t the guy who writes superhero CoGs give us the chance to pick “superheroes” as an over-represented genre in his poll?

[Eiwynn]

@Havenstone

PS - and while we’re talking about economic self-interest, why didn’t the guy who writes superhero CoGs give us the chance to pick “superheroes” as an over-represented genre in his poll?

This is the third sarcastic laced post I’ve witnessed today … did you find a new source to tap into recently?

[Eric_Moser]

@Havenstone, If I could get other people to stop writing them, I would!! Each time another comes out, I shake my fist with righteous indignation. Sadly, the vaguely threatening letters I mailed out did little to deter those miscreants.

And when did you get so salty? I have to say, I like it!

[Havenstone]

@Eric_Moser

And when did you get so salty?

Heh. It’s been a politeness-straining couple of days at work, and that seems to be finding its way into my forum “voice.”

[TSSL]

I’m sorry, I don’t think I can answer most of these polls they’re interesting questions, but I’m really not good at the “pick only one” type things. A lot of stuff I like tends to blur the lines between these categories anyway, and even if we did stick with the categories, I like things in too many of the categories to make any picks.
And, ah, I kind of just had a minor rant in another thread about genre divisions

Well, I suppose I do feel that, of the options given, the genre that I “wish was better represented” would be sci-fi… I like a lot of other stuff there, but I’ve definitely felt like there could be more sci-fi

I don’t really feel like anything’s overrepresented, though. Well, a lot of times I’ll like a CoG/Hosted Game even though it’s not really my preferred genre… Zombie Exodus: Safe Haven is by far a favorite of mine, but I’m really not actually a zombie person
So I just don’t mind people writing whatever genre appeals to them… if they do it well, its genre won’t really matter to me

@Eric_Moser

I wonder if all the people who didn’t vote fantasy as their favorite in question 1 ganged up and voted against fantasy in question 4?

I will check #2 “which conventional genre interests you the most?” against #4 “Which genre do you think is over-represented?”

Favorite=Fantasy, Over-Represented=Fantasy: 11

Favorite=not(Fantasy), Over-Represented=Fantasy: 40

Favorite=Fantasy, Over-Represented=not(Fantasy): 30

Favorite=not(Fantasy), Over-Represented=not(Fantasy): 18

(There were some people who voted in only one of those two polls, but those numbers were pretty even.)

That’s definite correspondence. I do think there were also some voters who didn’t read question four carefully enough and voted that the genre they like was over-represented, though
(Also, I’m totally catching some people voting that the genre that they’re writing in is overrepresented… sneaky people wanting less competion? )

But yeah, there does seem to be a bit of polarization

(I also wonder what things would look like if we divided fantasy into different types of fantasy )

@Fiogan

More seriously, I wish there had been a general ‘Historical’ category. We’ve had a few of those and I would love some more.

I would like to see more of these too

Also time travel, for that matter, but I can see where anything that might involve changing history would be really ambitious to code, especially if you don’t want to copy-cat off of Paradox Factor

@Fiogan

The book I’m working on now (is fantasy) is set in 550 BCE.

This intrigues me… where is it set?

(Edit: Does it have to do with the rise of Persia, by any chance? )

@Eiwynn

Since my project is a true cross-over, as evidenced by my testers categorizing it differently on their own, I kinda find this polling to be misleading.

I would be curious what the results of a multiple choice poll with these questions would look like. I suppose we could take suggestions for genres and then launch such a poll? (Would be interesting to compare and contrast…)

[Asterisk]

I, uh, didn’t vote on the last one because there wasn’t any genre I’d want fewer releases in. They all have potential for greatness.

[Lucid]

What do we want: Fantasy!

What do we not want: Fantasy!

Who can’t make up our minds: Us!

I’ve always enjoyed reading fantasy, so it’s natural that I’d write fantasy. It’s a big genre with lots of room for multiple stories.