Full time writing and CoG

Don’t worry, I am glad I wrote it, this isn’t a pity party (though if it was I’m sure I wouldn’t even score an invite, woe is me). I live life with no regrets, and not only am I thrilled that NPT allowed me to finally become an actual author instead of a a wannabe slacker like I had been for a decade and a half, I also feel like Parenting would not be even a third as good as it is without the learning experiences provided both from writing NPT and watching it squeeze out a steamer onto the various marketplaces.

This is not to say it wasn’t a disappointment; I had ideas enough to keep the series going almost forever, at least four more books and probably much more. I love these characters, and might still revive them in novel form someday when I have time to burn. But the moral of the story is that you can do set protags (but you shouldn’t), you can write sci-fi (but it sells worse than fantasy, heroes or romance on the whole), and you can write comedy instead of drama. But I definitely don’t recommend doing all of those at once.

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That may be true on the whole, but IIRC the biggest single-game sales behemoths for CoG are Choice of Robots and Metahuman Inc. Maybe the sales trend is better overall for fantasy and supers, but sci fi still has the most impressive outliers.

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I figure authors should just write whatever kind of story they want in whatever genre they want. I write in fantasy, the most lucrative genre, but I have a total of 3 mediocre games and 1 average one.

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Also, the fantasy genre is over-saturated in regular game media, and heroes is the same on CoG. Romance is present in nearly every game, so that doesn’t really count. Writing outside the fantasy and heroes genre may end up being lucrative if people start looking for new things.

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I disagree heavily with this. It might be commonly present but there’s still a pretty stark difference between something like Tin Star vs Wayhaven Chronicles or Love At Elevation, where romance absolutely is a genre of the game rather than just an element.

And even among games that have it as an element but not necessarily as a genre, there’s a very different reaction to better or worse (length, interchangeability, story impact, etc) written in-game romance paths, so I would still argue that it has effects on marketability

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I’m a loner, so I actually like when games don’t have romance because it means the author can make more meaningful relationships that aren’t romantic in nature. But maybe I’m just bitter because I’m still single :joy::joy::joy:

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I honestly kind of agree–i love a good romance, but absolutely wish more games had room for romance as well as meaningful platonic relationships alongside them, but I think that’s a topic for a different thread

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@hustlertwo you do realise a lot of first time indie authors are ecstatic when their book sells a few hundred copies right and yours is heading towards a thousand? (I’ve had people quite shocked when they’ve asked about the number of times my first game was picked up. Still very hard to convince a lot of authors to get out of traditional novels though for some reason, I think a lot of it is having to learn to code.)

cough Starship adventures cough Parody humour + sci-fi. Still surprised at how big the sales difference is between that game and my first one Wizardry which was recieved a lot less well but had way more sales. I think humour in general seems to be riskier to write in HG, and when you combine it with other factors like more defined MC’s and Sci-fi it just doesn’t seem to be a popular mix unfortunately. I’m not saying it can’t be done, but it does seem to be a lot harder to get a game fitting that combination selling as well than say a modern fantasy or superhero games. (The jokes about writing about a a game with a superhero, sorcerer zombie-knight that pop up from time to time are there for reason.) I’m also predicting Oedipus will sell less well than Wizardry despite it being a better game IMO because it’s more a more niche topic and has a more preset protag. So all those things do have an influence but hey, you tried something different. Someone’s gotta try it to see how it’ll go in the app stores. And @Eiwynn’s right, you can use anything you learn from the last one you write to improve the next. (Just pick your genera carefully if sales are a main driver :slight_smile: )

You know I’m not entirely sure that’s going to happen. Fantasy’s been the mainstay of popular games for years. Other topics (like pirates) seem to fluxuate in popularity but fantasy (particularly modern fantasy) just continues to stay popular. It seems people like to read what they like to read rather than an overstaturation occuring. All other things being equal, if someone didn’t have a preference for what genera they started writing in, my recommendation would still be fantasy for the long term (or possibly superheroes as they do seem to have been building in popularity and haven’t shown any signs of going out of fad.)

No I’m there with you. I’d really like to see more games where other relationships like friendship or family are the focus but I don’t think that’s a popular opinion. (I’d have to say one of the most common requests I get are to add more RO’s into my games.) A RO-less game can be done and be popular though (ie Grim.)

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Idk, I still think pre-set MCs can be almost a selling point with games like Fallen Hero, Mass Mother Murderer, or Nascent Narcissistic Necromancer. You need a well defined MC for those kinds of stories or they come of…insincere, or all over the place, or contradictory (and not in an interesting or trippy way.) It just feels wrong.

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I’m interested to see how my Christmas game does, because it’s seasonal and not inside those mainstream genres (although I love those mainstream genres!)

But I come from academia, where the only people who actually read my dissertation were the committee and I’m not quite sure any of them got all the way through it. Having 50 people look at a paper in its lifetime would be an amazing achievement. So writing is quite a bit more rewarding than research!

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Hopefully your game comes out this Christmas. I feel it would be a missed marketing opportunity if it is released outside the festive period.

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@Samuel_H_Young I agree with you, I often like more preset protags. There’s pros and cons to writing one, but I think it can give often give a story a lot more agency and focus compared to a blank slate MC where the choices often end up more general or have less consequence to them as they have accomodate every possible choice someone could have made in their character creation, rather than going into depth into a more limited subset that is available. (Either that or the game needs to be huge and the writer good at stringing lots of storylines and stats together to try and cover everything which is difficult since COG’s are not sandbox games.)

As well as your games that have been mentioned, Donor is another up and coming HG in which the preset protag just works for me from a storyline standpoint. You play an “everyday” person character who has no special skills along with anxiety issues and a xanex dependancy. You need to work through the story and evolve from that starting point, but even if you lean towards being braver and more of a risk taker, there’s still reminders there that you have an anxiety prone personality and can’t just overpower the vamps who are far stronger and faster than you are. You have to decide on a different way to handle it if you want to stay alive. Presetting aspects of the MC actually helps this story rather than hinders it. On the other hand I’ve heard a lot of people saying that they can’t enjoy a game if they don’t have complete character creation control, so I guess it’s down to the reader as to what they want to get out of a game. (And the further into preset character wise you go, the less well they tend to sell on average from what I’ve seen, so I’m guessing the general choice game audience tends towards blank slate or minimal preset as a preference to make it easier to self insert, rather than preferring to guide or step into the shoes of a character that is not themselves through a game.)

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I know! I better get to it. Only 2 chapters and an epilogue left!

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You can do it!!! Rob Schnieder voice :grin:

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I am really rooting for your story, both because I love unique and niche ideas the most and because skewed tales involving holiday figures are fascinating. About ten years ago I did a 50-strip webcomic called Hellidays that had Santa as the immortal head of a crime conglomerate populated by a homicidal Frosty, lecherous Little Drummer Boy, and a reindeer Cerberus, among others. The art was rough (although that artist had a lot more dedication than any other I ever worked with), but it was tons of fun to write.

That said, while niche stories always have that small chance of being runaway hits, it is not the likeliest outcome. Oedipus sorta proving that as well of late. Sometimes you shake up the status quo and sometimes it shakes you instead.

@Jacic While that is true, those indy authors would be getting a lot more for each of those copies than we do. Although in either case it is an amount of money that makes this more a hobby than potential employment for lower-selling titles, to circle back to this thread’s genesis. I think we scared the OP off with TMI here.

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That’s awesome!! You’re almost at the finish line. As someone who’s barely getting through the first chapter, I feel immensely jealous.

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Metahuman is …successful, sure. But it’s on par with Choice of the Pirate. It’s not single-out-able based on genre.

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For sure Mrs. Claus is penciled into our release schedule for early December. Now, I just need to do some code review on the romances @Brian_Rushton has written for it…

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Hi there, OP here, just wanted to say thanks for replying and for the numbers. They were very eye opening and I had no clue how abysmal the rates for writers are (part of being inexperienced, I guess).

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Thanks–I’d got a wrong impression somewhere that it was a blockbuster. :slight_smile: Terrific game, regardless.

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