It is immoral if You lie saying game is not complete and sell pieces like you didn’t make the total. If you give me a choice to buy it complete or in parts I agree if not you are cheating to obtaining few more bucks is immoral same like dlc that are in the game I bought but i have to buy appart like it weren’t is immoral
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But then doesn’t that provide an incentive against trying to keep the coding tight and avoid repetition?
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That’s what TV series are doing … they never knew whether the Network is going to renew a season, but the producers always leave a cliffhanger at the end of season… and when the series is cancel by the network, all those stories are not completed …
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I don’t think this is coming from a “games need to cost more” and “lets hold readers hostage for more sections” standpoint with the breaking up of stories, more about managing length expectations by containing the number of words per game, even if that means breaking them into a series but like many books do. The entire book might be 600k, but each individual game is still only 300k making them seem less out of the ordinary to the other shorter ones. (Much like the series in the stores like CCH, Lost heir, HR etc don’t cause comment by themselves, but would be long if all combined into a single game.)
Only a couple of years ago 100-150k was considered a good length, now that’s at least 250-300k, with some people saying anything under 100-150k is often not worth reading. That’s a big jump in about 2 years! So where does it end? If the ave game length goes up to 300k, how long before it’s not acceptable unless it’s 400k? 500k? More?
While HG’s aren’t part of this discussion, they kind of get similar pressures as there’s an overlap in the people reading them. A lot of HG writers (myself included) write these primarily because we like to. From a purely monetary point of view, I could make more per hour taking extra job shifts, but I like writing and would prefer to do that so I put the time aside when I can. If anything I write is going to end up get completely flamed not because it’s bad, but because it’s not an increasing number of words with each year that passes that I’m finding increasingly hard to manage into a coherent story, it might get to the point where it’s too demoralizing to do so. (I hope it doesn’t come to that, but I still remember how hard it was to deal with the overwhelmingly really negative and unconstructive comments I received in the app stores on first game I released. it’s not something I really want to do every time if it came to that.)
I was also being honest in the polls above. I’ve had to be a bit picky about what games I’ve bought this year, but almost all of them have been under 200k words and 3 were well under 100k. I guess I like some of the shorter games out there, but I can see why others prefer really long ones too 
Definitely! You can blow out the word count really easily by inefficient coding and repeating text to up the word count, BUT that’s something you’ll mainly see in HG, not COG where everything is edited to a standard. But yep, the number of words doesn’t always tell you the full story. In saying that, if the playthrough length doesn’t mirror the total length (either because of inefficiency or increased branching) it’ll result in complaints. I could see that happening to bump up the word count a little in HG’s though just to make it sound more worth while getting.
Yeah, really wish they wouldn’t end those things on massive cliffhangers unless they’re sure the next series would be approved 
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As a reader, I tend to find that CoG lengths between 200 and 300k are the sweet spot. Most times if they go over that amount I find that they tend to drag and sometimes feel unnecessarily padded out. For example, I enjoyed most of Silverworld (560k words), but by the end I was just exhausted and it felt wildly unfocused at times. I couldn’t bring myself to play it a second time.
While writing Werewolves: Haven Rising, I tried not to focus all that much on overall length. I had a story to tell and I wrote it until it was done. My original draft was around 240k. It got handed back to me because there weren’t enough ending states, which was a totally fair call on Jason’s part. In the end it was a bit over 280k and I feel very confident that it’s just the right length for the story it tells. I believe the average playthrough is approx 75k words which is just shy of the length of a standard novel.
For what it’s worth, I don’t think I’ve seen a single review complaining about the length, so in my opinion, what I’d recommend it simply writing until you’re done. Don’t worry about padding just to placate reviewers.
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As a reader? I have a job, and a life, too. Not necessarily in that order. 300k words is too damn much. There are almost no games that can hold my attention for that long, let alone for more than one playthrough – when a lot of the replay value requires going through some of the same text, too. Even skimming, that takes a long time. If Schmoe Sandercrombfuss can’t get me to read his 1,500 word brick about a jaded knight ass-grabbing tavern wenches, an interactive novel of equivalent tome-ness won’t do any better.
As a writer, the only way I can function is by assuming that no one will read my stories, let alone pay for them. Just a me thing. Every writer has their own quirk. So, I choose not to think about “what audiences want”. As for what’s economically viable? Economically, writing is an objectively poor career choice. Many of the most acclaimed and award-winning pro authors, especially in SFF, have day jobs. I like to keep that in mind, too.
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Out of curiosity, how do the authors of super-long games feel about their volume? Thinking of people like @Gower, @Havenstone, @kgold, Jordan Reyne and Kyle Marquis (not sure if the latter two are on the forums/what their handles are). Do you regret making such hefty games? Would you make shorter ones in the future, or longer? Or would you go with what feels right? I know Cakes and Ale is looking like it’ll be gigantic if it’s kept as a single volume.
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Perfect response. The older you get, the less time you have to waste. Length shifts from an inherent value to an inherent liability. I used to consider a 50+hour video game getting bang for the buck. Now, if you’re asking me to set aside that much of my vanishing store of free time, the juice better be worth the squeeze.
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I sort of feel it depends on the type of the story and what’s being written about. Certain settings and plots lend themselves to lengthier text whereas others are much better when they’re shorter. I wouldn’t write a zombie apocalypse story with 500k words because the action needs to be snappier and shorter, and I wouldn’t dare to write fantasy in under 150k.
I chose the over 300k word option because all of my favorite CS games have been on the longer side.
I don’t think it’s impossible to create a wonderful story-game that’s around 150,000 words, or even less. I just think it’s harder.
Writing a good short story is very hard, and usually the story has to be fairly small in scope. The best ones I can think of either focus very tightly on a single event, or if the story is set over a long period of time the use a very distant perspective to tell a lot of story very quickly.
The things that CS readers want and expect from their games really don’t fit the short story mold. A PC that feels multi-faceted. Preferably several variations of that. Then, a handful of side characters and love-interests that themselves are also multi-dimensional characters. Beyond that you need a plot that the PC can find there way to. Often there will be several paths to the climax, (or to several different climaxes), followed by several different resolutions.
While the authors are doing all that they also have to do all the things an author that writes non-interactive fiction also has to do.
Honestly…maybe 300,000 words isn’t enough.
I guess what I’m saying is that, writing a shorter CS game is probably harder to get right than a longer one.
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How do you feel about the Zombie Exodus series? It’s enormously popular and about a bajillion words long!
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Becoming longer? I don’t see any Tin Star or Magikiras these days. Do you?
They’re talking about overall. I don’t see 200-600k word CoGs published in 2010. Do you?
We’re talking about Choice of Games games. Which started out at around 30,000 words for Dragon, 60,000 I think for Broadsides. Now a “short” game is around >150,000 words and the average is inching up to 200,000+, and we’ve seen a decline in popularity of “short” games: in terms of enthusiasm on the forum, in the quality of reviews, and to some extent in unit sales. So we’re talking about what player expectations are around length.
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I generally think that pacing is what really matters more than length; shorter things are easier to fit into my schedule but if I have the time avaliable I’ll eagerly power through just about anything as long as it’s consistently interesting but can lose interest in even something short pretty quickly.1
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I’ve actually not played it! I definitely think it’s possible to write a longer zombie apocalypse story (and when I’m not consciously avoiding spending, I’ll check the series out because it looks interesting), but I generally like to keep mine on the shorter side. Even if there are a ton of words, it depends on how you use them (long paragraphs vs. short dialogue).
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I think this is on point. As a parallel, when we look at how efficiently something is coded, we can also look, however subjectively, at how well a story is written. Quantity does not necessarily equal quality, but of course there are exceptions.
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Depends on how you look at it, coding complexity for these games has gotten a lot fancier lately so some of that length might not be adding much in terms of story. Some of the new 100k-ish games hardly even contain that much more than your 60-70k ones with simpler codes back in the day.
Well the title isn’t exactly growing players’ expectations, is it? Rather misleading, no?
When I write a game, I shoot for 250k words or more. It’s tough to fit in the “mandatory” content with less. Players want longer playthoughs, so if I made a 150k game or part, they would scourge me in reviews. But my readers have come to expect longer games.
As a player, length doesn’t matter. For me it is genre > summary > writer > price.
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