I mean esl is easy to say that It is my third language that I am trying to learn by myself with little no success.
raised eyebrows
Maraā¦go back and read your posts when you first joined the forum. Your self-taught fluency in your third language has improved extraordinarily. Donāt bash yourself on this one.
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Yeah. I appreciate that response. Thank you. I think what is frustrating for me is that I am not an author or creative artist in the sense a lot of people in this forum tend to be. Many people who post here are and thatās great that you all support each other.
But Iām just a paying customer. I pay a price to consume the product COG and HG distribute. If you look at my profile, you can see that I only comment when I really feel like I have something to say. So while I appreciate where creators are coming from, from a small business perspective those in charge need to be considering our perspective as well.
What I appear to be hearing from you all is that there is a laissez faire process for how HG games are distributed. So now as a paying customer I have had to endure that terribly coded and barely written football game. And now this incident.
I work in marketing, so I understand how approval processes work in distribution. My work is approved by someone above me. And if the person above them has any issues with my work, then the person above me answers to it. Now legally I am sure the author was in the wrong. But why does it appear that there is nobody at HG taking responsibility for these things and owning it?
When I say the approval process is flawed, Iām saying that as an outsider it appears there is no process at all. Otherwise, how can they justify these things happening? Is there no one behind HG reading these things before distribution? Is it all just 100% user/community driven? Bc if thatās the case, then donāt have us pay for it. Lots of community artists share their works within their communities for free.
But when I pay money for a product, I would like to think that the company distributing the product is doing so in good faith. But if there is no oversight, then how can you have faith in your product?
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Hosted Games do review games before publication, more robustly with games that are sold on Steam. The link details how the submission process works.
This seems to be the first time this has happened; the rules are clear and itās reasonable for Hosted Games to expect that people submitting games would be representing themselves honestly. That said, Iām confident that this incident will result in changes to the Hosted Games processes to ensure it doesnāt happen again.
As has been mentioned abovethread, the point of Hosted Games is that itās a low bar for entry, without significant editorial oversight. Some titles from Hosted Games are written at a professional level, some arenāt; games in either category might be enjoyable, or not, depending on individual taste. If you play the free portions, youāll get a sense of whether itās a game that youāll enjoy or endure - but I would say that whether itās a game from Hosted Games, Heartās Choice, or Choice of Games.
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Iām glad to see that the company supports writers and rejects anything AI-generated. However, after reading some replies in this thread, I think itās important to keep a few things in mind regarding ESL writers.
The following is a review of my first game, āThe Midnight Saga,ā which was published and completed long before chat-GPT existed. Yet, you can see that the reviewer claims it feels computer-generated. As an ESL writer, most of the criticism Iāve received has focused on poor sentence structure and unnatural dialogue, which doesnāt reflect natural conversation. And Iāve used that criticism to better my writing.
I like to believe that my grammar and English have improved since publishing The Midnight Saga, and my plan is to revamp the story when I get some free time. All that being said, reading works from some ESL writers may seem off-putting to some people, as we also tend to use synonyms because the meanings of some words in our native language vary from those in English.
In my opinion, writing is a learning process, and prose varies based on genre and the type of story youāre writing. So far, Iāve learned a lot. I still donāt know where to place a comma or a period, and adding āsā or not adding āsā at the end of verbs is still my biggest weakness.
So please keep that in mind.
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I want to step in to offer my reassurance that I have extensive professional experience with ESL/ELL writing, long pre-dating my time on this team, and I make a point of sending games by non-native English writers to content reviewers and (where applicable) copy editors who are also experienced in that respect.
Itās true that we missed this one. We are working to develop our understanding of what AI text āfeels likeā to read, but as I believe this situation demonstrates, we are more likely to err on the side of trusting authors.
(deleted and reposted because threading)
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Absolutely. Iām at least as much a consumer as a creator myself, not having put a game out in 7 years but having bought and enjoyed a whole lot of choicescript games in that time.
CoG/HG lets you try the game before you pay for it and has a more generous refund policy than most platforms if you found yourself hating one or two of the ones youāve bought by mistake. As a consumer and fan, I always look through the demos before I buy. That not only lets me skip ones of low quality but ones that donāt fit my taste. Iāve never āhad to endureā a game I bought without having a good sense of what I was getting into from the free demo.
What makes you say that? Theyāre refunding everybodyās game and looking at how they can stop this from happening again. Itās true that they didnāt immediately come out and say, āWeāll completely change our HG business model to stop this happening again,ā but a decision like that isnāt one to make hastily.
There is, but (as far as Iām aware ā apologies if Iām misspeaking here) theyāre not doing editorial work, just scanning for grossly inappropriate content and game-breaking bugs. (And even with that, the pipeline for HG publication is long, and apparently getting longer.) That level of engagement isnāt enough on its own to distinguish AI-written material from e.g. authors with limited game design experience, for whom English is a second language.
The reason CoG has separate companies with different names, brands, and omnibus apps is because they really do different things. The level of care youāre looking for is there in the CoG and Heartās Choice publishing lines.
HG is more like itch.io or Steam or Amazon ā a platform allowing independent authors to self-publish with the company providing access to its market, UI and app store integration but minimal quality assurance. By keeping the HG platform going on those terms, CoG accepts the risk that the lower-quailty games there will taint the CoG brand and the better-quality HGs.
But in fact, as I noted above, the feedback on reddit (not just these forums) suggests that most consumers love the HG brand for its āhigher highs and lower lows.ā Almost no one buys every HG expecting quality work; for those who initially make that mistake, thereās that refund policy.
Iām grateful as a consumer that CoG has kept HG as open as it is. Sure, there are plenty of games there I wonāt pay money for, but thatās fine; by not pouring staff time into gatekeeping and editing the games on the HG platform, CoG ultimately publishes more games (including more of the great HGs, as well as the quirky weird ones or clumsy oddities that wouldnāt pass editorial muster but end up beloved of some corner of the fandom).
If that relatively laissez-faire approach now has to end in the name of keeping the platform from becoming an AI content farm, Iāll have regrets as a consumer (I write for CoG, not HG) ā because I expect it will increase costs on that platform and lead to fewer HGs coming out.
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This especially. I think its very easy to overlook it if you werenāt reading CoG at the time, but a lot of the beloved Hosted Games titles would have been unlikely to be published by CoG at time, either because the author didnāt have a portfolio or because the ideas were so different from what was generally considered a āChoice of Gameā.
I remember when Wayhaven first released, it was so different from the CoG of the time. Prior to that, the only book that seemed to feature romance was Choice of Romance, but it was more of a court intrigue than a romance. Romance in games wasnāt really incorporated so much as a prize at the end that you win for finishing the game. It proved that romance can be a huge selling point and kind of shaped how people write games today.
Samurai of Hyuga also doesnāt feel like it would have made the cut because of its linearity and general lack of significant choice. Its more of a ācustomizable novelā than interactive fiction. But it also was the 5th and 8th best selling Hosted Game (for the first and second book respectively).
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Reserve Ai for grunt work of bigger projects (like say lipsync in a game) and even then no so such thing is in text based interactive fiction.
First, good on CoG for taking a stance and even refunding every purchase. That couldnāt have been an easy choice. I bought this game without reading the demo because I like supporting authors, specially of smaller games. I was actually looking forward to it based on the premise. So, imagine my surprise when I got the notification for the reimbursement.
In second place, ā Simone Bilesāā ā new fear unlocked: having my writing be mistaken for AI. 
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Just a thought, but has anyone thought of doing some kind of review column for new HGs on a separate site? Sort of like what @AletheiaKnights already does, but in a way thatās potentially higher-profile and with a better archiving system? I feel like if the scattershot quality of HGs is a concern for enough people, thereās probably a demand for that sort of thing.
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I certainly wouldnāt mind being part of something like that.
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A more consumer/audience focused feature column or blog or whatever would really be good.
Something that offers reviews and analysis without the drama/discussion that some fan orientated sites fall victim to
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Thatās honestly one of my biggest concerns here. I didnāt have the chance to read Halls of Sorcery, so unlike others here, I canāt speak for how āobviousā it may or may not have been that AI was used. But knowing what I do about expectations for ESL writers in academic spaces, and knowing that thereās a recent thread about being able to ājust tellā based on things like word choice and purple prose is kind ofā¦ I mean I trust CoG/HG as a company to take some time and come to the best conclusion they can about what AI oversight looks like moving forward, but I have to wonder if āaccusing an author (especially an ESL author) of using AI as a way to create forum (and outside the forum) dramaā is a thing to not worry about. Maybe itās just my anxiety peeking out from under its rock butā¦ If it happened, especially publicly, I think an accusation like that could cause irreparable damage to someoneās reputation, to their work, and to their motivation. And god forbid they get completely banned from participating if they actually didnāt do anything. I am 100% morally opposed to its use in creative endeavors (especially those that involve money) but the fact that there really just isnāt a way to prove yourself one way or the other is a daunting thing to think about.
But again, maybe Iām just scarred from the time my history teacher assumed I shouldnāt know the word āidiosyncraticā and tried to have me suspended for plagarism.
My people have come for me at last! 
But in all seriousness, thatās reassuring to read. 
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A big concern that this brings up for me is that Iāve subscribed to Grammarly to help improve my grammar but I know that uses AI as well.
Iāve not used it for either UnNatural but I did intend to use it when writing Season Three but now Iām worried it might cause it to rejected or if programs like Grammarly are okay to useā¦
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They say Ai translators and all that are not recommended but you can use. It is in the first post
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The dashingdon demo is still up (for some reason)
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Speaking as the team member who interacts most directly with Hosted Games, I have no intention of overcorrecting or making hasty judgements. This happened partly because I have a bias toward trusting my authors unless and until I am given a clear reason not to. The bar for that is high.
As a company, we will be taking our time to explore how best to deal with this going forward, precisely because all of the āsimpleā solutions available are likely to yield unfair results. We take our responsibility to both our authors and our readers (which are two groups with substantial overlap) seriously.
Sincerely,
someone who got into trouble with my seventh grade teacher for using the word āquiescent,ā because he didnāt know it was a real word and thought Iād misspelled āacquiescentā
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I saw the mention of AI translators but am just unsure of where Grammarly would fit in. Iām going to email someone tomorrow about it!
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It is a joke in the sense that it is supposed to be humorous and is, for me at least. But itās also commentary on AI and the quality it sometimes produces. I am not familiar with this meme but have seen memes regarding AI quality. The fact itās meme-worthy just shows that it is a common enough occurrence to have multiple people relate to it.
I read their comment as satire commentary which is often found to be a valid way to express criticism and open dialogue. I donāt think it was meant to detract from the seriousness of this deeply concerning trend towards AI use. Or at least I didnāt read it that way.
AI use does have so much wrong with it on multiple levels when itās used to generate content and especially when not disclosed and when the source material used cannot be cited / credited / compensated. Additionally how it is taking opportunities from creatives and saturating some markets with lower quality materials.
Additionally itās been shown that some AI are using other AI source materials as references and are falling down a proverbial rabbit hole because they are using these works with their issues as standard.
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