As Spanish I got so much fun when people forget that 50% Italy was us back then and how Rome was mostly Spanish control… But nope all is Italy this Italy that… ITALY??? What is Italy? There was not Italy until XIX last time I checked… The idea people has of Renaissance is pure romantic lies put there but the magnificent propaganda Merchant princes had. Like Those new year parties in old Florence With Gold painted kids as angels to celebrate Medici influence in Rome… The paint killed all those kids next day for lead poisonings but nope all was wonderful in Renaissance Italy That magically place that didn’t exist There were peaceful and there weren’t killing each other and do atrocious stuff with mercenaries destroying villages…
I thinking Renaissance is a major example of how literature and art can blind the people and create a totally false narrative about how the society really was. In a way peasantry lived better in medieval times that in Renaissance. Their tributes were less and fair less religious problems.
SAME feelings about GUILDED RAILS. It is my least fav COG of all time. The romance was hyped and the business side was hard to master and not something I would’ve otherwise paid fpr had I known what the game would really be like. I think the writing was fine - it was just marketed wrong. It seemed like someone knew that romance games sold well, soooo…
I think it’s a pacing issue as well, for most historical games. Maybe this discussion will help adjust that for future games?
But to Not Post a so short Post, I try to share a bit of our history lessons. It is quite european centred. Real history lessons started in the 5th grade with stone age(Loved it). Then we had first settlement in the Orient and egypt. After this the Greek and then Roman Empire. Then european middle ages. Then colonisations, after that Revolutionsmann( mostly the American and French) and last the WW and german history afterwards. Oh and of course the Nazi dictatory almost in every year until we just could not stand it anymore.
Yeah we ended up doing WW2 three times over both primary and secondary to the extent that I was overjoyed when we did the Cold War and Korea/Vietnam in A Level because we were actually admitting history existed after 1945!
I think when Hearts Choice finally arrives we will get decent games where romance is the focus and handled a little better since it’ll be the forefront of the game in question.
I don’t know if the same gaming standards apply, @Eiwynn, when what we make both looks and feels first and foremost like an e-book. That said, it’s a great idea for CoG to internally track the “gameplay” aspects of their releases to see if there’s a correlation there with reviews and sales.
Some gameplay aspects are: resource management, memory recall, collect-all-the-endings. But the most common and majority of the gameplay, that I’ve seen in choicescript games, is deciding your stats and then making the correct decisions based on those stats.
It’s not exactly thrilling gameplay, in fact it barely qualifies as gameplay at all. I think the category most gamers would put them in is: Boring. I think the gamer who gives the choice game a chance becomes a reader after (and if) they make it through the first page, and that they’ll make their financial decisions based on the story, the characters, and whether or not it resonates with them.
That’s why I think taking the traditional, literary approach in both thinking about and labeling choice games is the right one. I guess in summary: we have an audience of younger people who are most likely gamers, but they turn into readers when they play our games. It’s an important distinction!
My experiences absolutely all people i know that plays If and in Spanish forums (there are several Spanish if games out there some really good) all are made and targeted to gamers. Most to role playing or visual novel players. In fact I have never seen anyone that buy some if thinking and with the mindset this is a book with no interactive component. In fact INTERACTIVE fiction so therefore action and that means a game. Where you interact and affect something. The only interactions I have with a book is carry it and kill a bug with it… Most of public is younger audience that are gamers and or visual media consumers
I appreciate your perspective but we will once again agree to disagree. I know it seems we are always at opposite ends of the IF-gaming spectrum but in one respect we once agreed:
A few years ago, I would be nodding my head and saying: this!
The marketplace and gaming industry (both casual and more dedicated) has already answered this for us though. With the inclusion of virtual novels, Otomes and other casual simulation games such as puzzlers in the various storefronts and with the evolution of these offerings in these marketplace, the simple fact is these are accepted by gamers as games.
They are so accepted by the general populace as games that their migration to video/movies is now seen as an eventual given. Game-movie crossovers is a hot topic now! Netflix’s major competition (by their own reporting) is not network television or cable t.v. but Epic, a game publisher of Fortnite.
Whether you believe it is boring gameplay or it is gameplay that is meeting the needs of specific gamers (such as representation and access) … that is opinion, and thankfully, I don’t think the majority of IF-gamers share the opinion that these games are boring.
The weakness of the mechanics and their execution here is indeed an issue, one I feel is a direct result of the origins of the founders of this company and many of the developer/authors here.
It is very problematic (imo) to see the following:
The reason it is very problematic, is because there is game design and theory involved in the making of Choicescript games. In the same document you find the above, you find:
and
which acknowledge that games are an essential part of the Choicescripting product produced here but in practice and in such discussions such as this, the game portion of the product is treated like a dirty secret or a distasteful never mentioned in polite company fact.
One of the reasons I am working my ass off trying to master fiction writing is to hopefully show that a person with game design experience should be considered for the main label and can succeed here.
Hopefully more game designers who can add better design and execution will be attracted to a growing niche I love.
I love retro gaming so for If was basically only computer games with storytelling in 70s and early 80s . So all those discussion about If is game is in a way silly. It is one of most ancient genres in videogames It is like say Muted cinema or noir is not cinema is sculpture in movement.
Many people is biased against Videogames as art media same some decades ago people was biased against cinema. In my book as artist is Lorca or Picasso than Hitchcock. Videogames are art and includes amazing writing content with the extra of INTERACTIVE content. Or extra like music or graphics. Still being a game.
What is and what isn’t a game, what visual novels are, why people buy them–there’s a lot we could go into here, but I want to steer us back to historical CoG games for the sake of this thread.
The question was why historical CoG games aren’t selling as well. It makes sense to look into why people buy choicegames. My personal answer and yours is probably very different. But we just need to consider the average player/reader. My argument against gameplay being a factor is that, as far as I’m aware, historical CoGs aren’t missing any gameplay aspects found on other CoG games.
The deciding factor must be elsewhere: I think it has to do with factors we find in traditional literature. Story, characters, plots and so forth. Then again, I think it’s misleading to assume historical CoGs are somehow lacking in all these areas.
There is one more factor that I believe might explain the disparity: resonance. There’s unfortunately very few resources on resonance, especially for something so critically important. Dragons and sorcerors resonate with our audience more than a real life 14th century noble does. We resonate more with a kind witch with a talking cat than we ever will with the 1st Duke of Wellington.
Maybe it’s because we are gamers and most or many of the games we play are fantasy or have fantasy elements. Whatever we are, to me, this resonance is what explains why people buy more fantasy than historical.
Are we talking about the setting or it has to be based on actual historical account?
If we are talking about the setting, like real historical setting , there aren’t many games, whether CoG or HG based at such setting… Tin Star , Chronicon, Broadway 1849,Cantebury are just few that i can remember, i also don’t agree Tin Star being classify as western , because if we want to classify at such, Chronicon will be medieval and Broadway will be entertainment genre , Cantebury as adventure ? and gilded rail as dating sim
I would think that it is about the story and plotline of the game that attract readers or gamers, not the genre… take example of Great Tournament , if we change the characters and the world to a historical background such as Middle England and some real historical names , the writing and game perspective of the story will attract large followers as well…
I do not think any of the above titles mentioned by Mary lacks in any of these categories.
In fact, most of the published titles are praised in reviews for their traditional literature factors. Character development and relationship story-telling is a major driving force of success that comes from the literature tradition.
I don’t deny that classifying the games here under literature genres is totally valid. I do assert that it is not enough. To really understand why a game is not resonating with gamers you should look at the product through a gaming lens and in the case of an IF game (visual or textual) you need to examine it through both.
This may be a truism for literature but for gaming (which you can not escape here) this isn’t. As I said above: to be successful at selling a game (including marketing and everything else) it is essential to look at it in terms of gameplay interaction.
The Tin Star game succeeds not on the basis of being a Western alone but rather on it being an adventure/RPG as well which have distinct game design elements.
Choice of Robots does not succeed based on being Science Fiction but also on its exploration and conflict (as executed by mechanics) strategically making decisions of an adventure/RPG.
Most of the games here fit within the adventure/se classification or the RPG/sce classification but not all do. Creatures Such as We is more of a simulation/se classification
Regardless of the actual game classification you use for an individual title, the resonance of the gamer is towards action/strategy and exploration/conflict dichotomies.
Without factoring these specific gaming focuses in your analysis, I argue, the success or failure of a title within the same literary genre and literary factors do not explain the results you will see.
I am going to bow out of this thread for a bit because I do not know how to further advocate my beliefs without starting a circular argument path.
I always enjoy our discussions, @MultipleChoice. Thank you for engaging with me on this one too.
I havent read everything posted, so sorry if i repeat stuff, or my English is bad, but I think the problem might be the combo of writing a game, a book and a historical one at the same time, not just that it happens to be historical. Tho tbh I might be a little biased since I study history haha. Anyways, the reason I liked Tin star, which ppl have mentioned, is because it doesn’t really do the typical mistakes of either relying on a historical event/person/etc to the point where you’re just confused if you haven’t studied it, but it’s also a story that won’t work in another period/place. The historical part makes the story better, it doesn’t take away from it, it feels pretty natural. Back in the days normal ppl were never really affected by the big politics, but that is the most accessible historical material for most people, so it gets crammed into stories to like, idk, remind u it’s historical. And I’m 100% gonna shame historians for the accessibility thing. The amount of times I’ve read abt something and thought “someone should make a book/game/movie abt this!” and then remembered that oh, right, this stuff is hard to get ur hands on… And on top of writing a good story and doing a lot of research ur also making A Game, and making A Game is Hard. You gotta learn code, game design, plan out all the choices in a satisfying way, etc. I really agree with @Eiwynn that the game aspect needs more attention. For example, a game might be super well written but if it’s just pages of text I, and probably many more, just stop because we came to play a game first and foremost. U can buy these games on steam, no one goes there to buy ebooks! Idk, in my opinion, these games shouldn’t be written in like 2 years by one writer, at least if it’s gonna be a long one
As for sales, it seems like we’ve identified a few key potential causes:
Literary Genre: It is more niche than others, and people may pass on it simply because they don’t like it, or because they don’t like/are familiar with the period in question. I would probably not buy a game set in medieval Japan unless it had a great-looking story, mostly because I am deeply unfamiliar with the period. I would, however, jump at the English Civil War.
Definitions: Akin to the above, how again are we defining “historical games”? What about genre mashups?
Gameplay and Game Genre: This could very well be a factor, as @Eiwynn suggests, but, to me, most CoG are roughly the same kind of game. Maybe I’m not thinking about it deeply enough though.
Pace and Mechanics: Many historical games at least start off slower, as they are establishing the world (Chronicon’s first two chapters are slow, although this is less to build the world in that I wanted a story that begins very normal but gets steadily more fantastical).
Expectations: Akin to the resonance idea that @MultipleChoice described, a lot of players may have certain expectations for a CoG or IF game and a historical realist work may not appear to fill that. I don’t know how varied the readership is, or if it is the same people coming back again and again. Is the CoG readership people who are out there thinking “do I want action, rpg, or IF?” or are they thinking, “Do I want fantasy, history, or monster IF?”
As @Eiwynn has posted (and others did as well), even most of the games above don’t fit what I consider a rigid ‘historical game’ definition.
I view Tin Star as a cinematic take on the Old West. I mean, take the bandit camp encounter where my sheriff outguns everyone without needing to take cover. In real life, she would be swiss cheese from all the holes.
Eagle’s Heir would actually be more of an alternate history than historical fiction. After all, the branching point is where Napoleon manages to retain control of his throne until time to step down. Of course, the rest of the world was extrapolated from real world events.
So perhaps the best way to do historic CoG games is to go for a cinematic approach?
I do think Tin Star handles it extraordinarily well. It alluded to some of the attitudes at the time without making it jarring for a modern audience, focused on using the setting to give the story a personality, etc.
Cinematic approach has not account the interactive part and cog is not about visualizing media so it is not the most accurate because Yes Tin Star could be a Western. But that let out of descriptions what type of game is . You know the interactive part of Interactive fiction genre. Seeing this as only literally pieces is forgetting what makes cog and if media powerful. Is the reader has active say in how their story unfolds. Nor book nor movie could achieve that.
So describe something interactive using the terms from a passive arts as Books and cinema is missing part of spectrum.
Tin Star is a wester history fiction… yes… but how it plays? That’s what a main core of your players. players ; not readers only. They have an active role in this. I wamt to know if is a Western strategy game or a Otome game or maybe is a Western puzzle. The interactive description is as core as the Western label. For instance I always will play a role adventure game but not a strategy management game about building a transport empire . Selling a management as a for instance a romance sim could lead people complaining. because If is most Interactive not passive
First and foremost, I’d like a good story from any prospective CoG or HG I’m looking to buy. If it doesn’t seem like a good story, then I don’t buy it or I wait for the reviews. The most “historical” CoGs/HGs I’ve actually played were Tin Star, Pendragon Rising, A Study in Steampunk, Choice of Broadsides, and Choice of the Vampire I & II.
Tin Star is the one I remember most as being a good and captivating story (and one of the two I didn’t have to look up) before being an exploration of the Wild West. I agree with what someone else said about it being a cinematic take at the time period and setting.
I don’t think I’d personally play in most historical settings because they’re not engaging as pieces of interactive fiction. If an IF took historical liberties with a time period or setting and had an engaging story, then I’d probably buy it.
I know the idea of historical accuracy kinda plagued Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and how Kassandra wouldn’t be a mercenary back then because that’s not what women did back then. I’m not entirely sure what all the arguments were, but historical accuracy was what I most commonly saw in the YouTube Comment Sections.
As far as my opinion on historical accuracy… you fight a minotaur and cyclops for crying out loud! I’m pretty sure Kassandra being a woman and a mercenary is the least of your worries if you’re that concerned about historical accuracy.
Same thing here. If an IF took liberties with history, I probably wouldn’t care or maybe even notice that they were taken. As long as it tells a good story, then I’m not concerned about how accurate the story is to history because it’s a story i.e. fiction.
I do wonder if historical might be more popular under the Heart’s Choice label? Historical is a very popular subset of the romance genre. If books are to be believed, Victorian England was crawling with rakish, single Dukes ready to drop their raking ways as soon as they find that one spunky heroine who refuses to conform to society’s standards. Thankfully, Victorian England was crawling with those too.
