How do you feel about how IF has changed in past 10 years?

Game Development Writing and Content
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I just realised that it’s been 14 years since I started reading IF. What has changed since I started? A lot. Just wondered, how you all feel about the changes.

E.G.

[[ Edit: coming back to this topic almost a year later, I realised that I didn’t mention many of the things I appreciate most that have got a lot better-

  • Unlocked MC gender choices
  • Customised appearance options reflecting diversity + differing ethnicities
  • Non-binary / gender fluid MC options
  • Trans MC options
  • Different Sexuality options - gay, straight, pan, bi, etc.
  • Asexual / Aromantic options
  • More varied range of NPCs / ROs - in terms of both cultural + ethnic diversity, and in terms of LGBTQ+ etc.

I regretted not mentioning this stuff when I first posted this, so I edited this topic. ]]
**
Some Stuff I’m personally happy about-

  • Art is now more important. Both art done by authors themselves, and art commissioned for games. If you see the title art for some of the first hosted games….bless them…it’s nostalgic looking at them now.

  • Patreon

  • RO lists - arguably I think this has led to a trend for audiences expecting more in-depth and fully rounded characterisation of NPCs

Some stuff personally I don’t like (not saying it’s bad, I just don’t get it)-

  • AI art profiles for NPCs - all the females end up with the same exact nose. Not to mention, the ethics of it all.

  • Background music - I’m sorry, when I’m reading a book I don’t have background music, this isn’t a film, why is there a soundtrack? (Ignore me, being old and grumpy….)

  • Asks on tumblr - I don’t understand how contemporary authors have the time to write with all the random asks they get about sometimes really mundane things. For films or books you love, I’m guessing you don’t contact screenwriters or novelists, asking them about characters’ NSFW preferences or favourite food, why on earth is it expected that you’ll gain the answer to your request from your favourite IF writer? If you’re going to bother the poor author, then at least join their patreon, and at least they might be paid for their time then.

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Oh, I think some authors love it when people bother them in this way. It even seems like a lot of blogs are created just for this purpose.

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Some of them get so caught up in that kind of thing that they never get around to the actual writing. That’s the real danger.

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You don’t see much IFs that have set PCs all that much anymore. The preference for players to have more and more customization is in itself a good thing, but I sometimes wonder if we’re losing a facet of the genre, one that involves exploring an already defined character and directing their story.

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That or they’re charging way too much for us to see the demo that haven’t been updated in public. Like the Fallen Divine (at least I think that’s the one) is charging 20 dollars just to get access to the demo which is a huge waste of money.

I honestly just feel like the writers who does it is just scamming the people doing this which is why I refuse to support anyone on Patreon.

Edit: I was right, the only way to get the alpha access to TFD is 20 dollars and the cheaper options doesn’t offer it.

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I keep telling folks. If a writer doesn’t do updates with any level of regularity, or you think they’re stretching things out because they prefer Patreon money to actually finishing the bloody thing and releasing it, cut the cord. Patreon subscriptions are a bit ill-advised in general, and definitely in those situations.

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There are some authors that I feel run Patreon ethically and forthright.

There are many more that I view as troubling and operating in the gray area of ethical behavior.

I, personally, doubt I will ever have a Patreon because I would want to run it “right”, something that I doubt I would be able to do, at least for now.

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Jokes on you, I don’t get any!

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When I discovered CoG thirteen years ago, they’d released only four games. They were just starting to learn what made interactive fiction work, narratively and mechanically. These days, they have it down to a science, and their more recent releases tend to feel far more like novels than games in the way they speak to my mind and emotions.

Obviously there’s a lot more variety than there used to be, which is a wonderful thing. I’m glad that there’s been enough collective experience for some IF-specific norms and expectations to emerge, and I’m glad that people are still experimenting outside of that.

I’m glad that, in so many of the ongoing disputes on the “best” way to do things, we haven’t reached a consensus. We have plot-driven stories and character-driven stories, “game-y” IF and literary IF, fixed PCs and endlessly customizable ones, escapist settings and grittily realistic ones, ROs with carefully constructed identities and playersexual ROs of variable gender - and everything in between. Whatever your tastes may be, there’s almost certainly something that suits them. And personally, I’ve found my own preferences challenged and sometimes expanded by trying different things.

Also on a personal level, I’m thrilled that so many games now offer the option to play as asexual, and that more and more authors understand the nuances of asexual identity, so that playing an asexual character doesn’t have to mean cutting myself off from romance, or even necessarily from sex. I’m thrilled to see asexual NPCs appear in more and more stories, in a variety of roles, sometimes as ROs.

I’m disappointed, although I’m not surprised, to see how much of the conversations on this forum and elsewhere revolves around sex and romance. There hasn’t always been an expectation of romance in every game - most early ChoiceScript games, if they touch upon romance at all, treat it as a brief subplot. Heck, even Choice of Romance didn’t offer the kind of vicarious experience readers have come to expect these days. I love a good romance. I enjoy a good sex scene. But I want authors to write those things because they want to, not because it’s expected of them. It breaks my heart that a lot of excellent stories, with elegant prose, complex characters, vivid settings, get shrugged aside because they don’t have much in the way of romance. It bemuses me to see discussions of multifaceted, complex stories like Fallen Hero or the “Claw, Shadow, and Sage” series focused so disproportionately on the romantic elements, and don’t get me started on the way people talk about A Kiss from Death.

I think it’s also unfortunate that shorter stories are so often devalued. I love The Book of Hungry Names and Lords of Infinity and all those other games with a word count that would intimidate Proust, but they’re not the only kind of story worth reading. Some of the greatest authors the world has ever known were masters of the short story, and I’d hate to see IF authors of similar talents go forever under the radar because they’re not producing doorstoppers.

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@AletheiaKnights

The new nuances for asexual and aromatic MCs is great isn’t it?

And you’re right, the demand for romantic content has gone up. Depends on the audience, I guess whether it’s a good or bad thing. :woman_shrugging:

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I can see the good and the bad side to having a patreon. Supporting an author could really help them by subsidizing their income, and in turn creating more time for them to be able to write. Hell, I’d love that. But so many authors ask way too much to support them. I know this is a good outlet for entertainment. But actual books by best selling authors don’t even cost half of what some of these IF authors are charging for access to their patreon.

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It does feel kinda strange, not gonna lie.

I have had more threads and questions about romance-related stuff in the Werewolves/Claw, Shadow, Sage series than anything else all together times 2. If I’d know that’s what people wanted, I maybe should have just written a dating simulator.

Don’t get me wrong, folks–I enjoy the romances in my games, too, but there’s like, a story attached to those humping scenes!

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You see them all the time, just not in CSGs!

HG/COG have gone down their own little specialist rabbit hole where only certain things can be considered popular really narrowing what people will now tend to release. I mean if you look at the earlier games and the popular ones releasing today you’ll see a distinct lack of preset MCs, heavy focus on romance, and games getting really, really long. (I’ve actually seen discussions on other IF forums that one of the reasons why they wouldn’t write for HG is the very long length expected and/or inability to write focused stories with more preset MCs.)

How long has it been in “alpha” because it’s a requirement for it to be made available via non-payment means… I want to say within 30 days of being put on patreon but someone who actually runs one can correct me if I’m wrong. If they’re not doing it, they’re breaking the terms of use for CSGs by monetising it without a contract.

Edit: Here it is. It is within a month. There are some very responsibly managed patreons around, but if you feel anyone is abusing it by locking CSG material away long term for the subs, then you’ll need to take it up with COG.

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And don’t assume CoG knows about who has a patreon or not, I very much doubt they search for that. If you feel something is scammy or taking advantage of people, ask CoG and they can let you know if it is legit (some authors might have special deals) or not.

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Shouldn’t really be a surprise to anyone at this point. Dragon Age: Origins was released in what, 2009 and it was the case for Bioware games ever since, not to mention even previous Baldur’s Gate. A large part of audience for IF and/or computer PnP implementations look at it mostly through lens of what romances they can have with the cast. It’s simply what it is.

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Yeah as far as I can tell when I looked at it yesterday that the last update was January 1st which was 10 months ago but there are some people still subscribing to it. Should I email CoG support about this because I feel like this is an blatant abuse of trust?

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Mind you that “content that you give to your patrons must be released to the general public within a month” doesn’t actually include requirement for this content to be released for free. This is also in the context of games which got published by Hosted Games and doesn’t necessarily apply to titles which haven’t been yet published by Hosted Games (or the author doesn’t intend to publish their work with HG in the first place)

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I think you’re very wrong there considering my talks with CoG. You can’t monetize Choicescript without some sort of license, the one month patron then for free thing is a compromise.

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Most of the things I like and don’t have already been mentioned. But something that I really enjoy about this… new age(?) of IF’s, is that there is a lot more personality within the choices we can choose to explore, and also just more choices per page compared to 2-3.

Also, I’m happy to see newer games push away from only having “stuttering shy virgin who would faint at an ankle” (shy) and “weird guy at the bar who is seconds away from a restraining order” (bold) as romance choice options. They were always so cut and dry, and didn’t fit a lot with the characters I created. Playing a stoic character in a lot of older games was a RPG nightmare.

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I enjoy there always being the chance to play as a nonbinary PC in CoGs nowadays, and there have been more chances to play as nonbinary over the years in HGs too. There are overall more non-cis characters, both NPCs and PCs being written nowadays, which I like seeing a lot. I’d love to regularly see more than one major non-cis character in casts as well!

While I recognise the issues that come up around perpetually-increasing wordcounts (and enjoy shorter games as much as long ones), I do love seeing how much variety there is overall, with different target audiences and writing styles across all the labels. It’s fantastic to see.

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