I don’t know about that one. I think all of these games are huge passion projects that take years to complete. Even the shortest ones are novel length and the biggest ones rival the length of an entire series of books all in one game.
It takes me around 2 years per project, and that’s working several hours a day, 6 days a week, usually with no breaks. If I didn’t have a passion for my CoG work, it would never get done.
I wonder if that might be the case. As far back as I can remember, I’ve never seen or heard any hint of a CoG policy to discourage CoG writers from posting drafts to the forums. After Rebels hit back in 2017, they were actively encouraging authors to do it for a while, recognizing (I think rightly) that the forum community was part of the good buzz that made the game a success. (And had improved the quality of my original ideas.) Kreg Segall and Harris have done successful threads here. But most CoG authors seem to be happier writing in isolation.
Ouch. I was already kind of dreading my first-ever sensitivity read, coming up when I finish some key elements in the draft. Now I’ll put on my extra thick skin for the occasion. 
This definitely stretched me…but I don’t think in a bad way, and I’m not sure they’re wrong. Binary choices do tend to be less engaging. Except of course when they’re necessary…and I’ll bet if you ever really wanted to make the case that one was necessary, you’d be able to convince the CoG powers-that-be.
Just realized last week that by the time I finish Game 2, my total word count will rival everything George RR Martin has written to date of ASOIAF. Questionable life choices…
The HG subreddit is best described as ‘delightfully unhinged’. Lots of memes or joking posts. Threads centered around Fallen Hero and the Infinity saga make up at least 1/3 of all content. Definitely the most active of the three subreddits (Heart’s Choice has one, but it’s a ghost town). Very active, multiple threads a day every day. Occasionally has contests and the like but for the most part it’s a grab bag.
The CoG subreddit is a bit more subdued. Less activity, tends not to have as much memeing and focuses more on specific discussion of stories and recommendation threads. Not out of any kind of rules issue, just the way it shook out for whatever reason. It has more subscribers because it’s been around a lot longer, since the HG one was split off a few years ago by the company. But that likely will change in another year or two.
I really wish the three labels had one unified reddit! I personally feel like the split has done especial damage to the COG (and maybe HC?) reddit audience - it feels like discussion is so much more lively on /r/hostedgames, and despite the more ‘sober’ vibe of the COG subreddit, I feel it skews more negative-feeling than /r/hostedgames?
Not that /r/HG doesn’t have its share of negativity, but I think that for whatever reason it has shaken out to a much healthier ratio of positive:negative:silly (and I think that when bolstered by that positive and silly, the negative can often actually be very useful and constructive, albeit not always).
20 posts were merged into an existing topic: Sensitivity Reader discussion
Wait a minute. You made Nuclear powered toaster AND The parenting simulator. Oh my goodness bro, I remember reading Nuclear powered toaster a couple of years ago and it was the funniest book I read back then. Heck even today it might be the funniest book I’ve ever read, I remember dying laughing on the couch while I was relaxing from the sheer ridiculousness going on. I knew it was going to be a crazy adventure when I chose the male character, I think their name was Alexis (my bad, my memories foggy) and we we’re being given our mission and that joke about paying Santa a visit made me genuinely laugh. Although at the time I was pretty young so I couldn’t follow the story properly at times cuz of jargon I didn’t understand stuff like that. But I gotta say, before thanking you for replying, I gotta thank you for that novel. I remember wishing something similar would come out. I love that work, its in my top 5 classics.
Could you go into depth about how these affect royalties? And what happens to authors in countries that don’t have a tax treaty with the U.S 
like Is there a way to work around the extra imposed taxes, or other ways to handle it?
From what I understand, if you’re from a country without a tax treaty you’ll need to pay higher taxes (I assume the royalties are what you pay the taxes from), but I don’t know if there are other limitations, apart from presumably some extra paperwork because HG wants you to tell them that before submitting your game. You’ll still get your royalties, just a bit smaller amount. If you’re in a sanctioned country you may not be able to get paid at all.
I think you need to talk to CoG about that, I don’t know the details. I imagine that varies from country to country.
Sure, Tax Evasion. Don’t do it!
Generally speaking countries without a tax agreement will mean that on whatever you earnt in the US will be taxed in the US, and then you will need to declare the income to be taxed again in your own country. If there is a tax agreement, this means you will be able to offset any US taxes paid against taxes owed in your own country, or that you will fall under only one jurisdiction for tax (usually where you live).
These arrangements can vary, not just by country but by contract type, income type, and there may be other legal methods to reduce your tax liability, such as special treatment for creative works. You will need to do VERY specific research into your own country’s handling of taxes, and how to report them, and preferably speak to a tax advisor if the information isn’t available, too confusing, or deliberately obfuscated to force you to use an accountant.
Wow, a glowing review for NPT in the Year of Our Lord 2026? Or, you know, ever? Didn’t have that on my bingo card. Shoot, game only has two reviews total on Steam, and for four or five years it had zero. I’m extremely glad you enjoyed it. I suppose someone had to. And it was Alexi. Alexi Beaumont. I kept his and Fiorella’s names in Parenting Simulator, and Day After too for that matter. My first literary offspring may have been a malformed creature but I love it all the more for its flaws. Besides, I had been trying to tell that story in various forms for almost fifteen years by that point. It was a webcomic (twice), a stub of a novel, even toyed with it in RPG Maker.
I know Jason found a workaround for someone in a country that didn’t have a tax treaty with the US. But I don’t know if that is still something possible now, or what that looked like. Just that he said their accountant was not fond of his solution.
I’ll chime in here. I’ve had 5 writing contracts over the years, 2 with Hosted Games, 2 with a now defunct game company, and 1 with a private individual. I’ve also released a commercial game independently.
My first Choice of Game game was In the Service of Mrs Claus. Against an advance or $7000, it sold 3906 copies so far in 7 years. Nowadays it sells 2-4 copies a month. There’s a remaining balance of -$4975 on my advance, which means I ended up getting paid a lot for something that the company got paid a little for (which is part of the risk inherent in a big company like this; some games pay off the work done by the company and some don’t.) I have fun in my math class at the private high school I teach at having them calculate how long it will take me to see royalty revenue (generally past the time I will die. Low wordcount and awful genre choice/inexperience will do that!).
My second contract for Choice of Games was helping an author finish a game: Star Crystal Warriors Go. Most of the chapters were written by the original author, but I added a lot more text (started with 100K words in 7 Chapters, ended with 250K words in 10 Chapters). That has sold 3300 copies in 10 months, and has a much healthier 35-50 sales per week. The contract structure is different for someone coming on board like this (and has to be negotiated per game) but it’s likely I’ll one day see revenue for this.
Both games were far more impactful than my next-best money making option, tutoring, which I did at a really low rate ($15 an hour for a while, more recently $25). One game can be the same as a year’s worth of tutoring a student.
My other contracts were higher but didn’t get finished. The company that went under was offering $12,000 to $16,000 with essentially no royalty revenue. I completed most of a game (around 60K words; it had a different structure than CS games and this was the target size) and they had commissioned artwork but the department got shut down, though I still got close to $10,000 (I think). Later, the company tried again with new middle managers and I got a few thousand from that contract before it was all sold away so the company could pivot to gambling apps.
I’ve contacted their legal department, now, years later, asking if I could buy back the first story or IP, and even found a fellow alumnus of my college that worked there on Linkedin and got his help asking, but they never wrote back.
They offered authors a lot of money (but no royalties), and were attached to a very wealthy bigger firm and had the IP for a very popular (at the time) IF game, but it still wasn’t enough to hold together. It’s impressed me a lot that Choice of Games has managed to find a stable longterm strategy.
My fifth contract was with a private individual to make a parser game. I’ve been much more successful with free, indie parser games than choice-based games (I’ve got 3 games in IFDB’s top 100, and 1 in the top 15!). A guy approached me to pay me $1000 to make a game for his daughter’s birthday. I made a 46K parser game (in terms of audience expectations 40K parser is treated like 200K choice-based and has similar playtime). It was just published yesterday on itch ( The Most Valuable Card in the World by mathbrush, DC )
My indie game is Never Gives Up Her Dead, a giant parser game (the one in the top 15). I decided to make an illustrated version to sell on Itch and I get about $100/yr from it. I decided to put it on Steam to see if I can match that revenue stream (I’d only have to sell 1 copy a month for it to work out!), and it’s coming out on July 3: Never Gives Up Her Dead on Steam
For what it’s worth, I think In the Service of Mrs. Claus is charming, original, and worth playing for every big fan of ChoiceScript games, but it is definitely in a niche of a niche of a niche: folks excited to play a text-only game, who are excited to play a Christmas game, who are excited to play a non-traditional Christmas game. I’m sad it hasn’t found a wider audience, but I can’t say I’m too surprised. Here’s hoping for a long tail!
I’m definitely way more positive about it than I once was. I think with my new knowledge I could revamp it to be way more interesting (bump up the romance, selectable genders, clearly defined power usage). The biggest issue is, like you said, the genre itself is so niche that making a brand new game would almost certainly be a better use of time.
I appreciate your kind words!
I liked In the Service of Mrs. Claus…not because it’s a Christmas game, but because it’s always refreshing to see a take of the elves that’s somewhat closer to the original lore than the pop culture regular!
I am 100% going to read it this Christmas! It sounds delightful.
I’ve made a new thread for the sensitivity reader discussion, as it’s a separate conversation to the original thread subject, and have moved most of those discussion posts over there. New thread is here, please feel free to continue discussion there!
Notable update to this thread: the latest royalties came out while I was on vacation, and May 2026 was by far the worst month I’ve had. Total royalties across three stories was $59.14. For reference, TPS alone has never gone below $80 before this month (closest it got was $80.57 back in February of 2025). Toaster had only its fifth month of 0 sales, and for the first time ever had two in a row (it made a princely 7 cents each month in adshare revenue). And Day After had its worst-ever month with only 3 sales and $.79 in my cut of the ad cash.
Now, what does this mean? As a singular month, probably not much. Although I’d love any other authors to share about May and see if there was an overall downward trend or if it’s specific to me. And I know some of the coming months will be better; the Steam Summer Sale will help Parenting, and right now it’s in the top bestselling list on the omnibus for the previous week, sitting around 13th or 14th. But it’s still disconcerting to have it be that much worse than it’s ever been all of a sudden. Time will tell if this is an anomaly or a start of a larger and more sinister trend.
My May sales were slightly (very slightly) better than April’s.
My May was slightly worse than my April. Looking at my historic data, May seems to be one of the dips, with things picking up in June and July, and then dipping again in August/September.