How many WIP's are sensible for an author?

Given your posts in another thread on the attitude of the developers of Discourse (same fols behind stack exchange if memory serves) I’d strongly suggest finding alternate software. Not at all an easy task though.

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Faster? Possible i say? :thinking:

Understood, truth be told. For someone who learned english by literally listening to others, and reading it on his own. I dare say i am fine. When i was going to school…we didn’t have english classes. Don’t ask…this country is…bah.

So i self learned it, no books or anything. So you will have to forgive my style of writing. I am not sure what can i do to make it easier to read, but i’ll try what i can, depending on what sort of feedback i am given. I really need things pointed out.

As for BUYING my products. You won’t get a chance for that truth be told. Not now at least, and as for the future? That is difficult to predict. But everything so far is free. :slight_smile:

As for your…one well written WIP is better than four rushed ones. Agreed! :slight_smile:

But either way, to not turn this into a personal discussion here. Thank you a lot for your words and your honest opinion. Really, really appreciated!

:fist_right::fist_left:

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Honestly, I think with the English cleaned up your work would be worth buying.

I think we did de-rail slightly but the gist of what I was going for was that your rushing multiple wips was having a negative impact on their quality, at least in my opinion.

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One WIP if you are serious about finishing it and not just playing around with concepts and coding. Getting one game out in three years is better than two in six.

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Warning. Long rambly post follows :slight_smile:

WIPs are like rabbits. The multiply out of control if you don’t watch them carefully. I mean adding a second WIP won’t do any harm right? Whoops, somehow now there’s 3, that wasn’t meant to happen. Now there’s 5, where did the extra two come from?.. :rabbit2: :rabbit2: :rabbit2: :rabbit2: :rabbit2:

But yeah, it’s one of the joys of being a writer with an out of control imagination. There’s always something new and shiny that you want to put down on paper (computer screen?) before you forget it… and then it’s so much more fun and easier to write than the older project that’s getting snarled in complicated variables and branching storylines at 80k+ words so you keep going with it, and before you know it, there’s another WIP to add to the list.

I know with mine, I had the best intentions with starting some “side projects” were meant to be just that- mini projects. Oedipus was meant to be under 60k (was about 110k when complete from memory). I thought Dragon Chronicles would be under 50k, but it’s currently 80-90k and still not quite done. Abysm’s veil started out as a contest entry. It’s probably going to be closer to 200k when finished. It’s really hard not to end up with scope creep, and then those little mini projects become full sized ones even when you don’t mean that to happen.

So yeah, the fewer WIP’s the better for getting something actually completed. One-two max is probably ideal. (Says the person with more than that due to the rabbits episode. Do as I say, not as I do :wink:) I did let them multiply out of control a while back, and they’re all 60k+ at the moment- so a lot of work has gone into all of them. It’s not writers deliberately trying to annoy people with starting extra games, it just kind of happens if you’re not careful. I’ve tried to learn the lesson and am now working through the existing WIP’s to get them all done, but I find I need to switch between two WIPs from time to time (or just write a strictly miniture project like for Ectocomp) as I need a break from them/get stuck. So I think 2 at a time to focus on is fair if you work that way.

I realise that having slowly updated WIPs can be very annoying for testers, but there will always be abandoned WIPs happening on the forum as it kind of acts as a sounding board for new works and ideas to be tried out (and not all will meet with a good reception or the author may just change their mind), and is full of people writing stories part time/ as a hobby/ new writers trying out CS.

It has always happened, but I wonder if one of the things that is exacerbating this is the trend to push for longer and longer games in order to have them be popular. Anything under 200k is now considered short, but the amount of work required to produce a 200k game is not double that of a 100k game (which used to be the standard for a “reasonably long” game a few years ago). Games get exponentially more time consuming to manage (and less likely to be finished as they stretch out over years) for a lot of writers the longer they get.

It’s particularly bad for new HG authors who I feel like often get overwhelmed, abandon projects +/- start new ones instead of getting a smaller game completed, learn from building that, then move onto a longer game if they want next time. I suspect it’s one of the reason we get a lot of those very short demo concepts that never go anywhere past that.

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For me, it feels like the important thing is what the author gets out of it, rather than what readers and assorted outsiders feel is “sensible.” Are they looking to actually sell a finished product? Or are they just having fun writing and noodling around with code, and if it eventually crosses the finish line that’s cool too but not really a concern? There are no wrong answers, imo.

Tl;dr - I approach WIPs the way I do fan fiction: It’s the author’s project, and they’re inviting me along for the ride free of charge, but ultimately it’s not about me. If they want an editor, they’ll pay for one. I’ll just enjoy what’s on offer.

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I’ll be honest I am also working on another, unposted WIP. It helps me combat my writer’s block ten fold. Truth be told, that WIP will probably never get finished, but it’s fun to take my mind off my main work for something fun, creative, and different, while still using my motivation to write even if I have no new ideas for my main WIP. The two stories are completely different and require much different coding so it has helped me become a better writer/coder. Another thing I do to help writers block is do research on the type of story I am trying to write. All these methods have really helped develop my writing. Plus, with a side WIP I’m not as invested in, new ideas come more freely to me for the game I actually would be interested in publishing. I’m not saying start a hundred new projects (lol, i definitely have a ton of notes in my phone for new projects), all up to the writer on what you can handle!

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Literally every single word of this is unvarnished truth. Particularly the bit about first-time authors. I bet that the vast majority of first-timers who got published as opposed to stopping before the finish line didn’t have multiple WIPs at the time.

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The first part of this sentence is true from my experiences and observations but I do not see the “trend to push for longer and longer games” influencing this – at least since I’ve been here.

The number of “active” WiPs at any one time seems to be (anecdotally) pretty stable.

Authors/developers active at one time change - turnover of author/developers seems to ebb when summer and other “breaks” like holidays happen and flow during the rest of the year but the actual number of WiPs do not.

One of the things that has changed is the automatic timer now active on WiP threads. The opening and closing of WiPs may influence what people conclude or observe.

The social media real-time “conversation” format of Discourse impacts how WiP threads operate and the lack of threaded discussion formatting I believe makes it much more difficult for an author/developer to conduct a proper feedback loop – unless they take the effort and time to foster it.

A skilled and involved author/developer can get a lot out of their experience here; some will prefer alternatives like Tumblr – which really makes the process complicated.

Edit –

This is part of the problem – The WiP thread is supposed to be a milestone that an author/developer uses to get their game published by the HG label. Feedback, even that which tells the author that they need editorial help is essential to this process.

If testers treat these as nothing more than fan fiction blog pieces, it defeats the purpose for these in the first place.

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Yes I’m not a fan of the trend to move things off-forum for WIPs. As soon as developers move their feedback cycle to tumblr or discord it becomes hard to track what feedback/bugs has already been given/reported.

Plus tumblr has microscopic fonts on most of the ones I see. I feel like I need a scanning electron microscope to read them :smiley:

Edit: for perspective i currently have 9 wips open in tabs at the moment that I’m working through and providing feedback/bug reports as I spot them and remember to take a note of them somewhere.

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In that case, there’s definitely a disconnect between the intended use of the WIP thread and how it’s actually being used in many cases (right down to the use of fandom language and philosophy in many of the threads.) But then you get into the thorny issue of whether, once you have released your product into the wild/opened your forum for public use, you get to tell your users they’re Doing It Wrong (full disclosure: I think you do not, unless things are happening that are explicitly against agreed-upon rules.)

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One project. I know that there’s science out there that says it’s good to work on other projects and whatnot when you’re working on something, but I think it’s better to detach by taking a break and doing other things just for fun. For example, I watch a lot of YouTube and play The Sims 4 like I get paid for it, and then when I’m done, I come back inspired and ready to write more. Do I write slower? Sure. But I don’t wear myself out and I can see myself finishing the project as opposed to hopping to another project when my whims dictate it.

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This is getting off topic, so I will give my reply and then if we decide to pursue this we should open our own thread…

A WiP thread’s main purpose is to gather feedback. Part of that gathering process is to direct your testers … in a public beta, there will be those that only desire to express their fan-girl support (or fan-guy?) but an author really should be pro-active in conducting a WiP beta test – open, closed, public or private.

This is not a release of a final product into the wild – that is only accomplished when you publish.

This is not even an “early-access” release like you see on Steam – Hosted Games does not have the tools or the set-up for this type of game release.

These are not even betas in the traditional gaming sense. I’ll find the quote from 5 or so years ago that emphasizes this… brb with it.

Edit 1 -

With these definitions, we see that staff consider most WiP threads now opened as Alpha threads… I’m not sure I’ve seen actual betas as defined here in a very long time (not even “official CoG” WiP threads were completed drafts yet) …

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I feel I should clarify: When talked about releasing something into the wild in my previous post, I was talking about this forum and how it’s used, not WIPs.

But I agree that we’re getting off-topic, so back to business!

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Most of the authors here are not fast writers, so I say one. I feel like the more WIPs an author has out there the less likely it is that any of them will ever be completed.

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Not sure if it’s a fine comparison since drawing doesn’t take as much time as writing a book, but thats the thing I have experience with so… Anyway I’d say it’s better to finish one project first, if I start another one while the first one is still unfinished then it’s most likely that the first one would get abondoned. If I need time off then it’s better to read, watch a film or youtube videos, stuff like that then going back to what I started instead of jumping back and forth between different works.
Edit: About ideas popping up along the way: I don’t know maybe write it down in a notebook or something then get back to it once the current project is finished?

I’m not a fan of this either, tho I can see what merit an author could see in doing that: it might result in more feedbacks (even if it’s more likely that some would end up as the same as fans on different sites wouldn’t know if someone else on a different site already pointed out the same thing) if they make the WIP available on several sites.

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I’m no expert, but I think I know a couple of reasons for this, at least for some people. The first is simply excitement. Sometimes an author will get an idea that they’re really excited about and will want to share it with everyone. So, they end up posting about it before their demo’s ready.

The second reason could be a desire for feedback. I’m making my first real effort to write a COG game and am pretty much lost on how to do it. And, well, there’s no real way for someone to ask people questions about or get feedback on their story without posting a topic about it, and naturally, you need to finish a demo before you can do that. Speaking personally, when trying to plan everything out, I have so many questions on what people would expect from the story like the one I’m writing, what choices I should include, ect. So, I can see why someone might rush out a demo for the sake of getting some feedback on what they’re working on.

PS I haven’t read through this whole topic yet, so, sorry if any of this was covered earlier.

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I think there is something(s) we can do to address this – A WiP thread shouldn’t be the solution to this.

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In theory, the ideas thread is for that but it doesn’t work. Because if I want to have feedback on my idea I don’t want the same time other fifteen authors doing the same in the same thread, at the same time. It is not useful, so people just make a quick demo to make their own thread without thinking; most of the time, they are just trying to get feedback on a early idea and the wip never is continued.

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Quite frankly, I have several WIPs sitting in google drive that exist simply because I thought they’d be fun to write. And I can’t help but just start a new one to see where it goes. They make for good warmup practice before I work on my main WIP too.

And to answer your first bit- I can’t speak for everyone, but personally I shared my WIP very early on because 1) I was simply really excited to post it, 2) I really wanted to hear feedback on how to improve my story, and I like to get that as soon as possible so I can incorporate what I hear as I write the next part of my story, and 3) hearing nice things helps motivate me. Of course, to each their own, and I fully understand that it’s frustrating to find a fun WIP that’s really short.

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