The Hosted Games staff will review your copy and if they want any changes to be made, it is my understanding that they will discuss those with you.
The biggest thing is to get the narrative written and submitted; I am sure you then can adjust anything you’ll need to, so the game is green-lit.
Well this thread makes me kinda scared. While I wouldn’t give my project a rating higher than T (due to distinct lack of child eating) I’m the kind of person who loves going on about religion and morality and social issues and everything else in my writing. And every possible approach to those is probably considered “deeply offensive” to someone somewhere.
Good thing my prose is broken and I don’t know when to quit typing. Have fun finding something to complain about when you’re too busy clicking “Next” to read the textual walls.
While I don’t know your politics enough to say whether your views would run afoul of CoG’s guidelines, I don’t believe they mean “potentially offensive to someone somewhere,” but deeply offensive to the CoG editors, who as far as I know hold very reasonable liberal ideals of treating other humans with respect, not glorifying violence or intolerance, that kind of thing.
That said, a CoG game is probably not the best place for an author’s lengthy political manifestos. These are games where the player should feel empowered to make choices that affect the story, their own character, and the world around them. If the player wants to write manifestos, or help other characters write theirs, go nuts, but the power to decide that, and what’s in those manifestos (within the realm of good taste) should rest with the player, not the author.
The problem with “Flight” is not blood and gore or graphic violence… or even content, exactly. It’s PLAYER CHOICE.
Does your player have a choice to kill another character or not?
If your character CAN be a total psychopath who murders children and eats then, that’s okay! Who hasn’t met a delicious-looking infant and thought, “You’re making me hungry, small child.”?*) As long as the player can choose NOT to murder folks etc if that is their preference.
(I suspect there were other stylistic issues with “Flight”, such as writing in first person instead of second and only giving 2 choices at a time, that were a factor in the decision too.)
It is true that, over time, the official ‘Choice of Games’ style details are getting more specific, and that has a small influence on Hosted Games too (Choice of Games is a business, with an increasing number of readers who are getting more and more specific about what they love).
But Hosted Games are still pretty great for trying out a super random idea (although the more typical a game is—mainstream 2nd person style, PG or M rating, and long—the better it’s likely to sell).
I reckon an MA equivalent rating would be fine. More than that and you may need to tone it down or publish it elsewhere.
Felicity
*just me? Huh.
Side note: If you publish it elsewhere and make a profit, Choice of Games gets a cut due to providing the ChoiceScript engine.
I published “Flight” in itch and have made a grand total of $26 which is CONSIDERABLY less than I would make for a Hosted Game.
Okay, I’m kinda facing the same issue here and thought this is a good place to drop my question instead of starting a new thread.
In the story I’m writing, the player who chose to have a drug vice will get a scene where they get to choose whether to take a certain drug or not (it’s a drug I created for the story, and it isn’t based on a real life one).
I will also give the player the choice to kick the habit away later, so it won’t be something their character will have to go through the entirety of the game.
Anyway, my question is this: Will it be acceptable by COG guidelines if the drug use scene is detailed and descriptive, or would it be seen as glorifying substance use?
It really isn’t something any of us can give meaningful input on I’m afraid, especially without reading the scene in the game in context. Your best bet is to write what you want to write, see what player feedback you get (if you get a lot of feedback from people saying it feels like it’s glorifying something offensive, that may mean it would be wise to nudge things in another direction), and it’ll be all read through down the line by HG when submitted; you can then make decisions about any changes you make, if any issues are flagged up to you.
Okay, thank you! I guess I’ll just have to test it out and see.
Is it legal or illegal? If it’s a dependence on a legal drug, see Donor. If it’s illegal… That’s probably a bit shakier depending on how it is presented. With these sorts of questions you’re probably better off contacting COG directly to see if it is something that would prevent them from publishing your game.
I mean, it’s nothing that extreme.
I guess if I had to describe it, it’d be like dropping the character in a bucket of rainbow paint and shaking it real hard.
I have no idea what you mean by that but good luck with the game!
Mmm, yeah. I know you’re right. I suppose I just don’t like the uncertainty 
I feel not everything is removable or changeable in a story, and knowing it’s based not on hard rules but subjective interpretations feels, well it feels hard to spend years developing something without any expected assurance. But I get it. I just don’t love it 
I expect it’s that same type of unsafe feeling why many unity devs are leaving after that whole thing—the investment in time and energy is too high to put trust in something that has been shown to be untrustworthy before. Feeling secure in what they’re creating is just too important to put on chance, for many.
This is correct. The Day After Ever After got several notes about potentially problematic elements. The only thing they specifically wanted changed was a small scene where torture was an option to extract information about the whereabouts of a traitor from a soldier. Torture is apparently a very hard line for HG. It wasn’t a major plot point (I had only included it so I could make a joke about literally going medieval on the person) and I changed it to threatening the soldier with being transferred to the bandit-plagued border, which achieved the same result and allowed it to be publishable. They did question the necessity of the child sacrifice option, but when I said it was fairly critical to one of the story paths, it was allowed.
That’s a shame, IMO. I’ve not read Flight yet, but the idea of Hosted Games acquiring criteria other than the “grossly offensive” one is saddening. HGs shouldn’t be tied down to one particular idea of how choice and character interact. By all means let’s warn the reader if they’re about to try a story where the protagonist is a bad person, not someone with a choice to be bad…but let’s not exclude that kind of story from HG.
Edit: having read the first chapter, I really hope CoG reconsiders its policy shift on this. Flight is clearly artistically meritorious without being grossly offensive. The only reason I can see not to publish it is CoG deciding to impose a stronger editorial line and less creative freedom for HGs, which I think would be a mistake, and a well written game like this is a deeply odd place to start.