Interest Checks (A Discussion Thread)

Game Development
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An interest check is a post centred around the ‘interest’ of a proposed hosted games project.

Before I begin I should clarify: this topic is about the nature of interest checks, it is not itself an interest check for a WIP (work in progress).

Interest checks have become commonplace on the choice of games forum; so much so that they’ve become an entire category of their own.
Now I’m not here to say that an interest check is an inherently bad thing in fact it can be useful to an author in a number of ways:

  • Gauging the interest of a given audience.
  • Getting feedback on some potential problems an author may face when creating such a project.
  • Interacting with the audience of a particular genre that understand the project you are attempting to create.

However there is a pattern of behaviour with interest checks a pattern that the folks at Choice Of Games appear to have recognised in their tips for posting WIPs.
Quoting from their ‘tips before posting’:
“If you’re posting a new work in progress, try having a demo ready before posting. Authors who post their thread with demos are far more likely to complete their game in the end.”

This advice is given for a reason. Because it’s true.
It is sadly the case with a lot of interest checks.The idea, regardless of the response it receives fades into obscurity never to be seen again; because this is the inherent problem with an interest check.
You are pitching an idea and an idea is just an idea, it isn’t a finished product it isn’t a demo, it isn’t an excerpt from your writing in the world in which you want to set your story it’s almost nothing for a potential audience to even work with.

So of course many will say ‘that sounds interesting’ or ‘i’m looking forward to it’ because so many interest checks are so lacking in content anyone would want to know more; only when it gets down to it, when the ‘interest checkers’ have to write their story do they likely find how difficult it is to write an engaging multiple choice story with different endings character interactions and romances where every conversation must have multiple outcomes in order for it to be engaging. it’s not easy; what is easy is to say your going to do something like it is with interest checks.

If any of you desire you can simply search ‘interest check’ to find a plethora of unstarted, abandoned and forgotten ‘projects’.

In short Interest Checks have a number of problems:

  1. There is no demo
  2. The ‘interest checkers’ often haven’t made a serious attempt to use choicescript, the programming language used to make these games and have little to no idea of the amount of work required for the project. Hence why they often don’t include a demo
  3. They haven’t got a clear idea or plan. They are vague and open ended lacking in a clear pitch of their idea.

Therefore I believe that ‘interest checks’ should aim to include a number of things as a bare minimum (and I mean bare minimum):

  1. Firstly if you don’t have a demo you should have an excerpt of your writing from this story in the tone and style we could expect to see in the main chunk of the game.
  2. A Synopsis, it’s the thing you find on the back of a book it gives you a plot outline and a rough idea about what the story is about without ruining the story. I think for this reason when a synopsis is included it is often a little too vague for fear of spoiling the plot, it’s important to consider when writing your synopsis the right amount to give the audience however I would say that too much is better than too little.
  3. A well thought out plan for the game. The stat blocks, characters, themes and this shouldn’t be a list you should go into some detail about what you are planning, how they are connected in game and more importantly how you are going to do it.

Interest checks shouldn’t be ‘Idea Checks’ they should be a well thought out pitch for a project that you have a genuine interest in carrying out and before you pitch the idea you should know how to deliver the project; that means trying out choicescript, perhaps making a short story with it, it means doing some writing; writing about the world, the characters in the game.
It’s a lot of work to write a good interactive story and I have nothing but respect for the people who make these games.

I’m also curious what the people on this forum think. Do you agree with me on how to improve interest checks? do you have more ideas?

I’m also curious if anyone can give me an example of an interest check that has become a hosted game. I’ve had a look but been unable to find any exemplars I could use.

29 Likes
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This is a good piece of writing, but would you mind to move it to General category?
Because, ironically, this topic is not an interest check, although it’s about interest check. But it’s not an interest check, although it’s about…

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good topic but I think you should move it to general. (I will see if I can help)

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do you mean that has a demo or that is already out as a game?

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I mean a hosted game that started off as an interest check

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IIRC I checked and there was at least one (when I was considering making all interest checks have to be in a single thread).

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I think it’s been moved to the correct place now.
Thank you to whoever is responsible I was unsure of where exactly to post this one.

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I think this is a great post. I agree that interest checks should include a demo to play and see what kind of interest there is in it, not just an idea check. Those clutter the feed. I think using twitter is a better platform than a forum for idea checks. But that’s just my opinion.

Your ‘bare minimum’ is a great template for new WIP games or interest checks. It’s easy to get excited about a new idea but if you don’t take any steps to put it into writing, it’s just an idea forever.

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I absolutely agree.
I feel a bit guilty saying this, but I generally avoid anything labelled interest check, because I know so few ever get anywhere, so I tend to only stick to the ones that are actually labelled WIP, because otherwise I may as well just be shouting into the darkness for how often anything comes of interest checks.

I know there are many members who actively encourage OPs in their threads to create a demo so that we can see what their idea would really look like, but even with that encouragement…very little gets done.

If we were to enforce bare minimum, I would say that a demo should be needed outright. A writing excerpt is all well and good, but actually beginning to branch everything and code stats and the real nitty gritty of using CS…I think that’s what deters people the most when they finally sit down to write.
At the very least, requiring a demo would mean that the poster is familiar enough with CS to have created a rudimentary proof of concept, and hopefully has reassessed their aspirations for their WIP. From there, they would (again, hopefully) give a more realistic pitch of what they hope to do with their game. So, so many idea checks start off with completely unrealistic or unrestrained goals because the OPs know jack-squat about CS. Requiring it might mitigate both the flood of idea checks, and the dearth of follow-throughs.

But then, of course, the discussion would shift onto what exactly constitutes a WIP and what constitutes an idea check, and…well, I believe my opinions are pretty clear, but I’ll open the floor to everyone else now.

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I don’t have anything to add other than ‘agree!’

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do you recall which game it was that started off as an interest check?

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A much-needed post. I get sad seeing interest check threads, because they’re just ideas, and ideas are easy. Doing the work involved in bringing them to life is hard. People poop out a notion, others get excited about it, and either it dies right there or they manage a few anemic WIP updates before it becomes vaporware. WIP threads also have a woeful ratio of started games to completed ones, but it’s a whole lot better than these.

In short, skip interest checks. Post when you have something to actually show.

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I agree, and would add that there isn’t much point to an interest check (or at least not much that won’t be covered by posting a WIP thread with a demo). The only interest that really matters is the writer’s interest in completing the work. And I’d argue that someone posting the equivalent of “I have an idea for a story. It’s about a soldier in a war. Are you interested?” isn’t all that interested in the story they’re proposing to write, because they haven’t actually put much thought into it yet.

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I rather like that idea, by the way. Keeps attention more focused on actual WIPs. If you just have an idle notion you post it on the thread for such things, and if and when you expand it into an actual demo then you put your big boy/girl pants on and graduate to your own thread.

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I agree with pretty much everything said in this thread, and will add that I always get really disappointed when I see an interest check in the new threads list, instead of a WIP with a demo.

Also, I feel like there’s been way too many of them lately, to the point where I don’t realise an WIP has been updated before a week or two after, because it was drowning in the flood of interest checks filling up the WIP category…

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Are you tracking or watching any of these WIP threads? I follow quite a few topics myself, but using the nifty little alert system helps keep me on top of updates and the latest comments. :slight_smile:

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At least this would unclutter the forums, but how well would it actually work without rules for what an interest check post would be and how many would even pay attention to said rules? And what about discussion about interest checks? Do you leave it at ‘if you like the idea, give it a like’? Or would it be better to just not have interest checks at all?
I don’t personally believe interest checks are worth discussion unless there’s an actual demo.

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I mean, we’ve discussed implementing this is as a rule before. The rule would be: there’s one thread, anyone can use it, if you post outside of it without a demo, your thread gets merged into the thread. Beyond that, I probably wouldn’t put any strong restrictions on it, and just see what happens to start off.

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I agree with everything said here! I’ll add that I’ve noticed a common trend emerging where people will post 3-6 “ideas” for an interest check (#1 is a game about war, #2 is a game about aliens invading, etc…) and will ask the community to vote on and choose which is their favorite idea so they can get started on one. I really think this method will not work: getting a story done is hard, and the motivation to see it through should really come solely from the author. If you need to rely on popular opinion to tell you which of those stories to write, 99.99999999% of the time your interest/energy will flag because it’s all external pressure, turning it into a chore you’re doing for other people. Not the internal passion (“I NEED this story to be told!”) needed to make it to the end.

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A single interest check thread doesn’t seem like a bad idea. It would certainly help declutter the feed, and might give people the last real kick they need to actually familiarize themselves with CS to get a full-fledged WIP topic.

@rinari put it brilliantly. Without the passion, without the drive, there’s only outside motivation, which can be as fickle as the weather. If people actually want to get their games off the ground, then they have hit the ground running by actually doing something about it instead of simply farming likes for interesting ideas.

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