Still They know what they are buying as Branches and the multiple path is even in the company name. And is the advertising focus. What many people are waiting is fake choices that leads noswhere or the no branching if from a rival company were game has no branches and the objective is reach a high score
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You’d think so, and I do think most people get it. But I have seen reviews along the lines of “No way this was 100,000 words” (or what ever the word count happened to be.) I also wonder in the “too short” comments are also tapping into the feeling that they bought something that sounds full novel length, then it turns out not to be. But yep you’re right, the more short “fake choices” that don’t branch anywhere with a focused goal in mind for the ending, the more linear and generally the longer the story for a single playthrough.
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Exactly most of the too short feetback market came from my experience from visual novels. Or small freemium choice games that DON’THAVE CHOICES i mean they apparently have but only one is correct. So in their 100,000 they have 98,900 . For them understanding Cog should they understand there is no a correct path alone and replay value exist . I think achievements and some sort of plus mode with few extra could helping.
But some peopleis plainly oblivious to logic. Like this one
ONE STAR WHERE IS SPANISH?
company You are downloaded the English version the Spanish one Say Spanish…
WHY THERE IS NO SPANISH IN THE ENGLISH ONE THIS IS A SCAM.MN
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I wonder if a lot of the “too short” players go into it with the mindset that there is only one “correct” path
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Basically, people don’t want branching choices because that means the playthrough lengths would be much, much shorter. They also don’t want obvious and boring fake choices, for obvious reasons. What they want are fake choices that are interesting and varied. This way, they still get a long story, and they’re also being convinced that their choices matter. 
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I won’t say I won’t buy a shorter game, but I usually find myself more tempted if a game is at around 100,000 words or more.
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Aka the (very successful if also much-maligned) Zachary Sergi model.
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Not to toot my own horn, but I think the fake choices that I was talking about (that are interesting, varied, and convincing) are the kind used in most of Mass Mother Murderer. Or, at least that’s the plan. The game is one of my most linear so far but thus far no one has mentioned that.
When it came to Heroes Rise, every fake_choice was like a smack in the face to me because they were very obvious and didn’t do much to make me at least feel like I had my own MC.
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Fair enough, but Sergi’s success suggests that most readers didn’t find them obvious. If you hold yourself to a higher standard, good on you.
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I’m not trying to be pretentious at all. Sergi’s first game was more successful than all four of mine combined and I’ve read and enjoyed his whole trilogy.
I’m just saying that if fake_choices are at least a little more involved and tailored towards all different kinds of MCs, it goes a long way.
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Sergi is also the master of copypaste and padding. Look how much of his games is text (history lessons, recaps, show payment) utmost irrelevant to the game, yet making itself out to be a must read.
Heck, he even has the character lament on how they know the stuff.
Rule of hand: 1. if bits are irrelevant, delete them or make them genuinely relevant (or an option not part of the story)
2. If you have the character complain that they know something already (aka you try to address the reader wondering why the char would not know this) delete it or make it an option out of the story.
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But, could it be that these days readers are less accepting of such practices? I mean, there was a time when there were few superhero games… nowadays the bar is set much higher? (btw, I don’t wish to diminish games in any way… for example, I love Choice of the Dragon, but if it was released as a HG today, maybe many would complain “too short!” or “too railroaded”)
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My biggest issue looking back on Heroes Rise is that it’s never clear when a fake choice is actually going to have an effect or not, something I like, because it gives you the ability to define your character without actually changing the game world at all, and dislike, because it feels so superficial. I think I would’ve enjoyed the series a lot more if I never peeked under the hood and saw how it’s structured
There were also occasional moments where the rug would be pulled out from under me and I’d be left with a “but my MC wouldn’t say or react like that”, but they were relatively minimal if you’re doing a 100 legend run
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Very probably. I had people complaining that Wizardry was linear and they kept getting the same ending when it actually is pretty branchy with very different endings. I came to the conclusion that at least in part, it was probably due to readers thinking they need to play towards always trying to be as successful as possible as the “end point” of the game when there was actually multiple ones. That also gels with a fair percentage of people only reading games once. (Although there can be other reasons for that as well.)
Heroes rise is very popular and does have a rather linear story with an optimal rather than branched ending (aka ideal is reach legend 100) which makes it seem longer than other games of similar length. So I can see where that idea comes from that there is a single goal rather than the old school CYOA books where there could be many endings.
And that’s the fun of delayed branching and silent stat changes used with fake_choices. Sometimes it seems as if your choices aren’t having an effect, while they actually are ticking away in the background. I like delayed branching. I use it quite often although unfortunately it has the side effect of making the set up of a game in particular seem as if it isn’t changing much on playthroughs since the consequences of how decisions are made either turn up later or have to build up to a level from where they start triggering changes (which can seem like a bad thing when you don’t know it’s happening.) Sometimes I think fake_choices get given a bad rap, when they can actually be used as effectively as a normal choice in some cases. I can see why they’d be a bit frustrating at times for working out legend scores though if there was lots of little things contributing? (I just didn’t play trying to get legend 100 and found the game a lot more enjoyable that way so not really sure what was involved to score 100.)
I’m actually surprised it doesn’t seem more too short comments since it’s still being downloaded. Must be a measure of how much people like it that it gets a pass for that.
I don’t know. It still seems as if many readers don’t care overly much if a game is railroaded, only if it’s short. But yep, have seen a few complaints here and there on google play about choices not mattering so maybe that’s where the trend of games need to be at least 250,000 words to be worthwhile reading is coming from. Long playthrough length with at least a moderate amount of replayability.
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Looking and attempting to summarise the results of the survey so far (n=278 respondents, out of 2.2k view of this site, though obviously it’s a biased non-random sample):
57% of respondents will only download games over 100,000 in length (25% of all say it should be at least 150,000)
12% of respondents will only download games over 30,000 in length
31% of people say that they don’t care about word count
There are other ways to read this data… but it seems that if you want a chance at a wide audience these days you need to have at least 100,000 words (or you lose over half of all potential buyers immediately), and 150,000 if you want to reach at least 75% of all potential buyers…
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Hmmmm… i think you miss the most important factor of all, Choice of Dragon is FREE 
, when people have something Free, they tend to be more lenient for their view…
but i do notice this review:
" Great game short but sweet. With enough divirting paths and some challenge to make it fun on multiple playthroughs. Obviously it was intended as a first part, too bad the 2nd part never camr."
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True, but it hasn’t stopped other free titles (including the new broadsides which was far longer than Dragon and there’s a few more in hosted games) from being critisized for shortness 
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I think the new broadsides , even though free is a victim of the author’s own success because the author is a well known author for his other famous game , thus when people heard that he is producing another game, the expectation was high where they never consider this a free game… this seems to be a fact when many who complain the story is short also compare it to his other premium titles , but i notice many sensible readers already explain in the comment column that this story is only a side project for the author 
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Maybe the most important factor is being a power fantasy? Being a badass dragon that has followers, hoards, challenge an evil mage, and even a god.
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The fact is Choice of dragon is for me in writing one of best paced ; designed and tailored If games ever. No choice or word is superfluous. All has a impact in how reader feel the story. It is short, yes but never felt sort. Or fake … It is a damn genial game unicorn.
As plot there are better games here and more complex. As game experience no. The Choice of dragon is for me a Hobbit moment
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