I had even read that some people on google play comment “Love at Elevation” is short , when that story is already 350k words … and i need 3 days to fully finish one playthrough , i wonder do they really read every words or they just skip to the page with choices and read the ending ? 
by the way, i think Nuclear Power Toaster is doing fine with it 160k words … so there is no need to stress yourself
I can’t remember the game name but it was one that was heavily complained about (in the olden days of this server). I ended up frequently skipping over paragraphs hoping I’d reach a point that was understandable or not grudgingly slow beyond belief. Normally that is not something that I do due to causing a person to get lost, or missing key moments.
Generally if they are skipping entire pages they are either just there for the choices, making a list of what happens each choice, or are possibly bored. Hopefully it’s not becuase of the first or third option and they eventually re read it.
Love at elevation was certainly not short.
I’m actually really curious if /how/ a game ends impacts its “too short” rating. It almost seems like games that are a bit shorter but that close all the loose ends nicely get less complaints (within reason) than those that are a bit longer but end more suddenly or leave loose threads as it makes them seem shorter than they could have been. (This isn’t a comment on love at elevation btw, haven’t read it as it’s not really my thing. I also have no idea how branched it is which also seems to negatively impact length expectations.) I could be completely wrong though 
On that note:
I’m starting to get the impression that “the game is too short” is at least in some cases short-hand for “there is little variety in the play-throughs”
For me generally if a game has a sopranos style ending or leaves lots of gaps and glaring loopholes and is not stated as a saga it does agitate me and the length does in fact suddenly seem shorter than it is. So I can’t disagree as to me doing that feels like flawed story writing. No offense to writers that do it, it’s just agrivating when it happens. I give sagas a little more room as long as they close the main points and leave tangible boot-ups to entice new plot points like @Cataphrak did so effectively that I am effectively wiling to wait old Star Wars time for the next episode/sequel just to feed my borderline addiction to the story.
You meant not enough choices to get a different outcomes for a certain route? and the route for a different choice has to be long as well ? That will be a whole new standard 
Yeah i agree, all the scenes for a single playthrough is quite well written and described … personally i felt quite engage with Love at Elevation and it was a long read for me
One example for that was Broadway 1849, which is “only” 150k words, but it managed to provide quite a different variety of routes and outcomes, and most importantly cleverly closed all the loose ends with a variety choices in the end , (although at the same time it made me feel there is still a possibility of sequel) …Overall it made me feel that i really went through an adventure for one whole year without boredom , after i realise the word count is 150k then… i genuinely thought 150k is the standard for a long game back then
Going by Elevation, as example. While I have not played it myself, the biggest criticism for it I see it that there is pretty much just one story with the names switched around.
The course of the game (where the characters go, what will happen there etc) seemed identical no matter who you are with.
So you get more of a game of fill-in-the-blanks than a choose your own adventure.
This i have to agree, now that you mention it … so the problem is there aren’t multiple endings based on previous choices… although there are a variety of different scenes
Hence the problem isn’t really the length of the game , it is more about how to utilise the limited number of words , like the example i gave about Broadway 1849, which i think the author @r_davis had done it marvelously for a 150k words title
I would not be surprised if there are people who buy a game and are disappointed (to say the least) if a choice that looked like a bigger branch turned out to be the same with some slightly different text or a railroad back to the path already taken.
And who perceive that as “too short” in a way
For this i would like to promote a “mechanism” that introduced in Tin Star ,which i feel works wonderfully , it is about a romance interaction with different ROs that based on “time frame” , meaning after choosing a choice of action at certain time with a RO , the time will continue forward and we won’t get the similar choice of action with another RO… (although we get a different scene with them)
It was the scene when we could ask either Maria Agustina or Carrie Caraway to go for a theater viewing in Elko, if we visit Maria first then we could invite her for the theater and engage in a romance interaction there, the next day when we visit Carrie the choice of asking Carrie to go for theater is totally non-visible (not even grey out) but we have a different choice of filling bullet powder with her… however if we visit Carrie First and ask her for theater going , we won’t be able to do that with Maria after that, we will have a chess playing scene with Maria instead
the other scene was whether to ask Carrie or Schmitt first about Marshal James’ grave
Hence these will make readers feel all those choices will make a totally different branch of story and thus also increase replayability
If you cut the 5-odd outliers, it would certainly be a very different trendline. The “annual average increase by 50,000 words” might give a mistaken impression that the median game in 2017 was 50k words longer than the median game in 2016…when I’d guess they’re not too far different, and the real difference is the growing number of long-winded loons at the upper margin.
In that case it seems the increase is just over 25,000 per year… which is obviously not as much, though significant nevertheless.
I dont know… for that we would have to make a list with all the playthrough lengths, though that data is harder to find…
Possibly. I kinda hope that this is the case.
This is another possibility.
Occasionally, I lapse into skim mode if there aren’t enough *page_breaks to break up the gigantic text walls of description/action.
I feel like this post needs to get “revived”:
Part of the reason readers could have the mentality of ‘well, it’s only double the work’ could be because they don’t know how much work it takes to write an IF.
Writing a novel is one thing - literally. You only have to write one novel.
Writing an IF is like writing one big novel… with a bunch of mini novels inside that will eventually match up to create the big one.
On a related note, do people think that the HG label is following a similar growth trend?
It can also be those players might read everything (or close to it) the first time, and then start to skip upon subsequent playthroughs. Anecdotally, I can say this is how I play…which certainly doesn’t account for other people.
Regarding general increases in game wordcount; depending on the game, some of this can also be accounted for by what I consider ‘flavor text’ changes. If there is a stat for happy/sad (as a rough example) and a couple of sentences change based on that emotion, this will add to word count throughout a game, though I would say most people won’t notice it on multiple playthroughs.
Another thing is that it seems some of the bigger games also have a few more ‘MC description’ sort of screens. Even if they don’t really do anything later in the game, this can also add to word count.
It depends. There were several Hosted Games around the 50,000-60,000 word count released this year. However, the ones that stay memorable to me are the ones also released on Steam, and those tended to be 150,000+ words.
While I will purchase the browser versions directly, I do take note of the Steam ones so I can recommend them to people on Hanako Games’ yuri game list.
And did those HGs receive a generally favorable rating?
I’m wondering two things:
first, if consumers outside of the forum know that there are different standards set in place for CoGs and HGs?
second, if this expectation difference is influencing their perception and then subsequent rating they give a game?
The answer is Yes !!! The Aether Life as God had reach the highest download of 100k in Google playstore.
Personally i don’t think readers outside the forum know how to differentiate between HG and CoG , for them it should be about whether a game suit their personal taste
From the looks of it, Harbingers head also did quite well in the ratings and was even released on steam despite being short, but aether did exceptionally well with a huge number of downloads.
What happens in the official titles seems to affect expectations of readers as there’s a large crossover in the audience, but there is more variability in the length of HGs. We’re still seeing things from minimum length like NE by NW to very high like Magikiras.