Here i would like to add that , “Fake Choice” within Tin Star is very limited for my opinion … the so called “fake choice” only appear at the beginning and end of story , but the ending choices allow me to forge my own legacy as well as my own romantic life in the end … having a love triangle with both Carrie and Maria with an official marriage with one of them was most satisfying .
In addition, with different choices in Tin Star… we could have an entirely different story plot or scenes , thus enhancing it with a different reading experience, example If we ask about the ex-Marshall’s grave with Ben first, we could only visit the grave ourselves, but if we ask about it with Carrie, we could have Carrie accompany us to the grave and there will be a further backstory about Carrie , accommodate with her mourn to a friend who she once tried to save
and we also have choices of who we bring to the theater depending on who we visit, bringing Maria or Carrie will have a total different romantic scene , most importantly we also will receive a secondary romantic scene with the RO who we don’t bring to the theater , i Brought Maria to the Theater , so i will receive a chance to make bullets with Carrie next … If i brought carrie, i will have a secondary scene with Maria instead
these may seems not affecting the general outcome of the main plot . but it gives a different romantic journey along the way… even the mission of overcoming the flood will bear significant achievement within the “history” of the story line
These all are a good examples of how word length matter in a story
Edit: I just remember that we must ensure the lead antagonist survive ( a choice) , in order to have a true happy ending with both Maria and Carrie , even so we must also select the choice of becoming the Mexico Governor in order to marry Maria or ensuring Carrie have a lavish life there
I wanted to know what the average for Choice of Games’ wordcount was and ended up doing this because I’m a loser. The Choice of Games list is complete; I’m making this a wiki in case anyone wants to finish the Hosted Games list!
Notes
The Choice of Games list is complete and done in chronological order, earliest games being at the top and most recent releases being at the bottom.
The Hosted Games list is not done in chronological order, but instead by wordcount, with longest HGs being at the top.
Sources: storefront descriptions, the occasional forum search, and the post in this thread by @SleeperHold. “?” was left for games where wordcount wasn’t obviously listed (or I couldn’t find it within 10 seconds of looking).
What is the actual average of COG wordcounts? IDK, someone else can do that…
Updated the table with recent COG releases (congrats to the company on breaking over 100 games!) and the average wordcount of COG titles (using only known numbers) is 227,289 words. Gives the rest of us a run for our money!
I don’t have the time to do all of the Hosted Games, sadly, since I imagine there are more than COG’s 116! I made this post a wiki if you want to add information about your games or any others, though! I’ll see about making a graph!
So Choice of the Dragon seems to have been published in Jan 2010, and the most recent release (Werewolves 2) was Jul 2020. Congrats to the company on ten years as well as over one hundred titles!
All of the games are on the graph even if their titles don’t appear on the axis. If you’re curious, the big spike in wordcount–coming from what I call our “three giants”, Choice of Rebels, Choice of the Cat, and Tally Ho–were all published in a close cluster in 2017.
Lengths taken from:
(a) word count in the game description, or if missing
(b) word count reported in the Omnibus app
Most (58%) of the time (a) and (b) aren’t the same number. Case in point:
Title
Description Word Count
Omnibus Word Count
Absolute Difference
Academy of Disaster
200,000
68,000
132,000
The Great Tournament 2
300,000
370,000
70,000
Samurai of Hyuga 4
375,000
440,000
65,000
Journey into Darkness
50,000
110,000
60,000
Zombie Exodus
750,000
700,000
50,000
The Soul Stone War
487,000
480,000
7,000
Foundation of Nightmares
100,000
96,000
4,000
…
…
…
…
Sum
47,376,200
48,169,300
1,421,700
Word count in descriptions got priority because they’re less rounded and I’m assuming that makes them more accurate. But you know what they say about assumptions!
It’s still Tin Star (according to the omnibus) at 1,400,000 words. ZESH and Magikiras come next, at 1,100,000.
(Hard to say which games are “truly” the longest, since the word count metrics don’t take coding efficiency into account, but Tin Star would have to be 21.4% inefficient to be as long as the 2nd placers.)
