Yesterday I was approached by a girl who noticed me reading one of the games here, we talked a bit and she told me she is working on a game, nothing special except she is like 13 or 14 years old. And not a english native speaker. Beyond that in the forums there are many, many people claiming to be working on projects of their own… I suppose its to be expected as CoG popularity grows and I guess it’s possible that all these games turn out be good but probably some will not.
Personally i dont’t mind that, the games are perfectly affordable and even if I don’t like a game much i still usually buy it to support the author, but I can also understand if someones feels “tricked”(in lack of a better word) for buying something they might judge too amateurish. What you guys think of about this?
Honestly, very few WIPs ever make it to a final product compared to the number that fail, and all that do will be judged by the players. Therefore lesser quality games will be weeded out as less and less people buy them as the word gets out it’s not worth playing.
I give honest reviews on App Store for that reason. I would feel I was deceiving potential buyers if I gave a 3 star game a 5 star review. I’m a huge fan of CoG and the HGs as well, but I don’t think inaccurately high ratings pull in new fans. Actually, I think it has the opposite effect by leaving people feeling duped.
HGs, by their nature, are going to be hit or miss in terms of quality. I generally think the CoG owners try to set prices to reflect the quality of a given release. That’s probably the potential buyer’s biggest clue.
The very first Hosted Game was written by someone still in high-school. There’s plenty of game authors who write in English despite it not being their native language. Also writing in English is a great way to get better at it.
I’d say that the quality of Hosted Games has always been a mixed bag.
There’s demos available for most of the games for a reason.
I only give five star reviews, or I won’t review a game at all, since I think a lot of people see a rating that’s less than five, or an overall average rating for a game as almost as bad as being a 1. Actually it’s been forever since I even wrote a review of a game.
Different people like different games. Heroes Rise, for instance, had an extremely negative reception on the forums, yet it’s one of Choice of Games most popular games.
There’s a reason that Choice of Games is now requiring that Hosted Games are beta-tested on the forums and that can only help to help improve the quality of them. There’s also now a minimum length required too.
Also, if you’re buying a game on google play (I think the chrome store’s the same) I know you can get a refund within 2 hours. So you can test out games that way, and if they really are bad you can get your money back.
where was the testing requirement mentioned?
Path of light came before the requirements I think.
@FairyGodfeather I personally agree when in rating a game, it’s either 5 stars or not worth a review. I feel that you can’t improve a game via a 250 character limit, if I had the time anymore I would honestly message the author any improvements needing to be made.
I always read reviews. If there aren’t any yet, I might gamble on it if the description is well-written and interesting. I have bought a ton of great COG/HGs, and… a few that were not winners. It happens.
That’s fascinating, what was the first game in the HG category? First COG was CODragon, right? I was impressed on the “Get to know you” thread by how many teenagers are on these forums and creating good games. I don’t know how to say that in a less condescending way - that’s really not what I mean - but to see so much talent from people that might not even be out of high school is part of why these forums are so great, for bringing people together like this.
I tend not to leave negative reviews unless something really irritated me. If there are typos all over the place, that bugs me, but I’m not going to write a bad review over it. So I guess “lack of good reviews” might be more of a clue; a lot of people feel that way about criticism. But if it was great except for a minor problem, I’ll give it 4 and mention why.
Wow, really? I’ll have to do a search and see what they had to say.
Yep, first Choice of Game was Dragon. Popcorn, Soda, Murder’s the first Hosted Game.
And me too about the teenagers. I wish there’d been something like this around when I was a teen. I did my first text adventure-esque game when I was a kid in BASIC, and it was tough. Choicescript is so much better and there’s the added benefit of a community, and best yet, even as a teen you can sell your work at the end of it.
My first game was a QBasic game about a rabbit, and my second was a FlashCard game that was like a D&D module. Both were in grade school and both were terrible. (At least, I think so.) I mostly switched to fiction in high school, so it was awhile before I learned any other kind of coding.
…Er, this is getting very quickly off topic. Here we go: lower quality games are great to show the progress that writers or coders make over time, given some feedback that project could go from “good try” to “really great”, and age doesn’t determine whether you’re a good coder (but might excuse why you’re not great at something yet, if you’re say 13 and learning a new language and a new coding language.)
@Sashira
A lot of the negativity about the first Heroes Rise game arose from The Prodigal and the, ah, issues she caused for player agency within the four corners of the game. A lot of that has was remedied by the sequels which never again sniffed breaking the Author-Reader Contract the way the villain’s spiel at the end of the first game did, hence why the negativity ebbed immensely.
Also choices and consequences not being as good as they should be.
But in the early days there was a lot of negativity for some of the games anyway, particularly in terms of quality control as hosted games were more or less better games.
Zombie Exodus, Way Walkers University and Sabres were very strong early entries that garnered a lot of popularity. They were pretty much steamrolling stuff like To the city of clouds, CoZ and Heroes Rise.
Thesedays I don’t really read the feedback threads as much as I used to. So I couldn’t say if reception has changed, but I still think the quality of the official games are hit and miss. At risk of sounding old, I avoid feedback threads now as I get the feeling there’s a younger crowd, who are happy to lap up ‘awesome concepts’ but not really pay much heed to the writing itself. (They’re changing what ‘it’ was, I tell you… I used to be down with ‘it’… -_-)
I leave honest reviews, but I don’t like it when people just leave a start review with no explanation to why it’s high or low. That’s just rude to me even if the star rating is high. No reviews are better than leaving a blank review with an unexplainable star. What makes me respect the authors of some of the HG games even if their games have typos or grammar issues is that they finished the game that is a main factor
most wips here die, and even if English was never their primary native language they still gave it a shot.
The qualities of games now are a hit and miss. Some games sound awful, but then turns good. Some games sounds good then turns god awful. Nobody can really tell if the game will be a hit or not unless the game is released and people tried playing it.
For google play store I think it’s more like 15 mins to claim a refund.
I like to leave a review of what I really feel about the quality and feel for a game. Any game. Even a CoG or HoG because I feel cheated reading great 5 star reviews, paying for it, then becoming upset later that the positive reviews mislead me. I don’t trust applications that don’t have any kind of negative feedback. Those are usually the ones that I purchase on a whim then regret after the 15 minute refund time has expired.
I prefer quality. Large number of spelling errors per page really districts me from the story.
Nope
After purchasing an app or game on Google Play, you can return it within two hours for a full refund.
Learn about refunds on Google Play - Google Play Help
It’s commonly suggested on the android sites I lurk on to use this 2 hours as a method of sampling the game. stay within that 2 hour period and then just ask for a refund if you don’t like it.
Ah okay. It still happens to me with some apps. Refund button disappears after 15 minutes. Maybe i just need to update my play store.
I think it’s even longer sometimes (always?) b/c I remember once buying and installing an app and falling asleep around midnight. I woke up late-ish the next morning, regretted my purchase, and tried to get a refund despite it being past time. It worked!