Metropia [WIP]

Hosted Games Works In Progress
1

I’m working on a story for my schoolproject, which is at the moment called “Metropia” (altough if I find a better title, I will swap it). The story is based around you, trying to survive in an apocalyptic-urban enviroment, and my goal is to encourage younger generations (primarily teenagers) to read more fictional literature.

The length of the story is about 10, 000 words each chapter, and I am currently aiming towards 2-3 chatpers (First chapter is done, and second chapter is half-done). In the end of the story, there will be a short analyze on the readers personality, morals, and how well the reader would manage in an actual acolyptic enviroment. It might sound a bit dull at first sight, but if everything turns out as planned, I think it would be an interesting way to end the story.

Altough, I have some questions regarding how CoG handles the games they recieve:

a) How long does it take, on an avarage, for a story that is around 20, 000 - 30, 000 words, to be made into a working download-able app on Andriods/Apples (count starting from the day I send in the story)? My schoolwork is supposed to be done in the beginning of Mars, and I need to have the time it takes for the story to hit phones into my calculations.

b) Will the application be free?

c) Will I be able to add new chapter to the story after the story have become an app?

d) Is there anything else I should know before and after I have submited my story to CoG?

On an unrelated note: I will ask all readers of the story to answer a short survey after they have read the story. The survey will be about how much time they spend reading fiction, and if they would be interested in more fiction-stories like the games CoG is offering. Just giving a heads up about it.

Ps. Be warned! English is not my native language, and grammar misstakes are bound to happen!

2

Might add that this will be the first time I be submitting a story to CoG.

3

Sounds really interesting i really want to read it :smiley:

4

I’d love ta grammar/spelling-check, and this sounds really good.

5

Mars???
also sounds good, but you will have to talk to @jasonstevanhill about this

6

Probably means march or may, depending on how long you spend coding/writing a week, I’m positive you will meet either of those deadlines.

7

Sounds interesting :slight_smile:

8

I know that they have games for free that you can play through the browser, even with a phone. For an actual app I don’t think I’ve ever seen one that was free, although some are cheap (0.99). You might repost this question in the CoG business model thread.

9

WiReDcHiMpAnZeE - I mean march, sorry :). And okay, thanks for the tip, I will contact Jasonstevanhill
Bagelthief - Well, sure! As mentioned, I got the first chapter ready, so should I send the textdocument to an e-mail address or how should I do?
Fantom - That’s weird, because it was through a free app on android market I first heard about CoG (I think it was “Choice of the vampires”).
The rest of you - It is nice with the encouragement, just don’t get your hopes up too high :slight_smile: It is only a mere schoolproject after all, and we all know that working under a deadline makes you cut corners :confused:

10

And I might add that I’m aiming at 2-3 chapters at release, just to make up with the deadline, but later expand it to at least 5 chapters, because that was the original plan.

11

Check out this page for what to do about submitting a game.
(http://www.choiceofgames.com/looking-for-writers/)

As for more detailed/other info @JimD or @AllenGies (off the top of my head) are probably the best people to answer that. They also have an email specifically for questions about submissions (on the above page). Also, Jason probably won’t answer for a while as he’s off on a business trip.

As for C) The answer is yes. Don’t worry about the technical side of that too much at the moment if you’re on a deadline. That can always be taken care of later.

12

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that I don’t think they’ll allow you to distribute the app freely (now they no longer use external advertising). It takes them time to package the app, submit it to android and deal with bugs and updates etc - To cover the time costs, naturally they’ll probably insist you charge some small fee for it - and take a majority percentage for themselves (as outlined on the page Reaperoa linked).

You might be allowed to distribute the first chapter for free, but somewhere in your game you’ll need to be producing revenue - else there’s no gain for CoG.

13

@SwedishDude, @jasonstevanhill is the creator of CoV and a founder of this site. Also that is how i found CoG, on my tablet it was a free app, along with others. Also, sadly, jason is, as @Reaperoa stated, away for the next week, @dfabulich maybe?

14

IIRC Dan (dfabulich) handles the technical side and Jason handles the legal/financial side.

@CJW Sons of the Cherry and Apex Patrol were just released and are free IIRC.

15

@Reaperoa , Both of those are titles by returning authors (not their first published game here) - I’m not sure if that has anything to do with it?

I could be wrong, I just assumed that CoG would require some kind of compensation for the time it takes to package and publish the game as an app, as it all adds up after all.

16

IDK, are they paid for in the various app stores? I just know that they are (at least) free on the site.

17

Okay, an E-mail have been sent to submissions at choiceofgames dot com as the link provided by @Reaperoa suggested. Do you guys think it will be enough, or should I contact an admin more directly?

And I double-checked today if the CoG apps is still free on Android, and indeed they still are. Hopefully they continue creating the “Hosted games” for free, since I would get more readers (which in turn hopefully leads to more answering the survey) that way.

18

That’s pretty much all there is to do. Jason is away at the moment, otherwise he’d have probably already come by to answer, so unless Jim/someone else you already has posted their game stops by, that’s it.

Also, please post emails as I’ve changed them to in your post to reduce spam-bots from picking them up. (That’s a good habit to have just about ever where.)

As for the concept of a survey, I’m not quite sure how that will work out. The best bet (IMO) is sending them to another site for it. Have to talk to Jason about that one too.

19

@Reaperoa You mean I should not post emails because spam-bots or do you mean I should post my own email?

Okay, I guess I have to wait for Jason to get back. Do you perhaps know when he will return?

20

Two weeks
http://www.choiceofgames.com/forum/discussion/952/behave-yourselves…