Or sort by author!
“Look at other stories created by this author.”
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That would be a nice feature indeed.
It would need to cross-index between both the CoG and HG catalogs because there are authors that have titles in both.
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Ideally, but even if it just limited to HG or CoG only it is still enough for the majority of writers, and better than nothing for the others.
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The new select screen looks great and was exactly what I was personally hoping for! Awesome job on this @dfabulich, I’m excited to see the implementation of other features as well! 
I think this omnibus app could be a great move for CoG/HG and its creators!
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It seems that since I connect on here using facebook I cant retrieve any of my old purchases. It says my email address was never used for choice of games.
That doesn’t have anything to do with it. We currently don’t have the ability for people to transfer purchases into the omnibus.
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I can imagine this being pretty good and pretty bad depending on how you look at it. On one hand it’s nice to have all the stories in one app and not have a ton of icons. On the other it limits search-ability. Yet if you write a story that would typically not be searched for this only makes it more likely to be found.
Then again everyone I know buys CoG and HG titles by going on the website and looking into the sections. I don’t think I know anyone who found a game thanks to the app stores, more word of mouth. Starting with me thanks to TotalBiscuit mentioning Choice of Robots and it snowballing from there. So I’m not sure how to think of people finding these titles on their own.
Still could be nice with new releases, search by price, genre (multiple genre search would be nice), Series list perhaps? I’d imagine you could even do something along the lines of a series bundle like “Dragoon Saga includes: Sabres, Guns, Lords, Masters and Wars of Infinity. Buy the bundle for $X cheaper than buying them separately!” and so on. Could do some really, really cool things with this. Especially since you can have app notifications for new releases, maybe it being something you can toggle per genre, series, author etc.
But I’m on android so I wont see this for a while. Though honestly I don’t see why HG and CoG games need separate apps when you can just have the two in one and separate them by categories/types. Feels like a completely needless separation that’s more of an annoyance than anything from the consumer end.
If you really want to separate them you can just have the start screen be separated in half with left side being a CoG icon button and the right being HG icon button to enter their respective categories. Could look really classy, be functional, separate the titles properly and remove the need for 2 apps to do essentially the same thing.
EDIT: Quick mock up I made of what I mean with the CoG/HG divided start screen. Used star wars to illustrate cause why not?
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That’s a really cool idea!
Hosted Games and Choice of Games are actually really different from one another, they’re different companies, and we try (without much success, I admit!) to foster separate brand identities for them, and emphasize the differences where possible. I think on the forum, most folks don’t make much distinction. 
However, they have two separate developer accounts on all our platforms, and I don’t think we’ll be combining them in the future.
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Honestly I always thought of Hosted Games always being under CoG as a company. Mostly because “Hosted Games” kinda sounds like a really generic name for a standalone brand so without being under CoG it… means very little. I wonder if many people make that assumption for the same reason. Working as a brand under CoG but not really working as one on it’s own I mean.
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@Blazerules, I agree. It’s hard to argue that “Hosted Games” sounds like a unique company. The only “unifying theme” or “brand” in the name itself is that there are games…and they are hosted…by someone? Of course, any game could be potentially hosted by anyone, so really it doesn’t convey a message at all. It definitely seems more like an appendage. Whereas with CoG, that word “Choice” really drives the brand home.
I do like the flame logo. It’s very cool. I wish the name could match the logo. I know HG has lots of fans, and rebranding is probably unlikely to occur, since it’s always risky to rename something and confuse customers. But if I had a time machine, I would travel back 8 or 9 years and try to convince Jason, Dan, etc., that I am one of those friendly time travelers, not one of the evil ones, and then I would try to convince them to name the company something along the lines of “Creative Flame Games” or something with a stronger brand name.
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I’m a massive fan of all the HG titles myself, heck my favourite ever series the Dragoon Saga (Sabres and Guns of infinity) is a part of it. I spent more time on the titles in HG than I’d like to admit. Massive kudos to all the writers involved here you guys really do great work, some of you are even an inspiration to myself (Like you @Eric_Moser ) . With Cataphrak being practically a role model for myself. To me the brand makes sense, it’s an arm of CoG for anyone to publish their work under. And even that’s not 100% accurate with what it actually is since it’s not a part of CoG it seems.
My criticism with the name is well… whenever I introduce friends to my favourite titles in the HG lineup one of the things they ask is “I don’t really feel like playing multiplayer.” since as PC gamers to us “Hosted Game” just means well… you are hosting an online game. The brand doesn’t even convey that it is Interactive Fiction since games tends to be associated with well… video games. Especially on the app stores and Steam where these titles are hosted. Which just adds to confusion and a bit of misleading in my opinion.
The brand really doesn’t do the titles under it any justice. Especially as a standalone brand. I’ll agree that it is extremely unlikely that it will change due to it already being set in stone for all these years, it’s just not a good idea to change it at this point.
At worst it sounds like it has something to do with hosting servers for multiplayer games, at best it sounds like a category on a website.
These are just my own opinions, as well as those of my friends whom I have hit up on discord, on the Hosted Games brand. And why it really never struck out to myself as an independent brand on its own. Especially since the titles under HG are much better described as Interactive Fiction or Interactive Novels than games, even listed as such on multiple websites. The majority of people, especially the mainstream, don’t even consider them games. Which makes sense.
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(and @Eric_Moser) I’m for sure not defending how “Hosted Games” works as a brand! I’m just saying our users don’t seem to make much of the difference between a game we developed, paid an author to write, edited, tested, designed artwork for, and released as a Choice of Games title, versus games that are submitted to us by users with no editorial work from us on them. But we maintain that difference, and I doubt we will combine the two omnibus apps.
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It’s quite a small thing I suppose, but having different colours for the Hosted Games logo and pages might help. The CoG yellow really binds them together visually.
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Oh I can see you aren’t defending it as working (or not in this case) as a brand. I was simply hoping to give my thoughts on why you guys have difficulty with making it stand out as a brand on its own.
It reminds me of how some AAA publishers have an “Indie games” program where they do essentially what you guys do with Hosted Games. As evil and hated as EA is the “EA Originals” comes to mind with “A Way Out”. It’s clearly different, and doesn’t even go through remotely the same process as their main titles. But it’s still a part of them.
It really doesn’t help differentiate it as a brand in my mind at least with how all hosted games are well… hosted on the forums of forum.choiceofgames.com
With the choice of games website being the main, and usually only way, some of us are exposed to Hosted Games titles? Not really too surprising we’d see it as a thing under CoG.
EDIT:
You have to remember that the community at large, at least those that dedicate enough time to post and browse the forums, would no doubt be exposed to everything through CoG. They can be separate brands but as it stands they are both under the CoG website creating a very clear association in peoples minds as “Well it’s posted on the Choice of Games website. So it must be a part of Choice of Games.” Kinda hard to see it as anything else.
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‘cause CFG, Choice Frickin’ Games, just sounds awesome.
Just wanted to put this list here.
Some awesome features that can be put inside the omnibus:
- A yearly list of upcoming titles (like the one pinned at the forum).
- An exclusive page that lists all authors (and probably their bio too).
- Quick navigation of CoG Blogs, either through an in-app browser or external one.
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Links to the titles respective threads would actually be a nice feature. Especially for those who are largely unaware of the forums.
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I’m not sure if this is how other people feel, but on the topic of branding I see it like this
Choice Of Games:
Official, mainstream, reliable content and quality. More expensive, medium length. Can be kinda dull but never outright bad.
Hosted Games:
Wildcards, can be anything from bad plot and narrative to awesome all around, varying costs (that don’t always reflect quality, e.g. very good, long, cheap games), anything from realllllly short (I.e. short, replayable games) to me doing 1 playthough a day.
But the way I see it hosted games are kinda overlooked (searching Choice of Games vs hosted Games) by the typical CoG player, and are seen as a part of Choice of Games games, not as a separate thing (although most will not differences in price, quality, the other stuff, etc.)
As a side note, are the COG/HG logos vectors or the other thing (raster?)
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I’ve just had a thought how hard it would be to introduce a token system to the omnibus apps?
I mean you get a set number of tokens for buying new games, completing games maybe even leaving a review etc then allowing users to convert tokens into games?
We can’t (and don’t, and wouldn’t) compensate anyone for leaving a review, but we have considered whether to/how to implement a “gems” system. I.e., purchasable in-game tokens people can use play games. It’s in the We’ll See category of things. Right now we’re hard at work getting the HG and COG omnibus apps built up with the features everyone wants to see.
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