All games restrict you to some extent. Choice of Dragons restricts you to being a dragon and with that an assumption of some draconic behaviours. Choice of the Vampire you’ve got to play as a vampire.
So you need to ask yourself what are the important choices?
For me there’s two absolute musts. I want to be able to choose gender. I won’t purchase Choice games where there aren’t same-sex romances available for all and with at least the same depth as the opposite sex romances. There’s also added bonus points if the game includes a gender-neutral option. I loved that about both Choice of Dragon and Echo Bazaar.
I’m trying to remember whose game started with “What gender do you identify as?” I liked that as well. I do tend to dislike when I’m specifically asked my sexuality, genders are flipped on NPCs as appropriate and bisexuality isn’t even considered. I prefer when the relationships just tend to flow naturally from the storyline.
My favourite romance from any of the Choice Games is in Choice of Broadsides, which I know wasn’t even a romance game. But it was fantastic to finally get an equal as a partner, one who was far more compelling than any of the other options provided.
I’m getting sidetracked I admit. I prefer if games don’t assume my sexuality. I get so frustrated if I’m playing a game as a man and I’m forced into swooning over the Princess when really I have my eye on my best friend. Or if I’m playing as a woman and she’s going gooey eyed over every single man that comes along needing them to save her.
Hmm considering your question. I, for one, found the whole “what do you look like” questions utterly pointless in Choice Games. It didn’t help me immerse myself in the game at all. For the dragon it was rather amusing, but working out my eye and hair colour, I couldn’t care less, especially since more often than not the game will automatically assume that I’m caucasian. So it’s offering choice, but a limited one that can alienate me with what it’s not offering.
People with long hair can tie their hair back. In Elizabeth Moon’s Deed of Paksenarrion series the main heroine has extremely long blonde hair, but she ties it up when she’s fighting and uses it to cushion her helmet. She actually misses the extra padding when she loses her hair. I’m not sure how accurate that is.
About the lock of hair, I think the sentence works fine with them just brushing away a lock of your hair, no need to mention colour, of course if you’ve been imagining your character as bald then there might be issues. I think if I’m bothered about my character’s appearance though I’d be playing a game with pictures.
@FairyGodfeather
"For me there’s two absolute musts. I want to be able to choose gender. I won’t purchase Choice games where there aren’t same-sex romances available for all and with at least the same depth as the opposite sex romances. "
So, if I made a game where you could only play Julius Caesar you would only play it if you can also play lesbian Julia Caesar?
I didn’t know that gender and sexuality were that important for absolutely EVERY story…
Who says the game assumes your sexuality? Does it also asume that you are for example a vampire, a pirate, a ninja…
I think you are none of them - but your character is. That’s part of the story.
I would like to see a game about a homosexual superhero that just says:
“This is a game about a gay superhero. He is strong, he is tough, he’s completely awesome - and he will kiss his boyfriend because he loves him. Get over your homophobia or don’t. That’s part of my game.”
I didn’t see a single game on CoG that broached homosexuality. I did only see games that didn’t even mention that it exists or that just said “who cares - all NPCs’ sexuality will just copy yours… do whatever you want”.
I’m not my character. My sexuality has nothing to do with that of my character and neither the gender.
The game gives me the opportunity to play a lesbian? Ok.
But then please give me a heart-breaking lesbian relationship… and not one of those 1000 “you are a (choose gender) called (choose name) with (choose haircolor) hair and are in love with a wonderful (choose gender)…”-stories.
Let’s be honest: He/she would treat you exactly the same way if you had chosen yourself to be a omnisexual pink elefant and him/her being a killer-robot-ninja pirate from outer space.
That’s not equality, that’s not sexual freedom. That’s just lame.
Well, I see your point somewhat loelet. But if romance isn’t a central theme in the game then I don’t think it’s necessary for an author to put so much into defining differences between a character being gay or straight for you besides basic differences. It’s just too much effort to do that for every option and in the end I think it’s just enough to make anyone availible. But if the author wants to add that to their game then so be it.
I do agree on the lack of depth in homosexual relationships, though. I just think that because straight is the norm authors dont bother.
@loelet you are quiet hardcore it’s really difficult trying to do sexuality differ between sex option and is a lot of work but is clearly possible do it that way .
I hate gender closed but I understand it in certain games vendetta and sables of infinity is compressible. But about Julius Caesar her wife and her lover are so interesting like him just saying :-)).
why bother me is if gender closed always have to be a boy and no problem but if is a girl boys don’t want to play and this is stupid
Personally, I avoided this whole romance debate by not including romance in SoI at all. Romance and romantic relationships may be an unavoidable part of life, but then again, so is personal hygiene, which may be less magical but is no less ubiquitous. If I see a reason to include a romance in a story, either to build tension or to allow the player in a self-insert game to live vicariously, I’ll do it. If it doesn’t serve any purpose save to pad out the story, or is too restrictive for the character, I won’t.
Also, don’t we have a thread for these kinds of discussions?
Oops sorry didn’t mean to sidetrack this thread. Can someone post me a link to the other thread and I’ll post there. I wrote up a spammy reply but don’t want to detract any more from Emilisa’s original question.
Okay to answer the question. I prefer playing Choice games with ‘you.’ And as for the main character please feel free to restrict away. You might just end up writing for a niche, but hey there’s already a whole pile of niche games here. Do what works for you.
Re: Romance options - Romance can definitely be a lot of work, but I love having them in Choice games, so I could not leave them out here in mine. In my game, there are four romance options, two males and two females. Two of them are bisexual. If you are playing a lesbian or gay character, that does unfortunately only leave you with one option for romance but all romance characters are an integral part of the story. Two more options wouldn’t really fit and would end up feeling lame compared to the other characters.
There is no strict question that defines your sexuality in Perils. In this game, you either like a character, or you don’t. If they make your heart skip a beat, that’s cool. Whether or not the person you like swings that way is up to them.
The only reason for me to consider adding appearance details was to add reactions by other characters to it. But if I were going to do that, an interesting facial feature or scar would be better than just…hair and eye color. We’ll see. That’s definitely not a hill I’m dying on for the game–I have plenty I’m ambitiously coding already haha.
I think a scar would be great, especially a scar which you can pick up during gameplay. Or have an event turn your hair white. Or burn your eyebrows off in the fire you just dived into in order to save the kittens. Things that happen to you which people can then react to. Things like asking where you got the scar and being able to regale the person with the story of your first fight, which you actually RPed out and took a wound in.
I think Romance Options are great. It’s one of the strengths of Choice of Games, that it allows for them, that it encourages people who want to write that sort of game do so.
I’m definitely trying to steer away from writing a romance game. Trying to find a good balance of both action and romance, and of course, making sure that if you don’t want to romance anybody, you don’t have to.
I am definitely planning on putting up a demo of Perils as soon as I finish coding the intro, which contains the three major background choices that will be referenced throughout the entire game.
I am trying to balance my need for feedback and my need to at least keep some spoilers secret. Also, talking to everybody on the forums is a powerful source of motivation for me to keep writing. To those authors that have WIPs up, is there a certain point that you stop uploading your entire game, or do you request feedback throughout?
I suppose that is a completely subjective question, as it must be different for everyone. But do you think if I end up putting a completed game up here, that in the end (if I flatter myself to think I could actually make a bit of money) that it would hurt the sales? If you could play an entire game for free, what is the incentive to actually purchase it, beyond supporting the author? The latter is something that I myself have always subscribed to, but not everyone does.
I debated on asking this question for a while, but its something that has always lingered in my mind while reading the forums and thinking about writing a game. I am not trying to be offensive, but as my teacher said in school, if you want to know something, ask.
As I understand it, the forum is only a small share of the potential audience. So you can certainly beta-test it by Dropbox and then sell the full game later.
@Emelisa
You can always choose to continue testing in a closed beta once you get enough general feedback to know which direction you should be going in. That way only a few people selected by yourself would have access to the completed game.
If you read the comments in the WIP threads, I would guess there are no more than 100 people (for the very large and very VERY popular WIPs) who play it before it gets published. If you sold it for 2$, of which CoG would pay you 25%, i.e. 0,50$ that would mean a total “loss” of 50$.
50$ you could spend on… hmmm… one paid beta-tester for about 5 hours?
I like it when I see that someone thinks about the marketing aspects of making a game - sounds like you were target-oriented and that increases the chance that you will finish the game one day - but if you want to earn money you need a good product and advertisment. By offering a free beta of your game you get both for free.
…and make some kids happy who like CoG but don’t get enough pocket money.
So, I think I would make an open beta until the end.
Hey, all those readers supported you from the first day until you finished the project - for free. And you think about how you could get them to pay you 0,50$?
well I never think in gain money from my game I don’t think worth expend money so yeah I agree with loelet I will open all game to testing I pay for all games I testing to support this page so for me is the same
I’m not trying to insult people on the forum, so I’m hoping that it doesn’t and hasn’t come off that way here. If it has, my sincere apologies.
I have wanted to be a published writer my entire life, and I am hoping to realize that dream within the next couple of years. Since my husband and I moved back to my home town, we both made the decision to work with his income and give me a chance to realize my dream.
I am having a blast making this game, and it’s set in a world I am creating for a set of fantasy novels. My hopes when creating this were many, some of which included creating a fan base (and also to see if my idea was interesting enough to gain said fan base). Also, creating branching paths is good practice in creating any story, including video games. My husband is a software engineer. If we had a graphic artist, there is a possibility far in the future that we could create a game of our own.
Making money (if any, I’m not expecting nor relying on it) is off in the mists of the future for this game. The same would go for my novel, when I finish it, so right now, this begins and most likely ends as a labor of love. That said, making money (any amount) on this game would go far and away for justifying and buoying our confidence that this is heading down the right path for us. And so, my question forms from me wanting to make sure that I don’t make a mistake right here, starting out, that I may regret later. I’m new to this kind of thing.
@Ioelet thanks for giving me some clarity with the number crunching. I’ve never done this before and it helps.
I appreciate everyone’s advice so far in this thread.
@Emelisa
"I have wanted to be a published writer my entire life, and I am hoping to realize that dream within the next couple of years. Since my husband and I moved back to my home town, we both made the decision to work with his income and give me a chance to realize my dream. "
Not very unrealistic… The creator of the hosted game WayWalkers has signed a contract for the first book as far as I know.
@Emelisa, look forward very much to reading your work, and good luck with living the dream! Yes, if the WayWalkers experience is any indication, you can add to your fan base by posting your story here.
In my spare time, I’m writing my own “labor of love” for CoG, which should eventually get up on the mainpage (working title: Choice of Rebels). I’m planning to post it here when it’s half-finished, and a few times thereafter before beta testing. While I expect that will cost me a few paying customers – I usually don’t buy games I’ve beta tested, myself – I think the gain from the independent reviews will be more than worth it! We’ve seen quite a few games come out lately that suffered bad reviews on the forums (e.g. Heroes Rise), sometimes for things that could have been corrected if they’d been caught at an earlier stage of writing.
So I don’t think you’ll have any reason to regret posting your game here, especially the early chapters. You might keep an eye on the Zombie Exodus threads to see how @JimD does it – beta testing things a chapter or two at a time, keeping the fans very engaged while still making sure they have incentives to buy the final version.
To those authors that have WIPs up, is there a certain point that you stop uploading your entire game, or do you request feedback throughout?