Platinum Package
Platinum Package is a 500,000-word contemporary drama by Emily Short, with additional content by Hannah Powell-Smith
As an employee of Platinum Concierge, it’s your job to find the unfindable and do the impossible for the world’s wealthiest people. Charter a helicopter on fifteen minutes’ notice to bypass LA rush-hour traffic? Transport a priceless emerald-and-diamond necklace across three continents? Arrange a candlelit dinner in a cave with waiters that rappel down the walls? All in a day’s work. You have your pulse on every brand, trend, and connection of the still-new 21st century.
But you also get to see the darkness behind the glitter: the excess, the waste, the callousness of the overly wealthy.
As your slate of clients grows, you’ll need to bring every bit of professional skill that you’ve got. When clients’ requests take you close to the edge of legality - and sometimes, over it - will you grant their wishes no matter what? Will you try to convince them to walk a different path? Will you join them for the ride, basking in the luxury of their lifestyle - and possibly even becoming fabulously wealthy yourself? Will you help your fellow concierges rise along with you, or will you betray and undermine them at every turn?
Romance a rebellious trust-funder (whose mom just happens to be one of your most high-value clients), an idealistic journalist, an ambitious co-worker, a visionary and whimsical tech billionaire - or even your suave and experienced boss.
How far will you go to help your clients? How close will you get to them before your judgment starts to cloud? How high will you climb in your own search for wealth and power? Remember, it’s your job to pull out all the stops and give every client the perfect Platinum Package.
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Directions for beta testing:
Email us, beta AT choiceofgames for access.
DO NOT POST ASKING WHAT THE BETA EMAIL ADDRESS IS. The first test to becoming a beta tester is inferring what it is based on how we describe it above.
Do not send DMs/PMs through the forum mail system, Discord, text message, carrier pigeon, or any other method than email.
When you send your EMAIL, include:
- the game you want to test in the Subject line of the email.
- your forum-name
- your real name (first and last).
Please indicate if your family/surname comes first as well. Beta testers’ names are listed in the game’s credits, which are accessed with the “About” link you’ll see within the game. If you don’t want to appear in the credits, or you want to be credited under a name other than your real one, please let us know.
Do not email us multiple times about joining a beta. If you don’t email us as soon as we post a beta, you go into a queue. As we post new drafts, we admit more people from the queue. Eventually, we will get to you. Some beta processes last longer than others, and it may take up to a few weeks to reach the front of the queue.
When you have been admitted to the beta, we will send you a link, a username, and a password as a reply to your email.
Please read the Beta Testers FAQ if you have more questions: Beta Testing FAQs - Please Read Before Applying!
When you have feedback to submit:
- Return feedback as part of the same email thread where you were admitted. Sending your feedback to beta@choiceofgames is the best way to make sure your comments are seen as soon as possible.
- Please send screenshots or copy/pasted quotes whenever you can; it helps us track down whatever observation you’re making. In particular, the author may see things that you don’t, and/or the screenshot may contain more information than you realize.
- If you’re submitting feedback using the Bug/Submit button in the game, make sure you include your handle/name in the body of the email. The Submit button obscures your email address, and I can’t give you credit for feedback if I don’t know who you are.
A few more notes:
- You can only test one game at a time. If you are already testing one game, send in feedback on that game before you apply to another. If you apply for multiple games at the same time, you will likely be admitted first to whichever game has testing slots open up first, and we won’t be able to admit you to the other one until you send in your comments for that one. (From an admin standpoint, it’s easiest if you don’t apply to more than one game at once – applying to multiple games makes it more likely that we’ll miss admitting you to one of them.)
- If you’re admitted as a tester but realize you won’t be able to send in feedback for that game, please let us know! You won’t be penalized in any way - we’ll just take you off the list of testers for that game. But if you sign up to test a game and don’t send comments or withdraw, it will affect your chances of being admitted to future betas.
- There’s no standard length of time for a beta testing period to last, and we usually don’t know exactly how long a game will be in beta when it opens. The best way to know how long a beta will be open is to follow the thread for updates.
- It’s fine to send multiple feedback emails, but if you have a lot of quick comments, it’s easier to keep track of them if you bundle them into one email.
Tips on How to Give Feedback
We’re looking for “high level” and “low level” feedback. Not mid-level feedback.
Low-level = typos and continuity errors. A continuity error is when a character’s gender flips, or someone comes back from the dead, or you run into a plotline that just doesn’t make sense (because it’s probably a coding error). For these low-level issues, screenshots are very helpful. If you see a problem, take a screenshot, or copy and paste the text that is in error, and email that.
“High level” feedback has to do with things like plot, pacing, and characters. “Scene A didn’t work for me because x, y, and z,” is useful feedback. “B character was entirely unsympathetic, because u, w, and v,” is also useful feedback.
“Mid-level” feedback describes things like grammar, style, word choice, or the use of commas. As mentioned above, we do not want mid-level feedback. In particular, DO NOT WRITE TO ME ABOUT COMMAS.
Be SPECIFIC in your feedback. General comments like “I had a great time and saw only a few spelling errors,” is not useful feedback. In fact, it’s the sort of thing that results in you not being given access to future betas.
Some examples of useful feedback:
- In Choice of the Dragon, you get to choose what type of wings you have: leather or scaled. Someone wrote in and asked about having feathered wings. Great suggestion! Done!
- In “The Eagle’s Heir,” someone asked about Eugenie. They said that the romance moved too quickly–because she only appeared in the last third of the game–and wished they could have had an opportunity to meet her earlier. So the authors added an opportunity to meet her and start the romance earlier in the game (in a scene that already existed).
- In “Demon Mark: A Russian Saga” several people commented on how the PC’s parents were unsympathetic, so the authors added a choice or two to deepen the relationship with the parents in the first chapter, to help better establish their characters.
- Pointing out a specific choice and saying, “this is who I imagined my character was at this particular moment, and none of these options seemed right for me. I would have liked an option to do X instead,” is also really helpful feedback.
- If you choose an option and then the results of that option don’t make sense. Like, if you thought an option might test one stat, but it seems to have tested a different one.