Polls about COG, HG, and IF games

[Sakinah_Saraswati]

I think that would be helpful. I wanna start my own wip but I always hesitate, doubting about my writing skill and grammar prob.

[AChubbyBlackCat]

I don’t really have a preference for length despite my vote. The Grim and I was an excellent story at 150k words and it didn’t need to be longer. Choice of the Dragon is still a great game and it clocks at 23,000 words.

Longer games can be nice because they imply that there’s more content but it’s like @Autumn19 said. It can either be interesting content or just filler.

[TheGhost]

Come on, it’s 700,000. Shorter games can be good, but given the choice between a short game and a long game of the same quality, I’m picking the long one every time.

[AgentV]

I prefer longer games, but a short game with replay value can still be great.

[poison_mara]

It is not. There are many times when I prefer a short, fun, more replayable game to read on the bus or train that a big one I can’t read in one go. Not all books have to be War and Peace and be enormous same not all games have to be The Witcher 3. Indies casual games have their space.

[The_Lady_Luck]

I don’t know if I count as a beginner at this point, since I have been working on my games for a few years now.
But I’d probably like to be a part of such a group, to give whatever support I can, and hopefully be motivated to work more on my WIPs.

@anon21485497

What word count range do you prefer most from these games?

I chose the 700.000+ option, but would like to point out that I prefer anything over approx 350.000 to be in parts with the ability to save at points. Also, as others pointed out, it should still be well paced without too much filler, or it’s just a shorter game with added padding.

[Lidell]

Most longer games repeat narration very often, which increases word count, so I don’t trust long games to actually be long. Not all of them do, but I’ve seen a fair share of them when code diving. It wasn’t really an option, but I think 300k+ is good enough for me.

Wanted to add that I will play shorter games, it’s just that I prefer them to be in the 300k range.

[justme]

@TheGhost

Anyone not saying over 700,000 is a flat-out liar.

Given that the first game in the CoG line with 700k+ words came out less than a week ago, I’d argue it’s more likely to be the other way round.

[The_Lady_Luck]

CoG maybe, but not HG.

[justme]

Still, that’s only a few more.

[Greyscales]

I would say that the branchiness (i.e. amount of paths/routes/outcomes available; is there a better word for it?) of the games matters more than word count. There is some correlation between the two, perhaps, but not always. For example: I consider Choice of Robots to be one such game and its word count just 300k.

[TheGhost]

While I’m not doubting the veracity of the idea that shorter, bite-sized stories are better in some cases, the original poll asked whether I’d rather have most of them at a certain word count. Overall, I would rather most of these stories be long games with lots of branches than shorter ones. While the shorter games are often great, and certainly have their place, in an ideal, preferable world, I’d like for the majority of these games to be long, well-written, and branching, thought not at the expense of shorter ones.

[poison_mara]

You wrote that anyone that chosen anything else is flat lying. The wording is making your opinion sound negative and antagonist. I disagree, I have read too much stories that would have been much better without a lot of content that is just there to fill the word account. Games should be as big as they plot demands, anything else is a bad gaming design. Choice of Dragon is a masterpiece same Gower Cakes and Ale is. Size don’t make games great.

[Szaal]

I like my games good; I think ppl often miss the most important thing.
But in any case, don’t get into a one-on-one argument, guys. Keep your cool and avoid getting the kicking boot

[AChubbyBlackCat]

To each their own and personally I don’t think word count is a “bad thing” on its own.

Where it can be a problem is when customers demand - not ask, demand - that these massive stories be longer. And personally as an aspiring author myself, it can be demoralizing at times seeing this - at times - demand for longer and longer stories.

It’s sometimes equally discouraging to see the possibility that people would write off my story because it doesn’t reach X amount of words.

@Eric_Moser said it best and I’ll quote it down below:

@Eric_Moser

On the writing side, it concerns me when potential readers’ expectations on word count seem to be rising.

Because at some point, it becomes woefully economically inefficient to write these titles, especially as there’s usually a huge increase in workload when you go from a 100k word story to a 200k word story. One may think, “Well, it’s probably double the work, right?”

And I would say, “Bare minimum. But first of all, ‘double the work’ is a helluva lot of work. 500 hours of your life just became 1000 hours. And honestly, it’s likely much more than double the work, since generally longer games result in more paths, more variables to track and account for, etc. So 500 hours probably became 1200 hours or even 1500 hours.”

And these games just don’t make enough money for the authors to have workcount expectations to rise any further. We have to look at what we earn, and divide it into an hourly wage to see if we’re really undervaluing our time.

An author of a 300,000-word game, who may have spent at least 1500 hours, and possibly more on it, will net like $1.25 per copy, even with a $7 sales price. Let’s say it sells strongly, 10,000 units in the first year, so the author nets $12,500. That same author would have need to write at least 2 more of those 300,000-word epics (in the same year!) to earn just $37,500, which in the US isn’t a high standard of living at all.

I just don’t see how these expectations are sustainable for authors. The numbers don’t work. It’s math. That author who worked 1500 hours to write that 300,000-word epic worked for $8 per hour. Let that sink in. Now that rate will increase as sales continue over the next couple of years, but will the rate ever get above $20 per hour or so?

[Eiwynn]

Please take the discussion to the relevant threads.

This thread should not be taken over in this manner.

[anon21485497]

@TheGhost
Personally, I greatly prefer below 700,000. I want to be able to finish and completely absorb an ideal playthrough for most of these games in a handful of hours to relax before bed (I restart until I like my choices because I’m a perfectionist so it can take a while). Not get trapped in reading Narnia where there’s always 5 chapters left and never an exciting finale. Setting aside an excellently written but long ass game without completing it so I can get any kind of decent sleep means I’ll be anxious to reach the ending the entire next day, and while that’s a positive note, I also don’t necessarily love that feeling all the time.

Despite not putting it as an option, the 350,000 - 600,000 range is perfect reading for me. In my experience, it’s not overwhelming, but it’s not underwhelming either. Long enough to cover all the right notes, short enough so as not to miss the forest for the trees, lose my interest and bore me straight to death.

[TheGhost]

I’m well aware that I was wrong about the overall reception to the poll, and I’ve backtracked. I suppose I was just in an aggressive writing mood earlier.

[Autumn19]

Poll seems to be doing well, just having a think about how I want to get the group off the ground, it’s there in theory, just a little unsure as this was a fairly impulsive idea. I’ll probably start a thread soon, so everyone who wants to take part can start communicating with each other and we can get started.

That’s the idea anyways.

[cup_half_empty]

Just throwing some ideas out there:

1. I think the first thing would be to come up with a syllabus. For that, I think that taking a look at how W3School organizes their tutorials could help. Obviously, ChoiceScript is not as nearly complicated as your average programming language. However, there’s a method to the madness, so to speak. A natural flow would be:

Syllabus

• General syntax
  • ChoiceScript code start with *
  • Comments *comments
  • Indentation
  • Organization
    • Scenes, labels
    • Nested vs plain code
    • Naming conventions
  • Which characters are accepted when naming variables and labels
  • *page_break and *line_break
• Data types
  • Numbers
  • Strings
  • Booleans (true or false)
• Variables
  • Declaration and assignment
  • Global vs local
  • Implicit conversion
  • Use of reference {var}
• Arithmetic operations
  • Sum
  • Subtraction
  • Multiplication
  • Division
  • Power factor
  • Modulo
  • Fairmath
• Logical operations
  • Equal to (=)
  • Different than (!=)
  • and, or, and not
  • Greater than, lesser than
  • Greater or equal to, lesser or equal to
• String manipulation
  • Concatenation
  • Transformation $!{var} and $!!{var}
  • Interpolation ${var} (printing a variable in the text)
  • Multireplace @{var option_1 | option_2}
• Functions (sub-routines)
  • *gosub
  • Passing parameters
  • Checking parameters on the other side (*params and param_count)
• Logical Flow
  • Implicit control flow vs Explicit control flow
  • *if, *elif, *else, *label, *goto, *goto_scene, etc
  • Simulating loops (advanced)
• Pseudo-arrays
  • Syntax
  • Iterating through an array
• Choices
  • Choice vs fake choice
  • Body of a choice
  • *hide_reuse, *disable_reuse, *allow_reuse, *selectable_if
  • In-line conditional: *if (condition) # Option
• Built-ins
  • round(var), *rand, length(var)
• Gamification
  • Stats
  • Achievements
  • “Delayed branching”
  • Game design (Branch & Merge, Gauntlet, Time-cave, Hub, etc)
• Other commands
  • *image, *text_input, *script, etc
• Debugging
  • Best coding practices
  • *bug
  • Clever tricks
  • Quicktest and random-test
  • Community plugins and tools
    • CSIDE
    • *sm
    • Notepad++
    • VS Code
    • etc
• Code snippets
  • Setting gender-related variables
  • Character customization with user input and confirmation
  • Verifying which variable has the highest/lowest value
  • Calculating passage of time
  • Inventory system
  • Combat systems
  • Relationship systems
  • Working with different languages
  • etc
• Version Control
  • Git or Mercurial
  • Github, Bitbucket, Gitlab, etc
• Publication
  • ChoiceScript license
    • Free for non-commercial projects
    • Publishing through Hosted Games
  • CoG’s style guide
  • Assets (image sizes)
  • Creating a social presence (“Self brand”)

2. Google Classroom for meetings. The host could share their screen as they code and explain concepts.

3. VS Code with Live Share and @Sargent’s ChoiceScript extensions. Live share allows people to code together on the same source file. The ChoiceScript plugin provides proper syntax highlighting.

4. Github for version control, project management, and file backup. Github now allows users to have unlimited private repos for free. No-one will steal your ideas. There’s literally no excuse for not using Github, except maybe for the fact that you have to learn git.

5. Notion for planning, plotting, tracking progress, organizing ideas, sharing code snippets and tutorials, and collaborating. Basically, anything. It’s free for personal use.