I prefer the as you go approach personally as due to my relative newbieness in writing an IF, getting feedback on whether there is or isn’t enough choices, the writing style is good or not or if I need to adjust something. It’s easier to shift gears early on than be bombarded with those complaints when you’re a step away from finishing and having a huge sudden workload.
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Being like I am one of the biggest failures in this community over more than a decade can Show with my own scars the problem of both choices.
Both are wrong and both ended up in a massive amount of burning you have ever seen. In my case two years without writing. I have canned entire games of what is now medium sized.
If someone ia searching for Yay, this is the formula don’t.
I mean if you are popular, and your game is easy profitable with all fans want go demo as soon as possible.
You are new, has no media and your game is not a trendy romance. It doesn’t matter. Nobody will care and you will be happy if you get five fans and or testers.
I would die for those five fans, by the way.
My message was not for you who knows as well as me the darkness of the wips and forum.
My message goes for the lurkers or people wondering with a tinted glass image of glamour.
This is popularity warzone and new product chances are well lottery percentages.
If you do this for popularity hire a good artist and make a very detailed description and images or animations of ROs Write a long romance despcription using anime tropes
Pull a big long name with as many buzzing words of trends you can. And a demo who end up in a cliffhanger after seeing first time main sexy RO character.
It is still lotto chance but something more in bingo range.
Am I bitter and burned? Hell yes!
But sometimes someone has to comment what normally people just hides
Updating wips is the way to go since you can implement things you mightve never thought of or paths or somethings like that.
An ongoing WIP thread has the potential to connect with people over time if the writer continues to work on it, whereas unless a full game catches players’ imaginations the way Dragon of Steelthorne did, an identical complete game may not. There is also more opportunity and ease for a writer to course-correct if they’re getting feedback along the way, because it’s a smaller amount of text to change.
It’s a bit of a juggling act though, because I’ve seen some players say they don’t want to play a WIP unless it’s long, but also I’ve seen some say they prefer playing WIPs earlier in development because there’s more chance that their feedback will be taken on.
I personally did the standard closed CoG beta test without a WIP thread for my first game, but have done ongoing WIP threads for the ones after that. Correlation isn’t causation and there are many other factors, but the ones I had threads for have been more commercially successful. More concretely, I preferred doing WIP threads and getting early feedback because of it being a lot easier to make changes at that stage. It also gives a clearer perspective once it’s time to playtest the entire game.
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Hey all, just wondering on writer’s thoughts on this one. What do you think are the pros and cons of leaving games until they’re pretty much done before releasing them into the wild on the forums? Particularly for games that aren’t going to get much discussion on the boards anyway. (Or maybe even for those which might.) I’ve seen a few finished/mostly finished games go up for the pre-req 1 month or so I think it is before they can be submitted to HG. And I’ve seen a few more authors talk about games they have in small private betas for much of their development. Anyone feel like discussing why they chose to do it that way? Any upsides? Downsides?
Good question and great topic. Lots of wonderful replies on here.
For my own take, here’s my breakdown:
Pros:
-Feedback
-Bug spotting / grammar and spelling feedback / etc.
-Exposure
Cons:
-Loss of Energy
-Increased programming problems (i.e. fear of creating new variables as those break tester’s games)
-Niche feedback
-Chore mentality
-Working against creative energy
Simply put, feedback is huge. I’ve at least had a couple times where what should have been obvious to me (such as player’s wanting more romance in a game) pointed out thanks to polls and other feedback. This is a huge plus; so one writes a game people will actually want to play vs something that will ultimately risk being released and be poorly received.
Bug spotting is also great - even with randomtest and the other tools provided, a lot slips between the cracks. Players will notice things I haven’t and point them out, giving me a chance to fix them.
And lastly, and probably most important, is exposure. For myself, in an almost religious sense, I feel like writing wants to be read . . . granted I probably don’t gain much more exposure than I would by participating in more writing groups or creative writing classes, but real people are really reading my writing . . . hundreds actually, which, as an amateur writer, is just amazing. Now, as a counterpoint, one would argue that by posting on dashingdon or somewhere else that is easily noticeable and accessible one might have just as much exposure, however, the downside to that is one doesn’t know if that is the case - which is a double-edged sword, of course, which brings on some of the cons and in particular the matter of writing energy.
Probably the biggest con, and I think I see that from other replies, is the risk of loss of energy resulting in abandoned or stilted projects. Before I delve into this, a huge thanks to everyone that has read / played one of my games - truly means the world. That said, seeing a low approval rating or getting snarky responses (which blessedly has been very rare on the forum) can bleed off energy like crazy. Yes, makes a creator wonder why they bother. This con is very similar to why some writers recommend not taking part in writing critique groups (such as Orson Scott Card), that it’s just a great way to lose all hope and enegy for writing. Some of the best writers I have known have forsaken all writing groups and just concentrated on doing their writing, which works best with the number one writing tip nearly universally recommended, which is to shut up and write. So, in summation of this con point, what is true for linear fiction, is likely true for IF as well.
One of my personal and biggest cons is the problem with variables . . . namely, I need to keep creating new ones, and each time I do, I am inevitably dooming all of my players games. Which really sucks - I know from the reverse end of that process, that if you are truly invested in a game, your prot, and their world, each time a game is irredeemably destroyed by crashes due to new variables being added on, its like the death of a universe. To get around this, I try to work ahead, create tons of extra variables, however, these variables end up with poor names that make them confusing and harder to use, leading to more bugs. If i had just waited to release the game until it was further along, all of that might be avoided. So, yup, that’s a huge problem.
Lastly, and I think rather apropos to any forum, is that you will get niche responses. While these responses are still incredibly valid and something I cherish as legit feedback, getting a smaller sample size for responses and a skewed sample can result in shaping a game into something that might be more well received for a small community yet risk being as well received for a larger community.
Lastly, on the con side, as someone who is probably not to great at marketing and not wonderful at generating community response and feedback, yes, ultimately I have to keep posting to keep my threads alive; after a while, it does kind of feel like a chore. It once more bleeds off energy, slowing down a project, or even risking the project’s completion itself. If I had magical powers over the forum, and I could do one thing with a snap, it would be to nuke the 60 day rule on postings, as while one can understand the original intend, to actualize the forward focused paradigm of COG, but I just don’t think any WIP that someone has soaked several hundred thousand words into and countless hours creating is really a junk WIP, and it seems kind of draconian to insist on the constant need for updates to keep a thread alive. Hope that isn’t offensive to anyone, but I guess that’s my hot take for the day, and I doubt I’m the only one who feels that way.
In any event, I’ve actually been thinking on this matter for a while, due to the last con - inevitably, in keeping with the forward focused paradigm, one makes various plans for one’s project and posts about it . . . which is great, one wants to get the work done . . . but eventually one’s energy shifts, and if you’ve posted about getting X done by Time T, then one will really try to do that, often at the sacrifice of other projects and writings that might be more fulfilling energy wise.
I’ll probably keep posting to the forums in the near term, but I have considered discontinuing it. Long ago, way way back in the day, games were only released when completed. Then, probably in the early 2000’s I think, the methodology changed . . . which is good and bad. From a player stand point, one gets to play a lot more games, get exposed to more creative designs, but one also ends up playing a lot of games that ultimately will never be completed, or one will play a game that is so changed by the end of the creative process that it really is a completely different game by the end.
I don’t think there is a right or wrong answer to all this, though certainly lots to think about . . .
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This is why I want to have my games fully planned before starting a WIP thread.
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Good point LiliArch, and I think that is a solid recommendation for being a planner rather than a pantser. Being a pantser is tons harder for IF.
Amusingly, I am a pantser. My method is thus pantsing my plan. 
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Hah, obviously same, though I need to work more on hybridizing. I know I read somewhere that most pantsers are probably in between the two methodologies. For myself, I think my main take away is that I need to create more variables than I would ever think I would need and then create even more.
Something I have observed time and time again, something that utterly fascinates me, is that people will generate their own version of a game well before the content they’re basing their visions off of gets introduced. I’ve seen several authors off-handedly mention a new character or RO they’re thinking of bringing in to their work, and that character, usually no more than a name and a sentence of description, if even, becomes a certain contingents favorite character before they even exist. I had a wild sensation when my own Diana was brought up as a “Hawkins-like” in a thread I had nothing to do with. She’s someone who appears in the first half of the prologue and then dips, who is clearly affecting her personality for the MCs benefit… and she’s my most popular RO, easily. Just off the hypothetical promise of a mean lady at some point in the future.
All this to say, WiP threads are excellent for generating hype, so long as you give even crumbs to latch onto, but they can create a very fickle audience. An audience that, if I’m being completely honest, is usually more interested in memeing about their favorite RO or discussing esoterica than providing actionable feedback. That’s not to disparage my own lovely followers, but it is a trend I’ve seen there and among other WIP threads. If you think you can handle it, it can be a good source of motivation and extra readers, but it can also add more than a little stress.
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I think one of the dangers of if you do manage to get a popular game is actually increased scope creep and derailment. I did actually have a somewhat read WIP at one stage, and I kind of ended up writing myself into a bit of a corner as I started allowing characters that shouldn’t have been ROs to be ROs due to popular demand (and you want to please your audience.) Problem is that caused problems for events I had planned later in the game. I think I’ve hopefully worked out how to resolve it so that game is on my list to be completed, but I do think that is possibly the flip side there as a downside of popular games given there is a very strong focus on getting games to be romance focused even when they’re not originally that way. You know, fair enough people want what they want to read, and most writers want people to enjoy what they’re reading so will try to accomodate that as much as possible, but that balance between making the story into something others want and being able to adapt the story plan enough to account for it can be tricky. It’s another one that comes under of how much do you write on a game before you release it as a WIP?
*temp is your friend!
I’ve been using it more and more for variables that I only need for a single scene. In saying that phantasmagoria already has over 200 variables not including all the ones I’ve just *temp’ed in and it’s not finished. It’s crazy how many some games end up needed to function properly.
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This! When sketching out a scene, I list out the possible ways the scene can end, make those perm variables, then make everything else within the scene (that isn’t carried forwards from a previous scene) temps. If it needs to become permanent I can make that happen, but temps will keep your startup screen so much cleaner.
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Thinking on in general adding more holder variables to transfer over long needed improptu temps . . . think the next time I start a game I’ll just add in a billion of those to begin with.
As someone who has a WIP thread with low traffic. I think it’s still important to put your work out there. The smallest amount of feedback is very helpful to the writing process in general. And constantly updating and adding feedback to your work from the few who did take the time to read, and offer feedback it is the most important. Because those are the people who are most likely to come back, and people like them are going to be your target audience.
Every book can’t be a popular book. And I think anyone who begins writing first goal should be, to enjoy what they are writing. Because even if a small portion of people finds it interesting, you’ll still have that drive to continue your story. And with more time working on your story, comes more opportunity for the story to become better.
Anyway, for me personally. There’s just not enough stories in the genre I’m writing so I decided to make my own. It’s more for me, than anyone else. So I think I have more of a luxury to not get discouraged. Because I know the genre wasn’t popular. But for someone who’s writing something like fantasy, which is very popular. I think they should just continue to up date their stories, and focus on fostering the small audience of people who do enjoy what they are writing.
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As a reader who doesn’t write, I think its important that the writer enjoys what they are doing, because that comes through to the reader, and is more likely to attract the attention of someone who may not be very enthusiastic about your theme to start with. Its very easy to pick up on something not being right, even if one can’t put their finger on it. To use those very overworked descriptions, its all about the passion, the sincerity, and authenticity of the work. If your heart is not in it, the reader’s attention won’t be either.
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