To echo what others have said about pitching your game to a group that might enjoy it and spread the word (eg firefighters) I’ve already been thinking about what niches would work for MoNHH.
I put a good amount of work into gender coding, so if I can keep that strong throughout the game, there are people who are dying to play more games as a character who’s trans, asexual or non-binary. My game is in the urban fantasy genre, another group that has more fans than authors working to fill the demand. I’ll also be sending out review copies to people who specifically are fans of dating sims, high school games, or monsters/one of my main monsters.
P.s. - R.O.I is not as easy to measure as “dollars spent vs. sales made.” Are you getting your game to the right audience? Your review scores will go up. Have you made people who buy your game love it, and support you, and feel good about buying it? You might not know until your download content, next installment or next game sells better. This is my theory behind paying for some great art: if I invest so much into this game that I only break even on sales, I still have something to show for it. I’ve created a group of people ready to believe in and support the sequel.
Do CoG/HG games have to have a free demo (like the first couple of chpters) if so (or not) @Sashira it would work great for your game, MoNHH, since people would like to see how the character relationships develop, like with Victoria, Artemies and the other guys ((and girls)And the 'cubbus)
I agree with miss Sashira, it’s basically a case of common sense and insight…
Like, the niche versus the sole developer dilemma is what make the Hosted games so distinct in regard to the "Choice o"f ones.
An good example is the guy that wants to make a game entirely original because that is the game he want to play, but no other developer dare to create something like it.
And the guy that want to create a game, but distinctly based on the community’s feedback on its cliches and RO dynamics.
There is no way to compare such different ways to develop a book. both have its pros and cons…
There’s discussions about that somewhere. All Hosted Games need either a public demo, or at the least a private play test, before submission to COG. The feedback helps make sure they’re in publishable shape, or close to it, by the time COG gets them (since they only provide editors for main label games.)
I had a question very early on about how much of my demo to share publicly, because I was worried that having it available for free would hurt sales. Apparently, that’s not really true. People who love your game from playing the demo are likely to buy a copy anyway, to see your final edits or just to support your work.
That helped make my decision on it. Once I HAVE a day two that has survived a small group of play testers (it is currently creeping along at a snail’s pace) everyone will be able to play it.
EDIT - Sorry, did you mean once it’s released on the app store? I don’t think so; that’s a matter of marketing, which COG has historically been very willing to listen to an author’s views about how to handle.
I think a free playable demo through, say, character creation would be a good idea to let people get an idea of how I code and write. Then I’m planning on a flat fee to unlock the entire week of gameplay, and some potential additional content in the form of more character types. If COG really thinks I should sell my game day-by-day, which is a format that encourages the “free chapter”, they’re welcome to give me their arguments. That’s not how I would prefer to handle it.
One important caveat here: commercial products are ineligible for IFComp. This wasn’t a problem for Creatures Such As We, since it was always going to be a noncommercial release, but that may not be ideal for all ChoiceScript authors. (Source for this is rule 2 of the IFComp author guidelines.)
I usually play the game for free to see first if I’m interested in it. What I look for is long stories with much detail, and choices that impact your story. Maybe some stats thrown in but not required. The story Samurai of Hyuga is a great example of what I look for in terms of crafting of the story.
@Hanon_Ondricek, this is a great suggestion! I would like to create an IFDB entry for my game, The Volunteer Firefighter, but the site asks for an IFID. Does anyone know if Hosted Games have IFIDs or is this something we need to create ourselves? (And, if so, how?)
[quote]@Hanon_Ondricek https://forum.choiceofgames.com/users/hanon_ondricek, this is a great
suggestion! I would like to create an IFDB entry for my game, The Volunteer
Firefighter, but the site asks for an IFID. Does anyone know if Hosted
Games have IFIDs or is this something we need to create ourselves? (And, if
so, how?)[/quote]
I think you can skip IFID - Twine games don’t produce one either. The
recent “Escape from the Man-Sized Cabinet” just says “unknown” in the IFID
field. If you come up with one later, IFDB pages are publicly editable.
I have found little success with promotion, other than sometimes receiving early reviews of ZE in some blogs and video game online magazines.
Paid advertising is nearly worthless as it’s impossible to measure ROI. It’s like opening a restaurant, printing paper menus, going up in a plane, and tossing the menus outside to float down. In the hundreds or thousands of dollars spent, you may get 1 sale or 100. You have no way to know.
The success of ZE is attributed largely to 3 things:
I published it early in Hosted Game’s history when few CYOA were available for iOS and Android.
It’s about zombies. Zombie stories were popular back then.
I asked people who read ZE to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, or my site. I interact with them weekly or more, which makes them more likely to buy IAP or my new games. I expect A Wise Use of Time (with its vague name) to get good sales because I have a bit of a following now. Look at Cataphrak and Lucid; people buy their games now because of the author not the title.
Just publishing a game through HG or CoG will get you sales. Spend YOUR efforts on making an error-free, grammatically correct, edited game with good choices, characters, and plot. That’s hard enough.
Promoting your firefighter CYOA on firefighter blogs and message boards is brilliant. If you have a niche game, let fans of it know about it. Otherwise, it’s a shot in the dark.
Yep, can only second what Jim said about publishing error free work that is as good as you can get it. Polished work that is hopefully enjoyed is the best promotion around as it should hopefully get people talking and do your promotion for you (to a large extent anyway).
(One thing though, and I’m not sure how CoG handles this with Hosted Games titles, is you could try giving free copies to bloggers and such. Again though, I’m not sure if CoG would allow that, though I imagine there’s a fair chance with Hosted Games essentially being self-published.)
Does this mean there should be social media for both Hosted and CoG games from the company itself? Like facebook pages, and similiar stuff to help increase the advertisement and help create a platform for the media?
There is a social media presence for the company – Choice of Games has its FB and Twitter. But you might be suggesting a page per game, to which I’d say: it’s still a very small company, without the sales volume or employee numbers to make that feasible.
