Yes I look at length of playthrough. I don’t know how many words per run tin star is but thats the kind of length I enjoy for IF.
I think Unnatural could have done with being a bit longer but you’re spreading it across more than one game so I think when you finish the whole run it shouldn’t be too bad.
As I said in another thread though - I don’t necessarily re-play for variation but to enjoy the same path more than once.
Im of the opinion to some people it’s the length of the playthrough that they look at almost as if they don’t understand the beauty is in replaying them making different choices.
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Yeah: as we know from this thread,
How many times do you play through a CS game?[quote=“Nocturnal_Stillness, post:20, topic:22609”]
some people don’t want to play a game more than once: that’s how they like to experience this kind of writing, and that’s good, too. But 45k-70k per playthrough gets “too short” comments? That probably just means your game is well written and you left them wanting more. Tin Star has 80k words per playthrough. We can’t all write Tin Star-length games, and more to the point, if you are writing a Choice Of label game, you wouldn’t want to.
To you I say, if writing is your passion, and in that you’re creating a HG, write the very best creation that you can. I’m personally loving what you’ve got so far, and always amazed at the progress you make on it (how do you do it, seriously, you’re like a machiiiine!) - so whether it becomes longer or gets capped off… I guess I’m on board already either way. But I’d like to see the end product be the best you can produce. Like how I want to make Monsters the best I can produce, someday, even though I’m certain that it will be one massive project likely to be over a million words when finished. It’s already at about 450k (not even joking), and I haven’t yet finished chapter 2, of 10. But, a lot of that is poor coding, I’ll admit- *line_break usage and copy/pasted sections. It’s probably still about 300k though. To me, whether it produces more money because of its size or not is secondary to producing something considered to be superb quality. (Of course I’ll need to do a heckalot of testing and editing to make sure it all checks out) But in that case, it’s more about the passion than the money. Even though I’m incentivised by money, in tandem with my competitive streak it’s why I keep entering all the CS writing contests that come up. But yes- I want your game to be something that meets -your- standards. Because you seem to have the same sort of inner fire for your own story as I do for mine. I fully believe Monsters may be able to have a sequel made for it someday. But with what I want to do, I think it would be an injustice to break the game I’m writing up.
I do understand the incentive for more, shorter stories… for a series I think it works much better than for a standalone, but I think it’s the fantasy novel reader in me who deeply appreciates longer read-throughs on stories. But for a masterpiece- a work of passion intended to be the best story/game possible rather than the best selling (even if the latter follows the prior), don’t sell short on putting any work into it which you feel would improve it. I personally love playing through longer games better… but I still buy shorter games, too. I’m a fan of Cataphract’s games, and JimD’s games- because they’re -good-. They’re not getting further into my pocketbook- I’m not buying the games multiple times… but they’re some of the games first on my thoughts when I want to recommend CS games and provide word-of-mouth in support of. Same could go for Fallen Hero. I think it’s at that level. And I hope Monsters will be, one day, as well.
Heh 2/10 = 450k… I think “it ran away” is an understatement. I have visions now of you hanging off the back of the millenium falcon with a rope as it jumps to hyperspace 
reaching back My haaaat!!! XD
Readers will always complain about our games being too short. In a world with epic fantasy novels in the hundreds of thousands of words, and open-world games in the scores of hours of “content,” being at the crux of those two with interactive fiction will always be perceived as too short.
The solution that I strive for is to make choices hard. And by hard I mean, where the reader wants multiple things, and has to choose between those things, and spends time deciding. That anguish is how you dilate the perception of length for our works.
And I wonder if that promotes replaying, even for people who don’t replay much: if you can clearly perceive two or three really divergent paths, you are much more likely to return (as opposed to a lot of choices that just seem like different tools to solve the same problem). Of course, if you are making choices difficult, that problem in itself points to more words–difficult choices suggests serious branchiness.
raises hand I’m one of those people who doesn’t reread most of the games I play. Bad habit… (there’s always something new to do instead)
Anyway, looking through the list, I see about three CoG games that I’ve replayed. Choice of the Vampire, Slammed, and Choice of Kung Fu. In addition, I’ve played 28 other CoG games, in full or in part. In HG, I see… Fifteen games I’ve replayed. Not necessarily replayed to conclusion, but at least in part. Of 36 total HG that I’ve played in full or in part. I realize I’m only a demographic of one, and I don’t think I could really explain -why- I replay more HG than CoG, having owned nearly the same amount (until losing most of my HG collection with the mobile I lost several months ago)… but more HG do make me want to explore multiple routes, and I don’t really know why. I find myself curious if there were a way to survey replayability and overlay it to sales to see if there’s a correlation or not.
@Shawn_Patrick_Reed - Heh, I either write or I don’t, there’s no middle. So as long as I can handle it, I will push forward fast, then it is rest and recharge once more. It’s the aspie in me.
And I am planning to make this the best end product I can, but it was always meant to be a trilogy. The problem was that it was originally meant as books, and when you do it as a choice thing, it escalates. You need more groundwork and background and variants, thus it goes wide rather than deep, and in my opinion it makes for a better game that way.
What my problem here was is that I had an envisioned cut-off point from the start, but I have been filling in blanks as I go, so the time to get there has become much longer. Right now I think I am better off going back and adding all the things that’s been planned, because that alone should add 50 000 words or so in paths and chapters. I really do admire your conviction to keep it as a single book, but that was never on the table for me.
I think what makes me happy about a game if it it feels like it is a complete story, even if it is just an installment of Samurai of Hyuga.
Hmmm I have to think about this.
Actually it’ll probably be longer once the edits are finished. @Fiogan comes up with good points a lot with her edits and new scenes will no doubt bloom from quite a few of them.
I really enjoyed this topic! The idea of short games and long games for authors makes a lot of sense. Short games give quick wins and keep motivation high, while long games help writers grow their skills and build lasting success. It’s a good reminder that both kinds of goals are important, and balancing them can make the writing journey more rewarding.
Blast from the past…
Well, whatever you did in 2016, @Gower, it worked!
Other threads touching on this include:
@Havenstone , rereading this old thread made me sit and ponder for a long time.
2016 was a really long time ago, wasn’t it? The fact that I used 350,000 words as my example for a long game is incredibly striking.
Anyway, it moved me to write this musing on tumblr:
And this here (a free post on my Patreon):
https://www.patreon.com/posts/whole-syllabus-144763263
If you look at those, you’ll see I have way more questions than answers about how we got here from there. I’m glad we’re here, but it’s kind of a dizzying process both to have gone through, and to be going through it as we speak.
I really enjoyed this topic! The idea of short games and long games for authors makes a lot of sense. Short games give quick wins and keep motivation high, while long games help writers grow their skills and build lasting success. It’s a good reminder that both kinds of goals are important, and balancing them can make the writing journey more rewarding.
I had a hunch that this was AI spam (due to the familiar ChatGPT sentence structure, wording etc.) and after a bit of extra research, I’m now 99+% sure…
This account only has one (!!!) comment ever, 3 minutes of being online (despite claiming to have read through this whole thread…?), and the only comment is also on an ancient thread with no activity for a decade
I analyzed the comment itself with some AI detector tools and always got a 95+% AI match
In general, there’s really no new/original thought, just paraphrasing the previous comments
You’re totally right. 
But I’m glad to have had reason to revisit the old topic anyway. (And I’m looking forward to reading Gower’s recent reflection once I’m back in a country where I can access Patreon.)
3.1 million words (for Gower’s latest work apparently) is… impressive. I’m frankly a bit speechless. The combined word count for all four of my Hosted Games is less than 200k, and I’ve probably spent around a year’s worth of days actively working on those!
Patreon is probably necessary to enable/justify that kind of effort, and writing irregularly like me just means a project like that will never be completed.
It’s a bit discouraging, too, in the sense that competition (especially on word counts) is much more fierce these days. I suppose it’s a good thing for the readers, but if a really successful release requires 500+k words now, it’s not really feasible for me or many others. You’d need to go all in on the idea and rely on Patreon for income for many years. Of course, my most recent game (Divine Ascension) was very successful for its size, but that’s probably the realistic upper limit. It’s not as easy to find the motivation to A) start a more limited project with no chance of major success or B) start a big project with some chance of great success, but no guarantees, and the effort is immense regardless.
In any case, it’s certainly a respectable achievement to write millions of words - just for one game!
I do find it discouraging as someone who enjoys making and reading smaller games and doesn’t have a patreon. One of the cited reasons is understandably “value for money”. While I strongly disagree long games are always better, if you want to look at cost per word, that does actually track in COG’s price structure. Longer games are in fact cheaper by word. This does have the side effect of not incentivizing authors to necessarily edit their games strongly for pacing and code efficiency which I think is a downside (some authors still do, but you’ve got to admit with the more words = better it does make it tempting to leave in scenes that could be tightened up or removed for story flow), but as much as I wish it didn’t, that’s the way the price schedule runs. But I don’t think price is the whole story. I sometimes publish completely free short games on my itch account and post about them here (I’ve had 3 recently, 2 ectocomp and 1 ifcomp game), but there is usually close to zero interest on the COG boards. And I saw a similar trend in the Halloween comp where there seemed to be very little discussion of the games entered there. In short (pun intended) it is very difficult here to gather interest in short games, even if they’re offered for free.
Anyway I think the trend of longer games = better is here to stay. I’m not sure where the limit will be and when that may end up breaking the system with few games actually ever making it to completion in the stores for HG. (Games left in semi-permanent limbo WIP limbo status or just abandoned when the author runs out of steam or finds the game too hard to complete.) It worries me that games of 300k are now increasingly being considered short (up from 100k a few years ago, and that’s up from 50k a few years before that), and we’re getting more and more that are getting over 1mil words, something that just isn’t feasible for a lot of authors, especially if they’re new and learning how to make CSGs or only writing part time (which between the two makes up the bulk of HG writers).
In saying that, I do have one WIP running at the moment that is short and has had wonderful levels of helpful feedback given/interest, so maybe under the right circumstances shorter games are not completely dead here, just in general going against the tide 
I find it similarly discouraging. As someone who loves short horror games, I thought the IF community would also enjoy bite-sized, finished projects.
Sometimes I want to get immersed in a short narrative for 99 cents. Not long-spanning epics. Time is very precious these days.
One of my (shorter) games, Divine Ascension, did indeed sell a shocking amount of copies - considering its limited size. If you just think about the dollars per work/effort/time invested, it’s not really that bad, even if the absolute amount of revenue isn’t very high for a shorter game. However, for a true hit/bestseller release, it does feel like 300+k words is the bare minimum now.
I agree - I often personally enjoy short stories more than huge/epic book series - but my opinion is clearly not in the majority! It does make sense, though, that if your budget is limited, it’s clearly more efficient to buy one 1 million word game for 8 dollars than one 100k word game for 5 dollars (as a slightly exaggerated example). It’s hard to blame the player who wants to maximize the value of their dollars.