Short Games and Long Games - Incentives for Authors

[Cataphrak]

@Kate27

it seems the longer the work, the more USD it is on Steam. I think the highest prices I’ve seen were $11-15 for titles from the V:tM series.

There’s a basic pricing scale based on word length, and the WoD licensed games add an additional mark-up, I think.

[Jacic]

@GreekWinter

Then again, my V:tM game is 600k words, so who am I to talk?

@GreekWinter

If it starts creeping over 100k for a single read, it better be really, really gripping or I’m checking out.

Games need to be as long as they need to be though . It’s when games become long because the expectation is that it needs to be long, rather than because that’s the right length to tell that particular story. I actually agree. I prefer short to medium sized games. I actually tend to find myself actively avoiding the really long ones unless they particularly catch my attention for a number of reasons.

@Zaldath

practically infinitely delayed.

While I’m sure not the intention of many patreon users, (and lets face it, most game from sales alone will net you less than minimum wage by number of hours spent making them so I can’t begrudge those trying to use it to justify spending the time writing rather than working at another job- seeing it from both side here although I don’t agree with deliberately prolonging a project for that reason) some games do pull in hundreds or in some cases over a thousand dollars a month before a game ever gets published. That has to be an incentive not to rush to publication and in some cases pull it out almost indefinitely.

@Cataphrak

it is still against the rules to paywall a Hosted Games project behind a paywall for longer than a month of lead time.

It is, but that rule doesn’t appear to be enforced. I do find it a bit upsetting that you can’t have a tip button on a game for anyone to chip in casually if they want to/as they can for freely available content, but it does seem to be overlooked if content is locked behind paywalls by some owners for prolonged periods of time.

@LiliArch

now that Apple made them drop the per-content billing;

Oh really? That sux. That’s the way I’d want consider running a patreon myself if I ever did as I know I have periods where I’m too busy to be able to work on writing consistently. It feels wrong to charge a subscription without giving anything back in return.

@Cataphrak

he WoD licensed games add an additional mark-up, I think.

Yes that’s right, it’s because COG has to pay WoD to use their IP so they increase the price of the games to cover that.

[Cataphrak]

@Jacic

but it does seem to be overlooked if content is locked behind paywalls by some owners for prolonged periods of time.

I’m fairly certain that’s how a lot of the really profitable Patreons make their money. Offering early access to development builds is basically the biggest goodie someone can offer in this context (I’m doing it for my next game, since it’ll be self-published and self-funded).

[Pamplemousse]

@Cataphrak

I’ve been doing this full-time since I graduated university, and I’ve done it while supporting others too. I can’t speak to other people or their situations

This topic has made me realize that CoG is kind of a rarity compared to other IF in how games are created. While there have been games that have more than one author, particularly those made by Jo Graham and Amy Griswold, and every game has beta-testers, an editor, and @Cataphrak doing Chapter and Stat headers for CoG, the vast majority of titles seem to have one person doing the majority of the writing and coding. I can only imagine that part of the reason is because of split royalties, the difficulties that come from having to share a vision, and the fact that ChoiceScript is simple enough to not require a dedicated coder.

That being said, I can’t help but compare CoG titles to other IF titles, given how long it would take one person to write the word counts of modern games, when even a team of two people can work on multiple routes. Games such as Suzerain, to mods like TNO and Kaiserreich, to even niche communities like The Campaign Trail have teams.

On that note, as someone who has played The Campaign Trail for two years, I can’t help but notice that similar discourse has arisen in that community. Many great mods were released this year, from Things That Never Were, All The Way, and Icarus, yet they are all:

1. Incumbency Simulators, scenarios with a set candidate and running mate that happen from the first-person PoV of the president, and with CYOA, meaning variables affect your opponent and what questions you are asked.
2. The creations of teams of people, some coding and others writing

The popularity and prevalence of Incumbency Sims has raised some discussion over whether or not mods that do not have most, if any, of these aspects, will still be created. Certainly, there are great mods such as Slick ‘88 that do not use CYOA and use more neutral Bryanesque writing (Dan Bryan being the original creator of TCT scenarios). In fact, a mod like Slick ‘88, despite being made by one person over a week, if not a day, is great because it set out to do something and did it.