Should Hosted Games be vetted more thoroughly?

Hosted Games
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I try not to be too hard on some of the HGs I read. Even so, I was kind of surprised at the issues I found when I read some of them. I agree with the OP, however. There were several where I found the quality control well below what I would have expected, and certainly ever wanted to pay for.

When I wrote Paradigm (in the HG queue as we speak), I was lucky enough to be able to devote six months of full-time 9-5 work to it. Spend one day writing, and spend a full day editing what I wrote the next. I was lucky to also be able to talk with published authors and writers whose work I truly respected and admired. I was also lucky enough to have an editor friend who offered to check 100,000+ words for spelling and grammar and continuity and general quality for free. I was lucky enough to have half a dozen friends who tested the game pretty thoroughly as I worked on chapter-by-chapter before I even put it up on these boards, friends who were happy enough to write me pages of feedback. I’m lucky enough to enjoy deep reading and literature analysis. And I also have two degrees and a background in teaching, which simply means I am far more comfortable with the English language than a lot of people. Even then, I’m willing to bet there are things that everyone missed, because Paradigm is my first big attempt at writing, and my first at programming, and I’m willing to bet there will be people who angrily point out that I know nothing about the English language.

And, with at least one of those criticisms, they’d be right! Even with my background, I was informed of a grammar thing by my editor friend that I simply didn’t know existed. Did you know there’s a difference between a dash and a hyphen? I didn’t!

But it’s something I can fix for whatever I do next.

But the thing about the HGs is that they’re a platform that allows everyone a possibility of making some money from their writing and, potentially, using it to get a bit of awareness. Some people have a lot of resources to draw upon, and others don’t. Some of those people in the have-not category might still be fantastic writers with great ideas, and it’d be a shame if their work wasn’t shared with the world. There are some I’ve paid for simply because I think the author shows great promise, even if the work has some issues here and there.

But there do exist HGs where I was pretty surprised to see the errors that had slipped through, that had indicated that even a basic spellcheck hadn’t been used. There is a spellcheck plugin for notepad++, which I personally use.

It’s a complex issue, and I think there’ll always be a tension between the expectation of quality and the ease of access.

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It is true that short games get slammed by reviews, but I think even 60,000 words will feel too small to many these days.

Also thanks for letting me know about the cake!

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This will be my crude and honest opinion, which might chafe some people. So, sorry about that.

To preface to those who don’t know me and don’t want to check up on who I am: I’m Finnish, and I have never read works from the great writers of the English language aside from Orwell and Tolkien. Before I found this place I wrote a fair bit, but never really finished anything except for the odd school project in creative writing. For anything outside those I didn’t have the kind of reach to get good feedback and every place I frequented didn’t have the kind of crowd where I could ask for people to read my work and expect honest and extensive feedback.
This forum, however, is an excellent place to gain feedback, but even here only a handful of folks are editors and their opinions come in few and far between. That’s understandable, they have plenty of stuff to read and they have their own writing projects as well. Editors and fellow authors don’t have time to go around reading the others’ work and come up with extensive feedback. That’d be a full dayjob right there to go through everything.

However, I’ve noticed one thing after Lords of Aswick and Best of Us, and that is that nothing fuels feedback better than money. I’m not talking about an author paying someone to edit and give feedback. I’m talking about someone spending whatever the cost is right now - a few euros, essentially a candy bar and less than a cup of coffee - on a +100k word storygame and finding mistakes.

For that alone, Hosted Games is invaluable.

I noticed there was a massive jump in quality of writing between stopping work on Lords of Aswick and starting work on Best of Us, and then again between Best of Us and The Golden Eagle, and then with Diamant Rose.
A fair bit of it was definitely because I received feedback in the threads and some grammar rules were pounded into my thick skull by @Fiogan, but a vast majority of the take-away for me came from the consumers. The pouring out of feedback from paying customers was a flood of excellent pointers on what to look out for in the future and how to refine my personal style. Whether it’s about writing style, grammar, mechanics balance, or whatever else, nothing motivates a person to bitch and moan on the internet more than buying a product, no matter how cheap, and finding it lacking.
It’s at that point that it becomes the responsibility of the author to have a good long hard look at that feedback and find areas to improve in. Even amongst the repetitive and vague off-hand comments. There’s always something there to take away and learn from. Even when the comments piss you off.

For that, Hosted Games is invaluable.

Now, of course I have also gotten the e-mail or PM here and there telling me about how people love my writing style in Lords of Aswick. That’s great, I’m happy people find it appealing. That won’t stop me from finishing my rewrite of it with all this flood of new information and criticism in mind, and a few more stories under my belt. I have a need to go back and refine that story, since I intend to continue the series. It’s my duty to go back and improve it sooner or later.
Thanks to Hosted Games there is a direct and occasionally brutal author-reader transaction with a sizeable audience which, let’s be honest, can at times be completely uninformed of who the authors are, and who will never check the forum. Yet without that same connection and sense of responsibility that it brings due to a simple monetary transaction, I would still be leaving a trail of unfinished stories on my hard drives, only to be abandoned as a waste of time with no new insight gained from any of them.
There’s a lot to be said about free sites where you can upload your stories. Especially in the more niche communities such as IF, but when it’s free, people don’t really care. Some will step up and leave comments about how to improve here and there, but nobody will be truly invested. Not the author, and certainly not the reader. The reader will click away if they don’t like the writing and hop straight to the next one with nothing gained or lost but a little bit of time. Add even 99 cents to the mix, and suddenly there’s investment on both sides. Even if a single cent of that purchase goes into the pocket of the author (Jason, this isn’t a request to cut my percentage. Just to make that perfectly clear) it’s still incentive to do more, to learn, to keep going, to keep looking at bigger and better things in the horizon.

That’s why Hosted Games is invaluable as it is.

Of course there has to be some kind of oversight so HG isn’t misused as a way to get a quick buck. Yet at the same time, everyone here can probably attest as to how hard it is to finish a regular story, not to mention learn to fluidly embed code and written word together into a satisfying game. Someone coming around to abuse the system is an unlikely event. It calls for far too much dedication. As so, the self-policing system with each author being their own gatekeeper does work, especially with forum integration during the beta. That also helps keep track of a standard of common decency. The community will instantly flag a story that is offensive.

For my own part I couldn’t do this without Hosted Games, and I’m not talking about finances here. Let’s be brutally honest, the IF marketplace as it is right now is not big enough to warrant quitting a dayjob if you have one. I personally am looking for extra funding in the form of government grants so that I can keep writing in general. Financially speaking all this is nothing but running after a dream, but from a motivational and learning perspective Hosted Games is pretty much my everything right now. I know that here I have an audience, whether that’s big or small, and I know that at the very end of the journey I will always get brutally honest opinions from those who don’t know me but have put their money down.
From that I can gauge where I am on my personal journey. Right now I still have a lot to learn, I have a lot of experience to gain, and the only way to do that is to get my stuff out there. That’s why right now I’m not truly comfortable with pitching my ideas to the CoG label and going through with the systems that are in place there. Only when I can turn around and tell myself: “That last one was okay, now I’ve got a solid foundation” will I be at the point where I can turn around to Choice of Games and tell them with complete honesty that I’m ready for the next step, which will include much heavier drafting, editing, and rewriting processes. when you step up to CoG the story becomes work for hire and a whole different set of requirements apply. When I sign on that particular dotted line it’s a much more substantial professional contract and in addition to my reputation being on the line, it’s also that of CoG on the line.
With Hosted Games, whether a majority of people understand the distinction or not, a lot of the Bantha poodoo can roll straight down to me. Because on Hosted Games I am personally responsible whether it’s a success or utter failure. Yes, a failure reflects on other Hosted Games and even Choice of Games to a degree, but ultimately I can take that on my shoulders and move to the next thing with the knowledge that I can’t have another one of those again. On the opposite side of the coin, a success will reflect well on Hosted Games and shine through the less good stuff.

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I completely agree with the grammer thing. A few missteps here and there is understandable, we’re only human after all. But at a certain point you’ve gotta start questioning how some of these games get published. And yeah i understand that english isn’t the first language of some authors but that’s what beta testing and editing is for. So regarding all that i do think that the guidlines for grammer, spelling and proper sentence structure should be stricter. It doesn’t have to be 100% perfect or fancy but we should be able to understand what’s being said without having to disect the entire paragraph.

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No, but in those situations, I’d expect the author to be sufficiently self-aware to not charge for a sub-standard product.

If you mangle your choice script code - it doesn’t work. If you mangle your English sufficiently a native speaker won’t be able to figure out what you were trying to say in the same way.

I can tolerate broken English to a point. English is sufficiently ambiguous that it can do well when bent a little out of shape. Beyond a certain point of mangling, however, I end up spending so much effort on mentally re-writing what I’m reading I’m not enjoying the story.

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My first encounter with CoG was a HG on steam. After playing it i went on the discussion board and saw the author asking for people to post typos/errors they found. After multiple playthroughs myself and one other user posted roughly 40-50 typos and errors combined. The author felt embarrassed and stated he had over 90 beta testers.
To be quite frank the open beta testing done on this forum barely contains any proofreading and is probably mostly used as ‘free games’.

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That’s easily solved for English: Ignore them, they’re all wrong and often break their own rules in the explanation. English really should be written as spoken except when required otherwise for legal paperwork.

For instance, your typed English is close enough that I can get your points most of the time. Should I care enough about the parts I missed, it isn’t going to kill me to ask a few questions to clear up any confusion.

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Depending on the size of the game, 40 typos on say a 100,000 word work is reasonable, especially without paid editors.

Of course, the best condition is if there aren’t any, but that isn’t going to happen in the real world.

Actual bugs in a game are much less forgiving.

Some games may not get a lot of beta testers to start with, especially if they fall on the Hosted Games side.

What doesn’t help is even if a lot of typos/bug are found in a game, and forwarded to be fixed, some distribution platforms may take a long time to allow for updates, even for a text game.

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That’s not true for many forumgoers. Yes, many lurkers and one time posters are not going to post feedback, but those on the forum have a tendency to do so. And people like Cascat or Studwick are worth the hundreds+ who see a beta as nothing more than a free game.

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We are talking about serious writing not about normal forum interaction. If I don’t try to write accurately my own game in based of English rules I am being negligent and not taking seriously enough my possible readers and my own work.And give the reason to those who trolled me for not being good enough

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Not everyone will be, though. As Goshman explained so well above, if they’re not self-aware enough before they publish – and IIRC, the forum beta requirement was introduced post-Sword of the Elements to help with this – they sure will be afterwards. HG publishing is a learning process for many amateur authors.

And unless I’m much mistaken, it’s worth being clear that “not charge for” means “not publish” (outside this forum). CoG won’t put up a free game on any platform; they want to recap at least some of that $1000 minimum cost that Jason mentioned.

For those of us who are just HG consumers rather than authors, I think the right solution has already been given: get on a browser and play a demo before you buy any HG. (Or CoG, for that matter.) And make sure we rate HGs appropriately to their quality – I know some forum members have been in the habit of popping a friendly 5 on every published HG, but it would ultimately be better for the HG platform brand if the Apple Store and Android ratings reflected the quality of the games as accurately as possible. For those who are really willing to be part of the solution: put in the time to be a conscientious beta-tester, or provide free proofing/editing for the HGs you love.

For those who are HG authors of fantastic games: I get that the brand quality is a real issue, and I was wrong to downplay it above. At the end of the day, though, I still do think the benefits of keeping HG as a relatively open platform with a low barrier to entry are too important to give up.

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Point taken, something I’ve noticed on several works in progress is that after a certain point (usually closer to completion) authors make the betas private. That tends to get more review on the grammer and language side of things whereas public betas get more reviews on what aspects of the story people do and don’t like.

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I do not consider interactive fiction to be sufficiently serious to warrant sticking rigidly to broken, antiquated grammar rules dreamed up by people who were full of themselves and thought they could “fix” the language.

As long as you don’t try to be overly flowery you’ll be fine. The only way to improve your control over an additional language is to use it after all.

That said if you’re intending to sell any CS games you create, I’d recommend getting a more fluent person to help proof-read and wrangle things into shape. I’d call attention you any Spanish metaphors and idioms that you so often mention for instance.

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https://dashingdon.com/ is a thing no?

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This is a very interesting discussion! I have a feeling that what the original poster was actually trying to convey, was a simple interest in seeing the hosted games section leveled up on par with the quality of the COG one. It’s not so much about blocking anyone (despite the poster’s suggestions, I feel that it isn’t truly the tone he is trying to take). If a magic wand could simply be wielded, where no one gets affected, that’d be just as fantastic.

There is an outline that COG could do, without setting up barriers.

COG accepts all submissions as per usual, and that all works go through the forum beta-testing process. Thereafter, COG takes a look at the game.

If it’s clearly “compatible”, which means the game is brightly written by a native english speaker (Note: this has nothing to do with the story’s quality! It’s up to the player to determine that.), it goes straight up to being published “as is” (no editing will be done, as it’s not really needed anyway.)

If the game is “lacking” (even after going through forum-beta), where it’s very obvious that it’s not written by a native english speaker, due to very odd or over simplistic sentence structures, COG could ask for editorial control to be ceded to the company as a prerequisite for publishing (which I have a feeling that such current hosted games authors might not mind, as long as they don’t have to phony up a cent).

And COG could polish up the game themselves (If they are willing to do it on their own instead of hiring an editor. Money saved, but lots of man-labor needed) or get an extra group of volunteer beta-testers that focus on the correction of language instead of bugs, where you pay them a small fee and give them the game for free, to do the spray and polishing.

Hah, but yeah, that’s still a large through of work!

One thing I noticed is that the COG audience are also a different variation from the book audience. COG folks get the bigger enjoyment out of a magnificent weave of ideas truly clicking with them. Where, when it comes to minute expression, such is of less importance. So, no major changes are truly needed to how things are now.

We can also liken “Choice of games” as an upscale cuisine place, with finer waiters and service, plus higher prices to go along with it (COG games are more costly on average).

Whilst “Hosted games” is a humble eatery, with a different kind of liveliness and self-service. Prices average lower and many things can be found, including rarer gems. Both offer free test-tasting before you even need to pay for a dish (demos).

I first came to Choice of games through “Broadsides” and “Choice of romance” (I prefer the latter). Both these fine pieces had me building upon an expectation of similar quality. Even though I understand the spirit of hosted games, it’s hugely varying quality was sometimes a bit jarring. Although Choice of games is far from perfection, I can always expect a strong flow and choreographical grasp of the language portrayed.

However, the hosted games section is a point of great excitement. As with the evolution of technology which enables everyone to get their craft out and a ready audience for them. Where not, we’d never see these wonders otherwise.

I remembered my favorite pieces of original fiction were the gifts of a free writer who never accepted a penny, and were tons lengthier than most fiction paperpacks. More than 100,000’s of words, and we are only 50% done!

If they had been finished, and the ending to my favor, I’d have dropped a premium on a fully published version, something that I do not feel inclined to do at all for officially published and popularly rated books as they don’t catch my attention the same way.

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Here is the crux of the issue: it already costs CoG at least $1,000.00 to publish a game. And that is minimum cost. Adding editorial review would at least double that and more likely quadruple the costs involved . As said above, some titles don’t recoup the $1000.00 even after years worth of time being in the catalogue.

Here is more specifics:

From this quote in-house non-professional editing isn’t an option any longer.

So, adding additional costs to publishing games that 2,000 people may not even purchase is not a cost efficient change.

Price point is a major engine driving the sales of this niche and as the information given on bundles shown, the relation between that and quantity sold is such that they cancel each other out.

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You don’t consider IF to be serious enough to warrant sticking to basic grammar rules, because you’ve invented something about people “fixing” a language? All the while saying the only thing to avoid is purple prose?

That’s a pretty big disservice to some of the incredible works of art in the IF genre that wield their language with absolute, perfect precision. Really, it’s a slight against the whole genre - don’t bother about excelling, the bare minimum of effort is fine.

By knowing the rules of any language, and how to break them at the right points, your work can only improve.

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Then re-read what I posted.

English grammar “rules” are arbitrary and dictated by people that can’t follow their own rules.

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Yeah not money saved at all since the Choice of Games staff do still need to be paid. AND any time spent doing this is time not spent doing their other duties.

Choice of Games cannot do this. If they were paying money then they’d need employee contracts and everything else that comes with that. Choice of Games are actually restricted in what they can and can’t ask unpaid beta-testers to do because there’s certain employment laws they don’t want to run afoul of.

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I’d go further with an example. The Infinity series would not be what it is without Cataphrak’s particular skill as a wordsmith. If he half-assed his use of language, including knowing when to use the rules and when to break them, we wouldn’t have seen Guns of Infinity because Sabres would have tanked. Among other things, if he didn’t pay attention to such things as spelling, then he wouldn’t be able to deliberately use archaic spellings to create verisimilitude in his writing.

Other writers on the site are less stylized, but even so, the point about knowing the rules and when to break them stands.

@LordOfLA: All languages and language rules are arbitrary. There’s still a method to the madness, and if you’re implying that rules that are made to be broken are inherently worthless, then you’re missing the point.

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