Choice of robots-It was the first time I ever saw so much branching done. There were chunks of the game that I never saw because I took another path.
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I think this was widespread in a lot of similar writing forums at the time. It was part of forum culture from the outset. Jim Dattilo, Andy Why, Allen Gies, Paul Wang, Sam Young, Lucid, J. Leigh, jeantown and Eric Moser were all if I recall correctly early examples of authors who posted their WiPs for forum feedback and helped establish the CoG/HG version of WiP culture.
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Speaking of @jeantown I think Guinevere deserves a mention. Despite not being finished I feel like it influenced a whole generation of games here.
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Wayhaven series: After the first game came out, practically every COGs or HGs need at least some degree of romance in it
Infinite Sea: They have a separate tag for this series, end of story
Choice of Dragon: No need for explanation
The Great Tournament: This game alone achieved immortal status among the community, the first game for many ( me included )
Fallen Hero series: Often named among the best games on this platform, I think it created a new standard for quality ROs
Breach The Archangel Job: It carries the whole criminal genre of this platform, the shadow it casted is just too big, too overwhelming
Notable mention: Tin Star, Evertree Saga, Choice of Robots, Zombie Exodus, Samurai of Hyuga ( I put these games here for avoiding personal bias )
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I actually think that the Infinity Saga, while very popular (and I personally enjoy it a lot) is not especially influential relative to its huge success.
Most of the things that seem particularly distinct about those games have not really proliferated to other series. Gender locks certainly haven’t, and remain very controversial even for Hosted Games.
You also haven’t seen a ton of war stories, stories where you get hard failure death endings a lot, or stories with more heavily “wargamey” design where you have to manage your own army in addition to your personal stats. Choice of Rebels is the main exception there to these, and I could definitely see Infinity being really influential on it.
The main area I do see potential influence is the expansion of world building and codexes, which Infinity was an early adopter of, and has proliferated to other games with complicated worlds, although I’m not sure it was the first Choicescript game to do it.
I think the lack of influence compared to its success (compared to the HG series clearly influenced by Wayhaven, for example) partly reflects that what the Infinity series does is really complicated and ambitous on a design level, while a majority of complicated games are more complicated at a narrative level, with lots of plot branching but not a lot of complicated gamey stuff like deciding which of a bunch of ways to train your troops is better, and then succeeding or failing 4 chapters down the line because of it. There is definitely an audience for that, but I think it’s a slightly different one than most of the authors and readers here, and that’s reflected in things like the traditional lack of save systems (which is due to an assumption that these aren’t games you will die and have to reload a lot). To me the fact that Infinity has a seperate forum reinforces that.
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This is a really really weird question to ask, especially for me but:
Is it?
I mean, I know I’ve got a pretty committed fanbase who generate quite a lot of discourse and content, but I feel as if the Dragoon Saga is fairly niche compared to even a lot of more popular Hosted Games. While I don’t have exact figures, I do know that Mecha Ace has probably outsold the entire series as a whole (for the record: I don’t regret giving up royalties for that - the lump sum paid off my student loans), and I’m almost certain that while Lords of Infinity has done pretty well, it probably won’t match Fallen Hero: Retribution’s numbers, and will certainly get outsold by Wayhaven’s third book when it comes out in a week.
Which again, begs the question: how big of a success is the Dragoon Saga?
I know it reviews well, and I know it’s generally considered positively. I’ve gotten other paying work on the strength of its writing, but that still makes me think it’s a moderate success at best, especially outside the closed circle of this community. I’m not saying it’s been a failure (I wouldn’t keep writing it if it was), but given that I literally have to make rent and put food on the table on the strength of its sales (we’re currently a one-income household for a variety of reasons), that question really is one I’d like a a few subsequent opinions on.
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I’ve loved the Infinity saga since playing the first game when Paul put it up on the forums. I’ve also always felt it was quite different to XoR, mainly because it’s been (until now? I’m saving my playthrough of Lords for a less busy time) such a thoroughly military series, informed by Paul’s grasp of military history which is roughly 10,000 times better than mine. I’ve yet to write a battle with anything remotely close to the verisimilitude and complexity that Paul brings to his big setpieces.
I also never thought XoR is as mercilessly hard as Blogia, let alone the Forlorn Hope. 
Choosing to give battle at the end of Uprising is my “Forlorn Hope” equivalent – the option the game reminds you repeatedly is an excessive and unnecessary risk, better avoided – and, well, it’s a lot easier to win the bragging rights in Rebels.
Paul and I are trying to do some similar things – long series of expanding scope, implicit critiques of power fantasies, willingness to end the story with the abrupt death of the MC (though again, I think it’s a lot easier to die in Paul’s world than in mine). In a lot of those, I think I’m more influenced by other media that I encountered before CoG – GRR Martin, Breaking Bad – than by any CoG or HG. But I’d be proud to count Paul as an influence.
I’ve always greatly admired Paul’s meta-commentary on the genre and wish I’d found a good way to add anything like that to XoR.
However much success his games have had, they deserve more.
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Thanks for being so transparent about this Paul. I think it’s really healthy for folks in the community to have a full understanding of how artists review and consider their work, even if you’re under no obligation to share something that personal.
For what it’s worth, I’ve always deeply loved the Dragoon saga and it’s a big reason I made the transition into working in games. Monetary success is probably the most important thing in a world where rent and other factors exist, but it’s had a profound impact on me and the community and that has to count for something!
This is a good reminder to go upgrade at your patreon.
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It may be a moderate success financially, but as a work of art it is a tremendous success. I’m glad you have other projects that may be more lucrative, not only because I’m a fan of your work, but because the Dragoon Saga is your masterpiece and it’s a vision worth staying true to.
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I think the answer to this topic’s question can only be Wayhaven. The sales and patreon pledges speak for themselves: it is by far the most financially successful choicegame ever written. And when you are that successful, things change. There’s an entirely new “Wayhaven Clone” genre out there, and although the name is unkind, it’s little surprise others are creating stories in a similar vein in hopes of replicating its success.
This also speaks to an important demographic shift in the people who regularly play and–more importantly–buy these games. If you have a very gamey, stat-heavy choicegame that appeals almost entirely to young adult males…that’s a tough sale for the modern choicegame reader of 2023. Now and in the future, the entire catalogue will shift to cater to what traditional fiction does: middle-aged women who care mostly (or exclusively) about romance.
That all said…I have to throw my own hat in for Samurai of Hyuga. For one reason alone: you guys have no idea how hard I fought Jason & Dan back in 2015 to make it Free with In-App Purchase. That’s the standard for choicegames these days, but it wasn’t back then!
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I think “Wayhaven clone” pretty reductive. I don’t know which specific games you’re referring to, but paranormal romance has been a genre for at least as long as Anne Rice’s books, probably longer. People write about what they want to write about, I can’t imagine most HG authors are just trying to cash in on a trend. And even if they do “cater to what traditional fiction does,” middle aged women are a valid demographic. They’re also not a monolith who only like one kind of thing. And even if they were and cared “exclusively about romance,” romance is a perfectly valid genre.
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As a middle-aged woman who enjoys romance (although far from “mostly” or “exclusively”), I am utterly bemused by the assertion that “traditional fiction” caters to my demographic. There’s one genre out there that caters to people (of any age) who care “mostly” or “exclusively” about romance, and it’s called … the romance genre. And there are more than enough romance books being published that a romance-exclusive reader doesn’t need to read anything else. That romantic subplots show up in other genres isn’t catering to starry-eyed matrons, it’s a reflection of the fact that romantic relationships are a significant part of human existence that most people are interested in reading about - and there are books published all the time, both literary and genre fiction, in which romance plays little or no role.
As for the ChoiceScript game fandom, I wish all those middle-aged women who are getting catered to now would start showing up in fan spaces, where I’m generally surrounded by Gen-Z whippersnappers who leave me feeling like an old prune.
Furthermore, the fact that most games include romance to some extent doesn’t say anything at all about how much, or what kind, or what a game is like otherwise. There have been several recent games that I have specifically not recommended to readers looking for vicarious romance. There are some sweet moments to be had in Choice of the Viking, but it’s not by any stretch of the imagination a romance game. And I really don’t think we’ve seen that many more games that I would classify as romance games, per se, outside of the Heart’s Choice label. We’re seeing a lot of games, in all genres, with strong optional romantic subplots. Who’s to say a “gamey, stat-heavy” game can’t also include a love story, and be entertaining to both stereotypical young men and archetypal crones?
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Hey, YA is a thing too. I’d have said the catalog right now hews closer to the tropes of that demographic, and the money’s good enough there to feed multiple CoG-sized companies.
If I start a band, I want to name them this.
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Please do! 
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ever since lords came out I’ve been lifting weights to feel more worthy of dating the betrothed.
so yeah Id say thats influential I think.
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I’m not sure I share this sentiment. It’s the sort of terminology that is used in gaming a lot, like “Dwarf Fortress clone” or “Rogue-like”.
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I see even CoG forums aren’t free of men who grumble about romance and consider it a genre “for old hens” You don’t have to make thorough demographic research to notice that polls and audiences skew much younger (and mostly male on platforms like reddit). Young men and women seem to be the ones driving the demand for romance in games (especially cRPGs).
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I think it’s a little unfair to Devon to assume he’s grumbling. In general he’s pretty pragmatic about writing to what he perceives as the desires of a target audience.
But I agree that on the evidence I’ve seen, the audience for CSGs that tug heartstrings and tingle loins isn’t at all confined to a particular gender or age.
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This is exactly why I like IF as a whole, and why I got into it as a child. IF games are great because it has the potential to create engaging, immersive stories and narratives that can be experienced on a deep personal level regardless of race, gender, creed, orientation, etc. Of course all media can connect to different aspects of who we are, but how many allow you to experience stories as closely as an IF game can?
But in terms of influence, it’s been very interesting to see how authors try and push the limits of ChoiceScript to better suit the stories they want to tell. Truth be told, I don’t think it always works, and I actually would love to see ChoiceScript get updated or expanded on—it came out in 2010 I believe, and I can’t think of any major updates to it—but there are times still when a CS game will come out and I think “wow, I didn’t realize you could do this with CS and I think that’s so neat!” For example, I hope Stars Arisen (and I think A Study In Steampunk did something similar) will be influential in encouraging authors to have “save checkpoints” to repeat chapters until you‘re satisfied with them.
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I was inspired by Stars Arisen to do this for Royal Affairs (and retroactively add it to my previous games). I had mostly seen it in HGs and Choice of Rebels before but not any more recent CoGs. I’m planning to include it for things I make in the future.
Thinking about influences, @Havenstone mentioned YA and the YA audience, I think Psy High was the first CoG that was firmly in that genre - a school story with romance, plus magic. It was massively successful and I can only imagine that it influenced future games. Certainly when I was first thinking about Crème de la Crème, although it isn’t magical, I saw Psy High as proof of there being a market for school-set CoGs.
When I looking at Psy High’s release date on the CoG Omnibus app, I noticed Psy High, Creatures Such As We, and then Choice of Robots. Three games in a row which enjoyed a lot of success and critical attention at the time and for many years afterwards - I think this 2014/15 triptych marked a sharp increase in ChoiceScript’s visibility in IF and indie games in general.
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