The weird thing is, I’ve posted an idea of of a football/soccer game as part of my interest check, but not a lot of people have swarm over it as I don’t. Probably has something to do with my other ideas I suppose.
Hence, under-represented. And then, ppl won’t see much of its kind of genre; it won’t popular.
You see, the satanic circle goes on.
Remind me to do that idea as well when I choose my story
I would say something similar to “Stardew Valley” (I think it’s called slice of life?). Being embedded in a small close knit community. No devastating force to overcome or villian to defeat, just figuring people out around you and just connecting as humans.
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This I very much agree with. I don’t mind the overabundance of other genres, but I feel like more often than not they have a serious tone/mature themes. I always appreciate it when there’s humor or silliness involved, although… when it becomes the focus of the story I tend not to enjoy it as much.
I generally don’t want to read dark and sad stories. There’s always the news for that. 
It’s not really a “genre”, but if you look at the list of tags there isn’t really much in all ages fiction. I mean, I get that it doesn’t have as much of an audience, but I’m young at heart so I feel disappointed that it seems to be overlooked. People seem to be more interested in “more mature” stuff (not that I dislike it necessarily). 
I mean, just look at my WIP.
Anyway, I agree with the slice of lifey stuff too. There’s a certain appeal to it–everyone wants to do awesome fantasy things, but there are other things you want to do or experience in real life too (or a story in a realistic/modern setting).
Even other genres can use a few more slower paced scenes.
What do you mean by meta exactly? Well, in my WIP the characters will eventually discover the fourth wall and the plot will revolve around it. 
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I think it would be cool to have a game where you become an e sports pro player game since there have been none and there would be a lot of interesting choices in that as the e sports industry is still growing
@MeltingPenguins I guess you can call it Medium Awareness, or whatever, but I like that term better. What else do I call the “barrier” anyway? You can think of the screen you’re reading it on as the wall.
Oh, I should have clarified:
You have a fourth wall for them to discover to begin with? I just blatantly let the narrator and MC banter from the start.
I’m writing in first person, so no fancy narrators. It will also be a big part of the plot, not just occasional mentions. In fact, in replaying the game, the MC will be (optionally) subconsciously aware of it right at the start.
Ahh, I see.
Still 
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Well, you can’t break the 4th wall if they realize the 4th wall 
I think the problem with Soccer is that while it’s very popular in Europe it’s not really common in America so users from there wouldn’t be that interested in it. The same goes for other sports that are only popular in certain countries (like that baseball CoG game)
In comparison genres like Fantasy are popular all around the world
Also I think the reason why Fantasy is so popular here while genres like historical fiction aren’t is that you need to have actual knowledge of historical facts and can’t change things too much or people will complain your game is unrealistic, while in Fantasy you can just make up the world and decide whatever you want.
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Soccer is also very gay unfriendly and headed by a backwards, regressive anti-gay and extremely corrupt (seriously they make the shenanigans of the IOC look like the girl scouts) governing body in the FIFA. 
So while some of the athletes themselves may be cute I prefer to look for cute athletes in other sports myself.
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I would hazard the guess that most of the people who enjoy both computer games and long books, and as such comprise the majority of the easily reachable audience for these games, are also fans of fantasy, and genre-fiction in general.
It might be prejudice on my part, but I doubt many of the people who are really into sports/sport-games or literary fiction fit into that first category. (Talking about the groups as a whole, I’m sure there’s induviduals who break the pattern.)
As for me, while I do enjoy the added variety, I play CoG games about sports and competitions despite those themes, not because of them, while fantasy/steampunk/cyperpunk/romance or the game being about some sort of artist, would be a selling-point for me.
EDIT: Actually, a game about how magic powers or cybernetics are changing the world of sports, or dealing with racial discrimination in a high fantasy sports game, could be really interesting. 
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A Historical fiction. But really honest historical fiction would yell off the stage depending on the time period. Sometimes I view it as too much of the hard-core base on the site want a power fantasy and or escapism. One reason I love @Cataphrak writing so much. He took fantasy troops in settings used his knowledge of history to create a brilliant world to explore very real issues while and avoiding some of the more awkward baggage of real life history while at the same time putting in wonderful social commentary both to the time. It’s partially inspired from a he took fantasy tropes in settings used his knowledge of history to create a brilliant world to explore very real issues while in avoiding some of the more awkward baggage of real life history while at the same time putting in wonderful social commentary both to the time they are inspired from and their own.
For example dealing with something like the long walk either the perspective of Carson or his Ute allies or the Navajo themselves all of them reflecting on what let them To that moment of suffering, victory or self hatred. That’s heavy but something that won’t wanna touch but would make a great game in the since using as tool to show different point views what would motivated the actors.
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I think sports games are VERY hard to pull off in IF.
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People who don’t care for the sport will probably show little interest. I mean, if they’ve never wanted to follow the sport before, is a interactive novel really going to be the “gateway” for them to do so?
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It’s hard to describe all the action, especially in games that flow like basketball, hockey, soccer, etc. There’s just so much going on, and most of it will not pertain to the MC. I mean, describing a soccer match is like describing a combat scene with 22 people in it. I mean, sure you can generalize some and focus on the most vital parts of the action, but there’s still soooo much going on that your MC wouldn’t realistically be able to impact.
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The story would have to take precedence over the action. You need a narrative, like an “underdog story.” Rocky was about boxing sure, but it was interesting because of how big of an underdog Rocky was. The technical boxing parts were ridiculous.
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As someone said, I’m sure there are plenty of athletic readers of CoGs/HGs, but if I had to guess, I would say our audience leans a bit to the introvert/gamer/reader side of things, not the weekend warrior or sports nut type.
I would think a sports story that uses sports as the setting, but that but weaves a strong narrative about the MC, would be the easiest to pull off. A one-on-one sport like boxing or wrestling eliminates some of the issues discussed above. MMA, boxing, wrestling are also all sports that play up “storylines,” so I think they are the strongest matches for IF.
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In my case, I think I’ve sort of found a way to work around the issue; technically my idea is for the MC to be the manager of a football team (sorry guys, but I am going to annoy myself every time I say soccer), essentially the only impact the MC would is quite honestly the influence of the situation. With that said, even i know there has to be a story, as @Eric_Moser, hence there is a particular reason why the MC is a manager for said football thing and it wouldn’t just affecting the sport career but also the life of the MC in general. In a way, that would describe and explain the game without the story being detracted.
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What I mean by meta is basically when the author points out that the work is of a fictional nature (this doesn’t have to happen through a fourth wall break. It could just say so in the author’s note) and then, in one way or another, mess with our conception of what’s real and what’s not. If you want an example the novel “Mother Night” by Kurt Vonnegut is a good one.
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Ohh, I see. I guess I could also play around with that and give the reader a sense of what if I’m in a story too?
But yeah, I agree that it’s unexplored. It’s also probably hard to do well?
And I mostly agree with what was said about historical fiction and sports, but those don’t interest me very much, so…
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