Just to be clear I don’t really mind the price of any of these games but I was just wondering why nobody has released a worthwhile free game in forever.
1 Like
Its because of issues with advertising revenue. There was a blog about it how they were banned from ad-sense and other ad companies were not very good.
Also because good games take a lot of time and effort to make, time that a lot of people can’t afford to spend writing.
If an author makes money from the games they write, they can work less (or not at all), and thus have more time available to spend making those games.
Time is money after all.
Without any ad revenue, charging for the games is the only reliable way to make money off of them.
Because it’s a $1-5 difference for the reader but thousands of dollars of a difference for the author. It keeps us motivated and, like CJW said, it allows us to write more often. Most likely, if all the gamebooks were free, CoG would be forced to quit and many of the authors wouldn’t have bothered making these stories.
It’s like when in a cake shop give you a free cake the inaugural day. People don’t go complaining cakes have to be free! Why aren’t cakes free? Why I have to pay a dollar for a cupcake?? Or pay my rent… all cost money publishes apps cost apple or android want money to Someone has to pay it and if no publicity money consumer has to
pay
@GiantPanda There’s also a fairly large school of marketing which goes something along the lines of saying that if you charge for something, it tends to hold more worth to a consumer than if you simply give it out for free.
Plus, as we’ve all noticed, it’s the readers that expect everything to be given to them for free that give horrible and misleading ratings because they don’t think an author’s hard work is worth a couple dollars.
I understand now. Now that I know why, it seems a bit obvious. Thanks everyone.
@GiantPanda I have good news and bad news.
Good News: If Dan and Jason will allow it I am hoping to release my game for free
Bad News: It’s worse than City of the Clouds.
@Aquos_Boost NOTHING IS WORST THAT NIGHTMARE OF CLOUDS, PERIOD. EVEN MY DEMO IT’S BETTER. So be proud of your work, ok?
I’m probably the only one on this site who actually like City of the Clouds. Didn’t like Second choice of vampire, choice of ninja, willow creek, burn(t). Also Unnatural, I mean it had solid writing behind it, it just failed in execution, mainly with paragraph structure, spelling mistakes and just general characters who even now I can’t remember…
*Ahem.* Back on topic, the new business model can be summed up with that timeless phrase.
“You gotta pay, if you wanna play.”
There are, of course, still pretty meaty demos for most, if not all of the full length CoGs.
Maybe I’m ignorant here, but can I ask you something? Why does everyone bash City of the Clouds so much? I mean if I was the author of that game and I saw the community having a grand old time freaking out about it, I’d be feeling pretty bad.
The game wasn’t horrible. We’re all on the same team here, you know? Let’s keep up with constructive criticism, but Nightmare of the Clouds? Man.
I always thought of the free games as kind of like demos in themselves…sort of like demonstrations of what other authors could do with ChoiceScript. I honestly think that it’s fair to make people pay for the games because as it was brought out…the author has spent a lot of time working on it. So why not support the people you like?
It’s not exactly the most brilliant game but it’s still better than mine. Mine is about as linear as you can get.
@BrianBlack with all respects This not a cult, if I feel a game is a terrible writer, zero replay value machismo humor with horrible taste, short and repetitive. And worst racist to all Spanish communities. I say it here, where the community could fix the error. The nightmare name is the objective of put humor note. If we say all Cog are great we are doing a bad service to this company due people outside is cluel and put one star reviews
I never put less than 5 stars, even if I feel that it deserves less. To help Cog due rating so I don’t like your assumption IM NOT A TROLL
@Aquos_Boost
You could certainly consider making it better, especially if you yourself consider it poor quality xD
Brian: As Mara noted, we’re not a cult (Mara: That’s the English word I think you were looking for?), and if we the users find a game to be garbage, we’ll generally say so. Authors can usually take criticism and bad reviews, and if they can’t, they need to find another line of work.
I wouldn’t go as far as to say it was garbage (that’s not constructive anymore) but I will say that the author forcing me to be a crack head/drunk/sex addict regardless of my choices was pretty creepy.
Choice of Ninja and Willowcreek were fun and I liked both of them. They are not in my top ten favorites but I still enjoyed them. I gave them 5s as well, not cause they was perfect, but because I figured more people tend to rate them so low that they need a boost. Some don’t need a boost and I will still give a 5, its what I write that matters for me than it does the actual number. If there are corrections, something not right, I will apply it to a review to be shown for possible fixes. City of Clouds, well, that is one of my bottom ten list. 
@Samuel_H_Young I’m not exactly sure how I could go about a better game, though 
I was hoping for better character development. Also I know what you mean. City of the Clouds was a game I played when I was 14 so it was very strange to find out I was addicted to every dangerous substance ever.