Never said otherwise, never said that short stories can’t be enjoyable.
I just said that you shouldn’t compare it to non interactive stories.
That probably is a personal taste thing. Especially if you’re on the time poor side, I LIKE having the choice to sit down and read something in a lunch break, particularly if it gets me thinking or has some replayablity so you can come back to it.
Are you sure? I’ve written several and most of them have not been lighthearted. (Albeit none are actually published through HG as of this date so perhaps they’re easily missed.) Some are quite dark. I can’t imagine I’m the only one writing them though. Forum example (I’ll get to the others when I compile the list I was talking about) is Raishall. I’m adding an alternate path to it at the moment, but the game open to play at present is under 30k words and dark fantasy. Is it experimental? I don’t think so, unless you class the short story structure as experimental (or the flipped perspective I’m currently writing.)
Short form can be hard in some ways. One of those things is getting the balance right with the pacing vs storyline depth and breadth.
Well we are comparing one of the “classics” of literature to generally indie writers here. If we could all write classics we’d be doing extremely well for ourselves yes? (Although it might be noted that Lovecraft wasn’t a very popular author during his time and his work would be considered experimental since he deviated from gothic horror to the new system of often watery unknown terrors we know as lovecraftian horror today. Food for thought that sometimes when new ground is broken, it is not seen as popular until later. Can see that in a lot of “cult” status movies as well but I’m getting off topic.
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While I agree with this statement, short fiction is rarely an epic either, which I think the original complaint was about. I could be wrong though.
And now I want to see an interactive epic.
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A lot of good points, like I said initially, its almost all my personal opinion.
Yeah I don’t typically browse WIP on the forum much because I find it hard to accurately judge a story unless its finished and WIP are often change drastically between drafts and/or the finished project which is a bit of a mind fuck to me. I’m mostly referring to the works that have been published by Hosted Games. The shorter works that instantly come to mind to me are Arthur: the Retelling, A Sensei’s Story and the one that was a bunch of mini games (not sure if it was actually short but it’s what I think of when I think bite sized).
With this, I think my issue is more that in advertising, the works seem to suggest they’re about an epic adventure. Arthur: A Retelling is an “epic reimagining of Arthurian legend”, Dawn of the Sol Empire by description seems like a massive space opera, Mage Elite seems to be an entire war/rebellion story. I think with these they either seem to be implying they’re an epic when they’re not? Or they’re the first book in a series which isn’t conveyed at all by the description.
And this is fine, I just know people irl who associate a shorter word counts in Hosted Games specifically with a newer writer and less polished writing and thus are less likely to even consider them, although this could be due to hosted games being a bit soured by a few games that released before they were ready and before there were mandatory beta tests for games.
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I guess it depends on the definition of epic 
A lot of very well known literature which has made a big impact on society is relatively short (Say sub 60k words). Yeah if you’re writing IF, obviously that’s going to go up with the alternate sections of text, but if you were a good enough writer, potentally you could get a sub 100k game that could be considered epic. (Not saying I’m good enough to do so, but if you can get someone with the skills it’d definitely be possible 
)
But yes, shorter fiction does tend to be more limited in scope because of the word restriction but it doesn’t mean it can’t pack a punch if done right. With my Raishall example above, because it’s short I’ve deliberately attempted to keep the pacing moving right from the start (that’s my intention anyway, I’m not commenting on how successful I am at it). Anyways, you get thrown right into a situation, and the game lasts a single night. You can get flashes of the past, but they’re flashes you decide how to piece together.
Contrast this to if I’d written it long form. You might start with growing up, incidents that affected your upbringing and mind state, the initiating incident, leading all the way up to the night shown in the shorter game and what the fall out was. It would be a very different game. It’d move slower, a lot of the tension would be lost as you know each piece as it comes along and don’t have it kinda sprung on you as much. You go from spooky campfire story to “a life of” novel.
They’re different means of story telling, each brings their own strengths and weaknesses to the table. Anyways, yeah. Like you’re not going to get a lord of the rings experience in a 20k novel, but if you look at the way good shorter fiction tends to be structured, that isn’t necessarily an issue. It’s just going to come down to what you want to get out of what you’re reading as to if it’s to your taste or not
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A certain type of a long, narrative poem.
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It does. I’d argue that George MacDonald’s “Golden Key,” at less than 30k words, is more epic than most fantasy that’s given the name:
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks07/0700571h.html
But some people’s definitions won’t line up with that.
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Speaking of word counts, I think it’s important to point out that the average word count length for a Hosted Games game is 140,000 words. Out of the currently published 205 HG titles, 100 of them are above that number, 97 are below it, and 8 of them are listed as being exactly 140,000 words long.
I’m bringing it up because sometimes it seems that some folks in the ChoiceScript community view games that are several hundred thousand words long as being the norm when they’re actually the outlier.
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I think that’s because the overwhelming majority of the most popular games are not only above the average, but well above the average. There are a few gems on the lower end of the word-count scale, but there are many more that are poorly constructed and badly written, and I think people tend to forget that those exist.
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The problems with that are:
- It creates unrealistic expectations among the readers.
- It diminishes the accomplishments of authors who managed to write these massive games.
- It encourages the mentality of “word count = quality”, which has become a self-fulfilling prophecy at this point.
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Oh, I agree. I’m not espousing or defending the idea of word count as a measure of quality. I just understand why so many people see it that way.
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A list of a few sites where you can find shorter IF. I’m going to list mainly choice based IF here as it is most similar to choicescript, but if you’re into parser that exists too!
It’s super late here at the moment so I’m sure I’ve missed stuff. Feel free to add any interesting short IF you might have come accross
First classic COG which I’m sure everyone is aware of: Choice of dragon. It does a lot and is a fun little game with a low word count. Paradox factor (also rating high on the underated games poll) is only 30k words too.
(If we want to open the word counts up a bit to about 60k you also have ones like Zip, Aether, Broadsides.)
Bunnies! (Forum only) is a bit more experimental but shows what you can do with a bit of coding and not a heap of words.
https://sub-q.com/ Unfortunately no longer accepting submissions (hense the expired webpage certificate but everything is still playable) but published short story IF of no more than 5k words of prose (excluding code.) The only two I know of that are in CS there are mine (Lost ones and Ocean’s call), but there’s some really nice short story games on there. A few from other authors writing here (sorry if I miss anyone!)
Hannah Powell-Smith (Noblesse Oblige, Creme de la Creme, Blood Money): Teeth and Ice, Nine Moments in Fairyland, Swept Up.
Natalia Theodoridou (Rent-a-vice, Sin of Sires, An Odessey): The Tunnel
https://ifcomp.org/
While the comps are running, it is very easy to search for short games. If you want to search through the years for them now, use ctrl F and search for either “Half an hour” or “15 minutes or less”. (They don’t give word counts but if they’re under 30mins for a playthrough, most are likely short in that regard) If you want choice based rather than parser, pick “choice-based” tagged games. There’s so many, hard to choose a few but out of the short games I got to read this year I liked Use Your Psychic Powers at Applebee’s (under 15 min game.) Another is from 2018 called Animalia (half an hour). Salt in 2017 (under 15 mins). Black Marker (2017, under 15 mins.) 16 Ways to Kill a Vampire at McDonalds (2016). Anyways, there’s many more, these are just a few I can think of from memory.
Couple of random games from itch. No word count on these either, but I’d be very surprised if the word count was long.
(Hunting unicorn- trigger warnings).
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I assume @HarrisPS won’t mind if I post this link to their short pieces on itch.io. I haven’t played them all, but the ones I played packed a real punch in under 15 minutes. Two of them focus on Blaise and Delacroix from Crème de la Crème, and I’d love to see them updated and converted to ChoiceScript as DLC, but unless/until that happens, you can find them here.
I’ve also really enjoyed some of @Jacic’s work. Don’t get me started on Pawprints.
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I don’t mind at all! 
Several of the games there were also published in the wonderful sub-Q Magazine (which was edited for a while by Stewart Baker, who’s making The Bread Must Rise and Natalia Theodoridou, author of Rent-a-Vice, An Odyssey and Sins of the Sires). I need to update my itch page because I think I forgot to put up one of my favourites, Heretic Dreams, which was the first original writing I ever sold (the very first was a reprint, also in sub-Q!)
I very much recommend browsing everything from sub-Q. It was really important as a venue for IF creators to achieve publishing credits, as well as supporting creators financially at a time when commercial prospects for IF were even narrower than today.
Digression about its importance in IF history aside, sub-Q showcases loads of fantastic short IF in a wide variety of types and structures, and can introduce you to a variety of authors too, many of whom have made lots of other games (such as our own @Jacic!). It’s really worth a look.
Edit: haha I missed that @Jacic literally posted about sub-Q upthread! 
apologies for repeating! Heretic Dreams is my longest one on there and is pushing 5000 words but still has several paths through and endings. It was a great test of discipline to make it with so few words!
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