In my experience, the branching style that I most enjoyed was @Lucid’s The Lost Heir trilogy. For those who have not played it (you should!), the story branches in totally different directions based on key player choices, and all with very unique effects, and then the story returns to the main plot from that branch but carrying forward the unique effects from each branch. This system seems (in the Lost Heir games and my own WIP story) to greatly add to replayability and the availability and power of choice, while also being conducive to a main plot of more than adequate legnth.
For example, at one point the player must choose to go into hiding for story reasons in one of four locations. The effects of these places, and their own little sub-stories, are extremely unique! In onr place, as a Ranger character, you can get a pet wolf. In another, a pet griffon. In one, you can slay a vampire. But in another playthrough of the same one, you can join that vampire. It’s like mini-COG’s inside of a big COG, and it works brilliantly!
Not really. My comment was mainly directed to small-normal sized games. I think Choice of Rebels is bigger than that (more than 100-130k words), right? At least it feels bigger. In bigger games, at least to me, as long as a single play remains long enough (and yours, is) more branching becomes a plus, and not a problem. And besides, your game has a very strong game-ish mechanic, and that makes the smaller lenght a much less significant issue.
I was thinking it was around 300k words, 600k is really impressive. So that there aren’t more confusions, let me change my argument to: in order for me to enjoy a game, it has to have a minimum of 40k words per play-through, with at least 100k words in total (with the exception of amazingly writen games). If the total word count is above that, the better, because it means lot of replayability. But that is just me.
As do I. It is one of the most ambitious and best WIP in quite some time, which is saying a lot.
To be fair, in most IF the writing is of significantly lower quality. Don’t get me wrong, I’d happily pay full price for some of the stuff written by Paul Wang or Kevin Gold, but in the vast majority of cases, regardless of word count, the writing just isn’t up to scratch. IF writers can’t compete with the quality and quantity of traditional novels. Hell, with a lot of the recent games published by COG, I feel like I’ve been ripped off even with the relatively cheap prices.
Ironically, a lot of the recent titles published by CoG are from successful novel writers - I think even the majority of the “recent” titles were. Moreytown is but an example. If is a harder format to write in because the expectations and the format are based on both written novels and playable games.
I have other theories, such as the recent authors don’t have a firm grasp on mechanic system theory that explain the failings recently; until this latest release the actual writing has been decent and even lauded by the consumer. This kurfuckle with the non-binary npc is an exception for the vast majority of the CoG titles going back at least a year.
Most of the WiP threads I see have authors with ability to write; the deployment and implementation of the mechanics and scripting seem to be the sticking point for many. Perhaps the tools out there like the soon to be released one that @Fiogan mentioned in another thread will help. I know I am looking forward to it helping me.
It depends on your definition of “successful”. Most of the people who have written for COG are, afaik, relative unknowns as authors. Aside from poor writing, I do agree that a lot of authors seem to struggle with mechanics. Even the games which have otherwise solid prose are seriously hampered by poor overall execution (eg Empyrean, Eagle’s Heir).
Empyrean, Eagle’s Heir, Moreytown are all written by successful authors in other “writing” fields. One of the criteria to be published under the CoG library is you must already be a successful author.
I believe you are getting the “Hosted” and "CoG authors mixed up. @Cataphrak published in Hosted first, then once he was a proven author, he made Mecha-Ace (I believe) - that is the “usual” and established route established here. The exception to this was @Havenstone but I also believe he has published professionally so that might count towards the CoG publishing requirement.
I’m not referencing the Hosted titles because an established author gets a more favorable deal publishing under the CoG library with traditional perks such as advances. Thus most established authors would chose the CoG route over the Hosted route. Which means they are actually more restricted with all the authoring and editing requirements.
Hosted games are for people like myself that can’t point to previous experience - they are a trial by fire deal that opens doors both internally here and within the industry.
I’m aware of that. As I’ve said, I don’t consider any of them to be notable or successful authors (maybe the moreytown guy qualifies, although I haven’t heard of any of them). Successful by the standards of IF writers, sure, but otherwise? Debatable.
I only brought up Cataphrak because I really enjoy his writing. Nothing to do with what label he writes for.
Wow, I really should read that trilogy. I think @Lucid is one of the very best IF writers.
However, I am thinking, why not give a player all of the options on one playthrough? Why not having both a wolf and a griffin as pets, joining a vampire and maybe then slaying him?
When I was writing The Path of Light, I decided to put situations one after another, not instead of another. That leads to a lot of variables and changes in the values of variables, and some would even say a loss of replayability, but I really want to give the reader the best and longest experience in a single reading. I don’t want the reader to miss an interesting encounter.
I think most of the IF stories I’ve read were linear and think I continue writing in this way.
As for me, length doesn’t matter as long as I enjoy what I’m reading. So what if the story is “short”? Look on the bright side, there might be an upcoming sequel in the works for that story.
Also, I prefer shorter works but are of great replay value since I don’t think of IF as a novel but a game. (Choice extensive games are highly welcome.)
Having said that, IF is a different genre from other writing, so I guess it should be judged differently? I am under no illusions myself about being one of the best authors on this genre, yet I comfort myself in the thought that I might be at least on the same level as other interactive fiction written in the 80’s-90’s (recently I’ve been re-reading some of my old gamebooks, and the writing of many authors in CoG and Hosted games -in this last one clearly not all- is vastly superior).
Novels are different to writing drama, and both of these are different to IF (the style being clearly different, as each of them is typically written in a different person… 3rd person for the case of novels, “1st person” for the case of drama (for a lack of better way to express this), 2nd person for IF.
My own belief (and it is a belief, not based on any scientific measurement) is that some of the authors in CoGs, and even some in Hosted Games, might later be considered classics in this genre (in the same way as people like Ian Livingstone, Steve Jackson, Joe Dever, are considered classic of the old gamebooks, which are the predecessors of “modern” IF -as it is clear that modern IF Apps have a different style and measurement yardsticks than old gamebooks). Sadly, I’m sure that I’m not one of these authors, though people like Lucid, EricMoser, Cataphrak, etc, not to name some of the CoG staff, probably have a good shot at being remembered…
