Choice of Games, Drama Part 2

[Helmut23]

To be fair with Hearts Choice, people need to be applying/proposing games for it. And I don't think it's as easy as it is with Hosted Games? I'm not surprised that for a branch focusing on romantic stories, there are more female-locked protagonists in their titles. Even if the romance in said titles are lacking compared to the romances in Hosted Games lol. Not defending Mary, of course, considering I'm still thinking about this comment she made.

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Is she sure that she understands why SotS wasn't popular? Because in my opinion, my issue is that the writing wasn't that bad but it wasn't a good game. This feedback document that I found on Steam summarises a lot of my own thoughts. I'm not a stranger to toxic positivity and I prefer it over the alternative, but there's a thing as too much. So yeah, I haven't been able to shake off the feeling that this is a backhanded remark lmao but I might be reading too much into it. The vibes are just off imo I found some of the things she said to be immature, especially in response to James' post before it got removed.

Hasn't Jason also go on tumblr and bothered readers who made posts about their forum bans too? Wish I could find some receipts of that. I understand protecting your brand but bruh that's a bit much lol they wouldn't have this many issues if they'd allow criticism about their moderation. It's embarrassing to see.

What makes Sins of the Sires not liked? Also i'm not surprised mods and other high in place on a forum are assholes, that tend to be the default way too often

 

[melusina]

What makes Sins of the Sires not liked? Also i'm not surprised mods and other high in place on a forum are assholes, that tend to be the default way too often

I've seen a variety of reasons, some of which are brought up in the google doc that I linked. You can also find some decent criticisms in the steam forums and cog forum thread for the game that go into more detail than "the writing sucks and the story sucks."

Reasons for disliking it include: There's a lot of telling but not enough showing to back it up. Too many choices but little to no impact. Not enough time spent with the characters to care. Feels like it ends abruptly and doesn't deliver what's promised on the store page. The writing isn't great (a popular example being the absurd moment where a character at the start asks the MC for their pronouns after having attacked them). Compared to the VtM games that came out before it, it didn't hold up as strong. It also has a lower word count but imo games don't need a million words to be good and sometimes it ends up being a detriment.

Personally, I liked the prose but I think my issue was the pacing. I wished we had more time with the characters, and I didn't feel attached to anyone by the time **** started to hit the fan. I vividly remember being stunned when it ended because I thought I had just reached the climax, but no. That was it. I believe the author received similar feedback with their previous work (which also got a nebula nomination). Jason claims to forward feedback to the author but I've been wondering just how much he actually shares and how much he censors.

True, but I feel like there's more weight to shitty moderation when it's a forum that is run by the company itself and fosters their audience. I just expected more professionalism from them, I guess lol.

 

[BronyForThePony]

Yeah, I see the hypocrisy that you're pointing out now.
And same tbh, the only reason I played SotS more than once was because I thought it ended too soon and I must have missed something somewhere lol it felt like the weakest VtM title in their catalogue. Which is a shame because I remember being the most excited for it (totally not because we could play a Malkavian... lol).

That was a riot lmao and not even the first time he's done that to an author on a different social media platform! Loved how James handled that, and not even surprised since he was as civil as can be when he was up against Mary in that thread. Shame she lacks reading comprehension. Going through some of the tumblr replies, seems like a handful of authors who switched to Twine also have their grievances with her.

I'm honestly half expecting Jason to show up here or on the new subreddit at this point. Then again, I imagine everything will just blow over again until the next outrage and they lose another two authors. He and his minions sure love ignoring complaints and pretend everything is a-ok in their lala land, bleh.

Excuse me dear citizen, but new subreddit?

 

[melusina]

Excuse me dear citizen, but new subreddit?

Yep! It's r/IFHub
The author of Kingdoms and Empires is one of the moderators and linked it in their recent update post. It's meant to be a space where we can talk about choice games (and twine) without worrying about biased moderation/censorship from the cog staff.

 

[ric.chaz]

I think that the relics game may have been the biggest author they have lost so far. Mainly because he replied to the author. I don't remember him doing this before.

 

[xenoboy]

Was this after releasing it for free?

I guess so. But he didn't breach contract. He sent an email to Jason revoking their permission to publish.

 

[xenoboy]

Yeah, I see the hypocrisy that you're pointing out now.
And same tbh, the only reason I played SotS more than once was because I thought it ended too soon and I must have missed something somewhere lol it felt like the weakest VtM title in their catalogue. Which is a shame because I remember being the most excited for it (totally not because we could play a Malkavian... lol).

That was a riot lmao and not even the first time he's done that to an author on a different social media platform! Loved how James handled that, and not even surprised since he was as civil as can be when he was up against Mary in that thread. Shame she lacks reading comprehension. Going through some of the tumblr replies, seems like a handful of authors who switched to Twine also have their grievances with her.

I'm honestly half expecting Jason to show up here or on the new subreddit at this point. Then again, I imagine everything will just blow over again until the next outrage and they lose another two authors. He and his minions sure love ignoring complaints and pretend everything is a-ok in their lala land, bleh.

I hope people make another publisher for CYOA games, honestly.

 

[ric.chaz]

I hope people make another publisher for CYOA games, honestly.

They would probably need to make a different format that choicescript. I think choceofgames ownes that.

Twine is a popular alternative. Not my cup of tea though.

One thing I respected about that site was that it was free to publish for authors(I think). They have published people that were probably not going to make them money. They have lost money, but balance that with the games that make lots of profit.

It's so bad the powers that be had a power trip. They had a good product.

 

[xenoboy]

They would probably need to make a different format that choicescript. I think choceofgames ownes that.

Twine is a popular alternative. Not my cup of tea though.

One thing I respected about that site was that it was free to publish for authors(I think). They have published people that were probably not going to make them money. They have lost money, but balance that with the games that make lots of profit.

It's so bad the powers that be had a power trip. They had a good product.

Isn't ChoiceScript open-source? Well, I do know that they at least have a license where you can publish any other way, and CoG only gets 25%. I guess someone could do an open-source project around it, just like people are doing of Victoria 2?