Hugo is very good for creating multimedia IF. I wish I had a little more control over its windowing and positioning ability, but it does fine (the limits are due to cross-platform considerations). It’s also very powerful when it comes to parsing, and when it comes to customizing things. If I ever write commercial IF, it’ll probably be in Hugo.
There isn’t any reason multiple people or groups can’t start commercial IF projects independently of each other. Even with collaboration, there isn’t necessarily a reason the same organization can’t sell IF made in different ways.
I always liked the general look of City Of Secrets. It looked like a professional game and stood out from most of the other IF. I’m sure Hugo can do a similar thing, though, or it did in Future Boy! anyway, but then I haven’t played enough Hugo games to say for sure.
I’m pretty sure neither Tads or Inform 6 can do anything similar. Inform 7 I don’t know.
Adrift 4 can’t but hopefully Adrift 5 will be able to, but it’ll be several months at least before we find out.
But for me, it’s not so much a case of which system would be the best one to try and write a commercial game in. I only know two systems and I only write games in Adrift. So Adrift it is for me.
I can get really excited about some new project like this, until I realize just how long it would take to write a sale-worthy game. In 1999, I started working on a massively multiplayer sci-fi browser-based game (at starlock.com/ if anybody cares to play – it’s free). Last year, after six years of development and less than 20% of the total project completed, I gave up. This was going to be a commercial (but self-published) game – the next big thing from Prowler Productions. Granted, this was far more ambitious than even a well-implemented and lengthy work of IF would be, but it drives home my fear that I could spend the next year or two working on a single IF game to market. If I could do it full-time – cash in my 401k, max out my credit cards, or something – It wouldn’t take so long. But, considering that commercial IF is likely to be only moderately successful without a publishing deal (I know – some disagree – this is just my take on it), anything like that would be foolish.
About how long do the rest of you think it would take to write a great “commercial” work of IF?
To a large degree, it depends obviously on the size of the game. The game would have to be big so people feel they’ve got their money’s worth - say 10 hours worth at a minimum. I seem to remember someone (it might even have been, Merk) said my Spring Thing entry took roughly 8 hours to finish. So a game about 20% bigger than that would be a reasonable starting point, though tested a lot more thoroughly beforehand. That game took about 3-4 months to write, not counting a few other games I worked on at the same time.
Of course, a commercial game would be tested a lot more than my Spring Thing game was so double the time it took to write.
Yeah, it took me right at eight hours. I’m not even sure a ten-hour game would be long enough. How long was Future Boy!? I’ve only played the demo version. I’m thinking maybe 20 hours would be a better “commercial” target. But again, that’s 20 productive hours – not just a bunch of roaming around with nothing to do, trying to solve a single puzzle by random trial and error.
A good example – and a game I played recently with my wife – is Dreamfall (sequel to The Longest Journey) on XBox. It’s an adventure game, but it has great pacing. The length comes from the story and content, not from stumping the player in certain areas. It really feels like everything you do makes progress. We spent hours and hours to complete it, and aside from some parts that required us to run back and forth between places, it really does move ever forward. We’re now playing the original (The Longest Journey) on PC, and while it’s a great game (and highly acclaimed when it was released, I think), it’s easier to get stuck. It has more “real” adventure game puzzles, where Dreamfall really didn’t.
I’m not sure where I’m going with this, except that I guess it all depends on what in the game is going to cause it to be longer – more content, or more stumping the player.
20 hours of gameplay would require a huge game. Really huge. To write and test and bug fix something like that, you’d be talking at the very least a year. The longest I’ve ever worked on a game was 6 months and by the time I finished that game, I was wishing I’d cut it short so I could have finished it sooner. Of course, big is better in terms of value for money. A short game, no matter how good, would just never be considered value for money because it would be over with too quickly.
It’s something to think on, I guess. Ideally, this is the kind of project best attempted by a group of people. One coming up with the ideas, one writing it, one testing it, one fixing the bugs/errors. But you’d need to be lucky indeed to find enough people willing to work on a game for a full year.
Yeah, a year of solid work is about what I was thinking, too.
But maybe that’s the wrong approach entirely. How about subscription-IF? Every three months, release an “issue” that contains several smaller games. This would make collaboration a lot easier. Instead of five people working on one 10- or 20-hour game each (which would be hard to coordinate anyway), how about five people writing a single 2- or 4-hour game? Although it becomes an ongoing commitment, maybe people would be more likely to pay a low “subscription” price, knowing they would get future games too. Think about having a trilogy split out over three issues, making people want more. Or, having the back issues available for sell (at a little over what a single issue would cost with a subscription). Subscription IF is an idea a friend of mine shared with me a couple years (if not longer) ago, and I forgot about it until now.
Anyway, it’s another way of approaching the commercial IF business model. And a little variety might make it more appealing to customers.
Edit: Another advantage would be publishing submitted works. They would need to be thoroughly reviewed, fixes recommended, re-reviewed, etc, but with the right publishing agreement, the issues could become even bigger and better. This would give other IF authors an outlet for selling and distributing their own games.
The only really successful ‘team effort’ game I can think of right off would be Slouching Towards Bedlam.
I don’t think IF lends itself very well to ‘team efforts’. The plot and the descriptions and programming are all tied too closely together. It’s not like a more typical type of game where one person can do the art, one the music, one the writing, etc.
Edit: Oh, and as for existing games that I, personally wouldn’t have minded paying money for, what comes to mind are Anchorhead, City of Secrets, The Warrior, the Princess, and the Bulldog, Max Blaster and Doris de Lightning Against the Parrot Creatures of Venus, (now say that ten times fast! ) and the Earth and Sky series.
Yeah, and that’s where Subscription-IF would really shine. Instead of one huge game, sell multiple smaller ones. Collaboration is moved to the top level, yet the resulting combined effort can be put together into one product. I really think something like that would have potential.
Commercial IF used to be written by teams of people, back in the 80’s. Some of the bigger games had dozens of people working on them. Of course, that was in IF’s commercial heyday when you could actually be guaranteed making money from it. Writing IF then was approached from the business point of view and companies might spend as much on testing a text adventure as they would on testing or writing a graphical one. I even remember reading somewhere (probably in the Inform manual) that Infocom hired a professional proofreader from a publishing company to proofread their games.
A group project would only work out if there was some agreement beforehand about who was doing what. I’ve been part of a couple of group projects with Adrift and both failed miserably. The “Pass The Taf” project died out because it was too disorganised: one person started the game, e-mailed it to someone else, they wrote their bit, e-mailed it to the next person, and so on. Before long, no one really knew what direction the game was taking, there were loose ends here, there and everywhere, and people started dropping out. Disorganisation killed it. The other project, I don’t think it even had a name, died out even quicker than that. Lots of debate over ideas, lots of people arguing that their idea was best and that should definitely be the one everyone went with… a definitely case of too many cooks spoiling the broth.
But an organised project might well work. If someone were to, say, draft out the entire game in as much detail as is needed to show people what they intended to do, and then carefully noted down what everyone else needed to be doing, it might work. The bulk of the work would be down to the implementor (for want of a better title) who would write the actual game. You could have someone else testing it as it was written, fixing bugs and whatever, proofreading, offering suggestions, and so on. Or, if you were really organised, you could split the game into several large chunks and have someone working on each chunk at the same time. It’d be a nightmare of a job to go through in the end and tie all the chunks together, and marry them up in style and content, but it might be possible.
That’s actually an interesting idea. Put out a game every few months, charge $5 for it, and make it part of a long-running serial. The games themselves would still have to be sizeable efforts - maybe 5 hours playing times - otherwise people would grumble that they weren’t getting their money’s worth. But I think serial IF could work. And, even better, it’s the kind of thing that would be doable. A huge project taking a year or more to complete is daunting; a smaller project, or series of projects, appeals to me a lot more.
Not just serial IF – subscription IF. Put multiple games on the same issue. They could be anywhere from one to three hours long (IFComp length), with maybe one “featured” game (longer) each issue. Collaboration then means each participant just needs to get their game done by the issue’s deadline.
The only problem I see with a subscription is that deadlines could mean having to rush and miss a few bugs, or force the author to cut out some cool thing they don’t have time to program, or something else that could disappoint/piss off a paying customer.
With a game that only has to be finished “when it’s finished”, you have as much time as you need for polishing.
True – but you could always push the release back a few days, or release early on a good cycle. Judging by the unpredictable delivery times for my game magazine subscriptions, I gather this happens a lot.
Something else that might be a good idea, especially if doing a subscription plan, would be to release the games as freeware after a period of time - say, a year or two. As long as there was always new content to sell, and older ones were “given back” to the community, it might satisfy everyone.
Since we’re talking about Commercial IF… I’d be happy to participate in such a project; however, it would need to be a collaboration with someone who can write and design. I’m a programmer first and foremost, and know my limitations - I’m not good at design and writing.
Occasionally, I do get ideas for games, but that’s where it stays: as an idea. No matter what, I can’t seem to flesh them out. That’s my weak point.
Writing IF as part of a team would be nice, especially IF of a commercial length and quality.
However, I digress a bit. Let me get onto the subject I was intending to write about.
I’m all for someone or someones from the community teaming up to create commercial-quality IF. And I’m not afraid of a failure in it, if the game is sold online, which doesn’t cause too much of an expense. However, I’m afraid it will fail, not because of it being a “text adventure”, but because of a failure to market it properly. Marketing the game is probably the most important part if going commercial.
Without marketing, who will hear of your game? With marketing, how many will be turned away because the game doesn’t have flashy graphics with a point’n’click interface? How many percent of those who hear of the game will be willing to part with money for it? These are just a few of the questions needing an answer before a commercial venture with a true business model could be considered.
You’re assuming that it would be possible to get together a group of people who can not only produce games of decent enough quality to sell, but also do it on a regular basis. It might well be possible, but I doubt it would be easy.
I think marketing is the key to it. Whatever Howard Sherman’s faults as a writer of IF, he’s very good at getting his games “out there” (i.e. in the public awareness). Even if no one likes them, and he’s regarded as the black sheep of the IF community, he’s still succeeded to some degree if people know who he is.
Setting up a website for the games would be a move in the right direction. Putting up a demo on the site to give people an indication of what the full version is like. Maybe even submitting the full version to a few online games sites to see what they think of it, and, hopefully, if they’ll consider reviewing it.
Of course, all the marketing in the world would come to nothing if we haven’t got a game to market.
True, Howard Sherman knows his marketing. Too bad he doesn’t know his implementing or writing as well.
This would definitely be a step in the right direction. In addition, it would be a good idea to send the complete game to some of the gaming magazines for reviews - IIRC, one of Sherman’s games has been reviewed in a magazine (getting a real bad score).
How true. And that’s where I’d fall short - since I can’t get an idea to gestate into a design for a game. The technical skills I’d have for writing one, but not the design or writing skills to make a good story with good text.
I think you might be right there. For some reason, I can never get all the various types of Inform 6 together in my mind. City Of Secrets was written in Glulxe which is some kind of variation of Inform 6 that allows larger games, right?
But, considering that commercial IF is likely to be only moderately successful without a publishing deal (I know – some disagree – this is just my take on it), anything like that would be foolish.
) and the Earth and Sky series.
That’s my weak point.