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I'm just wondering if anyone has any opinions on co-authorships. Do the pros outweighs the cons?

Probably should be in writers workshop.

But I mean the evidence is there. Look how many good games there are with co-authors. There are maybe four.

It works out to about twice as much work as just writing the game yourself, there are going to be glaring style differences, and only one person ultimately has control over the entire thing when it comes to edits/publishing/whose name is even on it/outright deletion.

I think perhaps it could work, but mainly if one person were doing the writing and the other were working with things like scripting and paths. Most people really have very different writing styles, and that always seems to be pretty obvious, especially in shorter stories.

Pros:

• Feed ideas off of each other
• Depending on length of story, may take less time
• Fun and more entertaining

Cons

• Communication and distraction may take up a lot of your time.
• Writing styles will differ unless you find a way to merge them (I'm attempting this with a friend off-site).
• If one person slows down, the other will have to make up for it or let the story die out.
• Effort may be split differently, but point rewards are still divided (mostly) equally
• Branching styles may differ
• Scripting and writing may interfere with each other (which would suck horribly)

The Other World has a co author. It's one of the best stories on the site. But you need to really communicate with co authors for it to work.

Wwwwwait it does??!!???

TOW was not written with a co-author. Soundstorm was added long after (years I believe) the story was published. KF and SS were, from rumors, trying to convert the storygame to another medium until they quit. (It might have been an app or COG, I can't quite remember nor cared enough to remember.)

Achilles, on the other hand, was actually co-authored (unless you're on of those conspiracy theorists that believe Chase and Steve are the same person).

I figured Chase wrote them and Steve just added the gay undertones in the stories and then took credit for all of it because Chase is an antisocial asshole who doesn't interact with this fine community.

Chase had to do all the scripting. (This is the proof he's a real person because Steve has proven himself hopelessly retarded in that area.) Not sure how much actual writing he did, but at some point during the sequel he bailed entirely and Steve had to get into his account or something to finish it.

I haven't actually worked on a story before until now, and the one I'm doing, I'm a co-author. We've been working on and off on the story, progressing it as we design the characters more and more in depth on Google Docs. My opinion? I think co-authoring is a fun experience where more ideas can be shared amongst partners, which can give the story more potential.

I think the October contest was a good indicator it just doesn't work out most of the time.

Welp, I think the verdict is:

Co-authorship is too hard to pull off. Good night.