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Giving a defined name or having no given name at all. For example. "You introduced yourself" or "You smiled and told Heidi you name" OR "Sam shouted your name from downstairs"

Since anyone reading is technically the main character...

IDK, as a reader, I would prefer to not have a given name because it never feels like me and I like when it does. I always prefer the games where you can choose your name and alter your character. I know others prefer to have a given name of the person they are "controlling". I was just curious as to what people on here who read story games think.

It doesn't matter too much to me, though currently the coding to allow a reader to choose their own name is a bit of a pain from what I've heard, so writers usually just avoid it.

Though maybe the name coding can be made easier to do in future site updates. (Stay tuned!)

Leora pulled it off and I'm gonna crack open her game and steal the code.

Not sure how referencing the name within the text would go with that route though, javascript is gibberish.

I almost made a post telling you exactly how to copy paste like everyone else in the world who isn't middle aged and against technology but CYS wasn't displaying the post properly so oh well. Ask BD.

I almost made a post telling you to choke on a bag of dicks but...oh wait, looks like I actually did do that. Oh well.

My personal preference and what's done pretty commonly here is for the character to have a name and background and all that established by the author. To me it just allows for a better character overall since the author's focus is on developing them and mine is in getting inside their head just like the protagonist in a book. The thing with a more customized character is that more becomes less...the choices always wind up as purely cosmetic ones at best and at worse the writing becomes a generic template for swapping a bunch of copy and pasted scripts around that don't really deepen the experience any and just mean you're spending time on that instead of the actual writing.

That said...that all goes a bit beyond a name obviously. Letting the player enter a name can be done in a simple but tedious way within the editor, or by the use of javascript. (Although I'm not the one to ask about the latter.)

You could also just never refer to it, but sometimes it is more natural to just say someone's name and you'll have to find a way to dance around it and keep it natural sounding. And as for me, again, I like to have some kind of name for a character. For that matter I've always heard it said that the way to identify a good character in a story is whether you can still remember their name a few weeks after you finish reading. I'd rather not think on the adventures of generic nameless person.

Maybe another idea would be to give them some kind of title? Like the way Endmaster has the Eternal or the Necromancer.

Using a title or something similar is actually my preferred way in writing or reading.

Planescape: Torment probably did it best when you were literally called "The Nameless One"
 

I often like it when the story isn't about me, so the main character would have their own name. But if the story is written such that I am the hero, I like the first one you listed.

Either's fine, but you have to take into account that it can be EXTREMELY difficult to write a game in which the protagonist's name is never mentioned. Still, Endmaster pulled it off with Eternal, so it's definitely doable. ^_^

And in some games of course a name is easy to do without, like if the goal was just to solve puzzles or something.

Sort of related to the theme of this discussion, @Chris113022 made some good points in the Mean Girls thread that got lost in an entertaining rant and a bunch of insanity:

"Now I ask this question: does it serve the story to include all these meaningless gender options that just change what people call you when referring to you by gender? Does it add anything to the story to include all these bland and interchangeable romance options who are just there for your character to make sexy time with? Is the story really better when you include all these characters whose sole defining characteristic is being black/Muslim/Asian or trans/non-binary/gay/whateverthefuck? The answer to that is a big fat fucking no."

Oh hey, Mizal quoted me and tagged me. That's neat.

Anyway, I guess I'll talk about my opinion on the topic at hand. I've always been sorta mixed on the idea of allowing a player to choose their name at the beginning of a story. The code to do it is pretty complicated if I recall correctly, so I've never bothered. Most of my stories, including the deleted ones, keep the character's name a mystery but usually they're always male and most of the time have a set background, so it's basically half Ageless Faceless Gender Neutral Culturally Ambiguous Adventure Person, and half established character. I'll probably try to shake it up a bit with my next story by giving the protagonist a name along with a more fleshed out personality, but time will tell if I stick with that.

As for what I prefer to read about? Well, my opinion is pretty similar to Mizal's: I like the main character in CYOAs to have a name and be their own character, but the idea of a character being known by a title instead of their name is a good workaround and one I'll probably steal someday.

I like to look at it abstractly.  To me, it comes down to the intent of the writer.  Is it the telling of the player's story, where the player just steers along the character, a conduit for the player's perspective, to interpret/process the situation?  Or is it the telling of the character's story, where the player might guide the character along, but the character does the interpretation and the player is just going along for the ride.  In the former, I prefer customization.  In the latter, I prefer a fully formed character.  The reason being I like to be taken out of my own experiences and see how someone else would react to different situations and stimuli. 

This is all preference and there is no concrete distinction on how either way would have to be played.

Indeed.

The original Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books were based on YOU being the character. YOU were the one making choices, and things happened to YOU. But that was the primary point. And I think those books and that idea are great -- for one type of writing.

I think that type of writing is limiting, also, a great deal. I feel like you can only write one type of story there, without a lot a variety. I have trouble with that writing to develop a character and have the character change -- after all, the reader knows they are the main character and they haven't changed! I find it harder when YOU are the character to use emotions in some ways -- how do I (as the author) know what YOU (as the reader) are feeling? I can't convey that as effectively as I can when the main character is NOT you. So indeed, creating a different character and reading about it does give more depth and options, in my opinion.

A defined name. I prefer to step into a character than it be me in that situation, and thus I'd prefer to have a new name for the protagonist.

Thanks for the responses, everyone. It helps a lot