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So first off, I'm new here, obviously. Hi. 

Throughout all my life, I've been quite a fan of CYOA games, but there's always something bugging me about the medium. It's tough to make a good CYOA game, I know, but the problems nonetheless bothered me. I hope I could share them here.

The most important thing about CYOA games to me isn't the writing. Though the writing is still relatively important, and I certainly would find bad writing annoying, there's another factor that matters to me more - the branching and the nonlinearity. And I'm not just talking about having "multiple paths" (something which I learned was rather easy to create, albeit create poorly). I'm referring to having that experience that you get to play a role in the story, I'm referring to you having the freedom to insert yourself and your personality into a larger world.

To take one example, the EndMaster story, Ground Zero, doesn't really seem to allow you the choice of playing who you want. You're forced into the role of an anti-social and ill-tempered man. That's not who I am. Instead, much like many mainstream CYOAs like Telltale's games as well as Japanese visual novels in general, you're forced to play a character and hope to god that you're able to provide some input in this person's decisions somewhere down the story. It feels a little detached, like there's a distance between me and the story, when I get this kind of experience. It doesn't feel like I've been transported to another world and I'm the one who gets to choose my own adventure. Instead, it's the author who chose the kind of life for me, and the kind of adventure for me.

On the other hand, the flip side isn't really that glamorous either. You might have known about this company making a series of CYOA games on Steam called "Choice of Games". They allow you to type in your name, age, and have quite a number of input to decide the kind of personality your character would have. Unfortunately, compared to CYOA on this website and visual novels in general, Choice of Games doesn't really have top-notch writing quality. The stories are mediocre and lackluster, and formulaic even. And with their recent notoriety of forcing feminism agenda onto players, their track record in terms of writing hasn't been the greatest.

So, between these two compromises, it's tough to find a CYOA that I really like. There were exceptions that really shined for me, such as the School Days visual novel.

When it comes to visual novels, my problem with them is that, while they often have well-written stories, they just don't really offer that much choice in the kind of person you want to be. School Days, on the other hand, is entirely different. You can be a total jerk, or you can be the sweetest guy. It's awesome. You get to play you, not someone else, and see what kind of outcome you'd have in this world. Having over 20 endings in the HQ edition, School Days promises to let you be the one who decide your fate through every action of yours. It's absolutely amazing. And while it doesn't have as amazing a story as the more linear CYOA like G-Senjou no Maou or The Walking Dead, it's actually quite a clever satire making fun of dating sims that let you date multiple girls without consequences. School Days has consequences when you date multiple girls, and boy, do the consequences get bad. Never after School Days have I found a more nonlinear visual novel ever since, with those of Key VNs (like Clannad and Little Busters) being the only ones that came close.

Then there's the Mass Effect trilogy. It's a step down from School Days, but the writing is indeed a step-up. And you also get to choose whether to be a smooth-talker or a jerk, a lot of options there. Although the endings are limited by a lot compared to School Days (3 ending as opposed to 21), Mass Effect's journey allows you to make decisions for yourself based on your personality. It's again, pretty fun to decide for myself whether if I want to be a jerk or not.

Then comes the Choice of Games CYOA. Like I said, it has the most customization options out there, but the writing can range from merely decent to mediocre to terrible. I do enjoy that my name,age, and race are the ones that pop up in the story though, as opposed to being known as "some guy" like in Ground Zero. But again, the writing needs massive improvement.

In conclusion, I guess what I would really want out of my CYOA games is the massive range of branches of School Days, the customization of Choice of Games stories, and the writing quality of either EndMaster stories or Mass Effect 1&2. I guess that's probably too much to ask, but the thing that really bothers me about CYOA being released nowadays, especially Telltale Games, is that there just isn't a lot of freedom in their 'adventures'. Usually, when it comes to the term, 'adventure', the first thing I would think of is 'venturing' or 'exploring'. This means that multiple routes and multiple ways to go about the story should be expected. I shouldn't be going only a single path throughout the whole story with some trivial options littered here and there. I should be able to decide whether if the Reapers would invade Earth, whether if I'm able to stop WWIII from happening in the future, whether if I'm able to make an impact through my many actions. Telltale Games lacks that personal connection because most of their major story events are unchangeable, Choice of Games will set scripted events in their stories no matter what you choose (Choice of Robots being a notorious suspect), and Shepard will always do the same thing in certain events whether you choose this or that in Mass Effect. My point being - choices have to matter. Don't sell your game as "Your choices matter" if they really don't matter that much in the grand scheme of things, in the big picture.

I guess in the end, it's simply impossible to make a good CYOA where you can tell five entirely different stories for the players, right...? Well, School Days did it. Spectacularly too.

Welcome to CYS~

Thanks. :)

I get what you're saying. With that in mind, realize what you're asking for... The biggest problem I see with the option you describe is the massive volume of writing. Each and every time a story has to have a branch, the writing will have to expand exponentially. The more actual choices that are written, the more story that has to be written that will not actually be read! Take, for example, The Adventures of Rory Thorn. In that story, you have real choices that direct the story in a completely different direction. However, because of that, when you read the story, there are about 13,000 words that you never see. In the end, you get a story about 3,000 words long, and most people complain that's too short. So what would it take to get the story up to 10,000 words or so? That would take writing from 40,000 to 100,000 words, most of which would never get read. That's a tall order that not many writers want to take on.

Well, it doesn't necessarily have to be writing. Yes, for text-based CYOA, it can be understandable that some limits have to be placed. But I do know of a couple of multiple-path games that use mainly graphics and animations to tell the various stories (like visual novels and other CYOA video games like Fable), and that's probably an easier task to accomplish, maybe...? Especially if it's done by official companies with time and money on their hands, as opposed to unpaid writers and indie game developers.

Welcome to the site.  Great commercial for School Days. XD

Seriously, I'd like to add to what Ogre already mentioned about the level of work necessary to create 21 entirely different branching storylines--

Ground Zero:  made by one man, in his spare time while working a full-time job, distributed entirely for free

School Days:  made by a team of developers, who didn't have to spend 40 hours a week on another job and were paid for all the time they spent working on it, and which made its parent company a lot of money

 

Well, don't get me wrong - I understand the constraints that come with being an unpaid writer. I'm not really blaming anyone on this site.

In fact, the thing I'm bothered by isn't 'indie' writers at all. Rather, I'm annoyed by the big companies like Bioware and Telltale Games, having all that profit and money and waste all that potential on something so... limited. They just fail to see the potential CYOAs can go.

Look at Undertale. Imagine a game like Undertale with the budget of Mass Effect. Holy cow. It would be like Chrono Trigger, but even better.

Every functioning neuron in my brain instantaneously committed suicide when I heard you liked School Days. I hope you're happy - getting all those back was a pain in the ass. 

The thing about that is it's really difficult to create even a halfway decent story with so many variables you need to account for. In all forms of CYOA literature, a sacrifice must be made in order to make something else thrive, be it the choices, the story, the quality or the individuality of the protagonist. 

Finding a CYOA where they can deliver everything in at least a 'good' way is pretty much impossible. That being said, I have one author who is currently making a game that might just take your fancy. The ironic thing is he's from CoG. 

Jim Dattilo, author of Zombie Exodus, is in the process of creating a sequel (though it's more like its own story) to his highly-praised aforementioned game. Said sequel contains so many choices in the introduction that it's almost been a year and he's still only just finishing off the first or second chapter. It screams the word 'choice' like you wouldn't believe, and the best part is his writing remains consistent throughout: the same, epic storytelling ability has so far been fluid and top-notch. Though you may not like the first game for the lack of choice, the second seems to be the story you're looking for. 

Oh, and welcome to the site, dude! :P

Thanks. I'll look forward to Jim's new game.

For the record, it's not the writing or story of School Days that I love (though I admit it's a pretty clever satire that soared over many heads), but the game design that I love. It's creative and unique for a visual novel. Unprecedented, even.

First of all, welcome.  I don't know how your post slipped by me.

Encouraging the most prolific writers is your best bet if you want better "quality" stories (or you could just write them yourself).  A little extra-sappy, over-the-top praise for the ones that you actually like wouldn't hurt, either.  Oh! ...and don't discourage young, inexperienced authors who are doing their best with what few tools they have at their disposal.  Just try to coax them in the direction that would benefit both them and you in the long run.  :)

First, welcome to the site.

Second, just to correct a misconception I see come up here now and then:

"To take one example, the EndMaster story, Ground Zero, doesn't really seem to allow you the choice of playing who you want. You're forced into the role of an anti-social and ill-tempered man. That's not who I am."

I think the mistake you're making here is assuming the character was ever meant or intended to be you, the person behind the screen. Second person is the traditional POV for CYOAs, but the protagonist in most stories isn't meant to be a generic blank slate that anyone can project themselves onto, and IMO that's a good thing. They're their own character with their own background and personality and the idea is to get into their head the same as you would for a book you were reading, only with the option of effecting what direction the story goes in at certain branchpoints.

Of course if you want the option to play 'yourself', that's valid enough, but my suggestion then is the same as it would be for anyone; write the kind of stories you'd like to see more of.