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This is more just out of curiosity than anything else. Most likely it has been asked before but I haven't seen a thread discussing it, hence this.

How long would you say is the average story-game on here? As for units... usually I go by word-count but I'm just generally curious so pages or choices or however you wish to count by is okay.

Well, the average would be brought down by the shitty ones. Forty pages, I guess, although I'd say most good ones would be much longer.

That actually brings up an interesting point:

Is there a specific length at which a story game, no matter how well-written, no matter how interesting the characters are, and no matter how captivating a plot it has, is simply too short to be considered "good"? Could the same go for being too long? (Or is it one of those "never enough" kind of situations?)

I don't think there's a point like that because there'll always be exceptions, but below 3/8 is almost never good. The best short games on this site like Snow and Deepwoods Flight are still 3/8 and 4/8, respectively. Realistically, it's super hard to compare a long story to a short story. A short story can be great as a fun little action piece or a gruesome horror, but those are completely different to one of the great long ones that gets you emotionally involved with the characters and brings you in. With length, no, I don't think it can be too long to be good. If a story can successfully enrapture me, I can't get enough of it.

The way length is calculated isn't terribly helpful because it caps out early enough that you could have two 8/8's with wildly different numbers of word counts and branches.

Though I don't think I've ever seen a decent story below a 3 in length, and with a few exceptions even 3s are questionable since you can reach that with a very small amount of content. I've got a story in my profile that's essentially flash fiction and even that came out as a 3. I'm honestly not sure I'd be able to tell a proper story with branches and a plot without pushing it over into a 4.

This may be in the forums/guides somewhere and I'm just missing it, but how does the length number system work? Is it by number of pages? Such as "between 10 and 20 pages means the story is a 2, and between 21 and 41 pages means it's a 3"?

The mods have said before that the length system, as well as the rating system, is secret so as to avoid exploitation, if memory serves, but it does involve the page number and word count is involved.

Okay, makes sense. Thank you for clarifying!

3 pages. If it's written incredibly well, it can be any length, but if there's no branching, it's not a storygame, and thus subject for deletion.