Choice of Games Is Hiring Writers

choiceofgames.com/looking-for-writers/

At Choice of Games LLC, we’re looking for authors to write more interactive novels and multiple-choice games, in the style of Choice of the Dragon and Choice of Broadsides. Our games are like “choose a path” gamebooks, but longer, deeper, and richer.

We’ve developed a simple programming language called ChoiceScript for designing multiple-choice games. Writing games in ChoiceScript is easy and fun, even for authors with no programming experience.

Getting Published

When we publish your ChoiceScript game, we’ll make it available in the following ways:

  • Our website
  • iOS app for iPhone, iPad, and iPod
  • Android app
  • Amazon Kindle Fire
  • Downloadable app on the Chrome Web Store
  • Windows app on the Windows Store (Choice of Games label only)
  • Mac app on the Mac App Store (Choice of Games label only)

Two Labels: “Hosted Games” or “Choice of Games”

Choice of Games LLC has two different labels for distributing interactive fiction. We publish some games under our premier “Choice of Games” label and other games under our “Hosted Games” label.

Anyone can publish a game under the “Hosted Games” label. If you’ve finished a multiple-choice game written in ChoiceScript, just attach your “mygame” folder to an email and send it to us at hosted-submissions@choiceofgames.com. We do require our approval for any games that we host and release, but mostly that means we check to make sure that the game will run reliably (by running our automated tests), that the game is written in clear English, that the game doesn’t infringe other people’s intellectual property (we can’t host a Harry Potter or Star Wars game), and that the game is not highly offensive. We also reserve the word “Choice” in game titles for games distributed under the “Choice of Games” label.

You’ll also need to provide your own “cover art,” suitable for various icons, splash screens, and promotional images on app stores.

Under the “Hosted Games” label, you’ll retain full IP rights on your game; your work will receive a 25% royalty on the revenue we receive from distributing your game. (This includes money from advertising, in-app purchases, direct sales where applicable, etc.)

Established authors can publish games under the “Choice of Games” label. Authors with published works to their name can apply to write and publish a game under the “Choice of Games” label.

We’re particularly interested in seeing pitches from authors with game-writing experience, but we’re also happy to see the CVs of fiction authors. At our discretion, we may invite authors who have published games under the Hosted Games label in the past to pitch subsequent games for the Choice of Games label.

If you’re interested in writing a game under the CoG label, please email us your CV to cog-submissions@choiceofgames.com; if we decide to move forward, we’ll ask you to send us some game ideas.

(Please do not send us a pitch before we ask for one, even if you have a really great idea. Just send us your CV.)

At the “concept” stage, we’re looking for a proposed title and a one-paragraph description of an idea that you would like to develop into a full game. It should give us a sense of the game and why someone would want to play it. We’ll ask you to send us three or four of them. Your game concepts allow us to see how you’re thinking about interactive narrative. They also allow us to see where your work might fit into our current schedule of projects.

If we like one of your concepts, we’ll invite you to turn it into a full outline for a multiple-choice game.

If we accept your outline, we’ll offer you a contract, under one of the following terms:

  • 25% Royalties: We’ll pay a $500 advance when we accept your outline, plus a $2,000 advance when we accept your finished game. You’ll retain full IP rights to the story and characters in your work, granting us an exclusive license to publish your multiple-choice game electronically.
  • Work for Hire: 0% royalties; Choice of Games LLC gets the IP rights to your game. We’ll pay a total of $10,000 over a series of milestones. (Not all game concepts qualify for this plan, so please let us know early on which plan you’d prefer.)[list]
    [*]Outline accepted: We’ll pay $500 when we accept your outline.
  • First chapter: We’ll pay $1,000 when we accept your first chapter.
  • 10K words: We’ll pay $1,000 after we accept 10,000 words of ChoiceScript.
  • 25K words: Well pay $1,500 after we accept 25,000 words of ChoiceScript.
  • Finished game: We’ll pay $4,000 after we accept the finished game–a minimum of roughly 60,000 words, where the player sees a minimum of 20,000 words on each playthrough of the game.
  • 90 days after publishing: We’ll pay $2,000 ninety days after the release, or 150 days after acceptance of the finished game, whichever is first.
    [/*:m][/list:u]

(Note that this is a short, non-binding description of our contracts. Please read the full contract for the legal details.)

Other Advantages of the “Choice of Games” Label

  • We’ll provide cover art.
  • A professional proofreader will review your work.
  • We’ll make your work available on all platforms, including the Windows Store and the Mac App Store.
  • We’ll advertise your work online.
  • Only CoG label games are highlighted on the choiceofgames.com home page.
  • “More apps by this developer.” On the app store, when users view “more apps by this developer,” CoG label games appear there; Hosted Games do not.

If you have questions about the submissions process, email us at submissions@choiceofgames.com. We’re looking forward to seeing your work!

Are you only looking for games in English, or are you open to other languages as well?

We currently only publish in English.

so much for choices :laughing:

Regarding the “Hosted Games” option, and sorry if this sounds rude, but 25% seems like a low percentage. (I’m only comparing it to ebook publishing royalty rates). I’m sure it’s taking into account the work you have to do on your end, of course. Are sales (and advertising, etc.) figures for existing Hosted Games available?

Conversely on the “Choice of Games” label, a dollar every 6 words is pretty awesome. By “published works”, does that just mean authors that have released any manner of IF?

If there’s any doubt, these are not the kinds of responses that belong on this forum. Honest critique is welcome, taking potshots is not. I would like to point out that it hasn’t just been one person taking potshots. Trollish behavior makes it easy to respond in kind, but that’s not the kind of atmosphere the mod team wants here.

I’ve logged a forum warning for namekuseijin as a result. Ignoring these warnings is grounds for locking and/or banning of an account.

Sorry to hijack your thread dfabulich, back to you.

The Hosted Games deal is the same as the Choice of Games royalty deal, except that the Choice of Games royalty deal offers an advance. We think we can at least quadruple your revenue vs. self-publishing elsewhere, but it’s hard to prove a counterfactual.

Our all-time bestseller Hosted Game has made over $20,000 in revenue after Apple/Google/etc. take out 30%; the author has received over $5,000. The second best seller is still just under $20K, I think. (EDIT: Oops, I forgot to check one of the reports. They’re both well over $20K now.)

In Choice of Games, all of the games we released in 2013 have earned over $10,000, so all of the royalty games are now paying royalties. Games that get good reviews seem to have a long shelf life. For example, Choice of Kung Fu (December 2012) made over $600 in revenue last month. We believe that almost all of our CoG-label games will eventually earn over $40K.

Sounds pretty impressive that you can make so much money from writing games at a time when there are so many free ones out there. Admittedly, it’s not really enough to quit your job and do full time unless you could be guaranteed very healthy sales, but I wonder if that might not become a reality in years to come.

Impressive indeed. And I do wonder if this rekindled mass interest in IF is another step in the fabled second video game crash? I mean $20k in IF now is something I wouldn’t have imagined.

the AAA crash is already happening (said the guy recently laid off by a AAA company). I live and network in the Boston area, and my twitter feed has been a slow-burning mass job elegy for the past couple of years.

That said, video games aren’t going to have the same kind of depression they did before, IMO. The industry doesn’t look the same as it did when the first crash happened, and the market forces are not the same either. The video game industry isn’t a single market any more; it’s many smaller ones and a couple of extremely large ones. Games aren’t niche; almost everyone plays them.

Anyway I have a lot of thinks on this but I’ll spare an informational thread from them. :wink: