Commercial IF Survey

I decided to do this survey because of the discussion on commercializing IF and I thought the most obvious demographic for selling IF to, is us!

If you select the answer “Yes” to the question of “Have/do you spend money on buying IF?”, then it would be very helpful if you gave a rough estimate of how much you’ve spent on IF in total so far. It would also be very helpful to know how much money you spent on each individual piece of IF. Finally, it would be worth noting whether or not it was an actual purchase and/or a donation to the author(s).

EDIT:
I’d also like to add that if you have ways of improving the survey or have objections to it, then I’d love to hear those too!

EDIT 2: I also put this in the general design section instead of the general and off topic section. If someone could move it there then that would be great, thank you.

I bought Hadean Lands and Eczema Angel Orifice. I think they were each five dollars.

I bought Blood and Laurels first thing when I got an iPad.

I probably would have bought Nex (Storynexus) if I’d gotten more wrapped up in Fallen London.

I bought Lost treausres of Infocom and beat all but 3 games.

I bought 80 Days, Hadean Lands, Sunless Sea, and Sun Dogs at the very least.

…being that Sunless Sea can be considered IF, the same way that 80 Days can be considered IF, but it isn’t really.

EDIT - Let me rephrase the above sentiment somewhat. “Isn’t really” is too strong. They are games that probably grew out of such labels as “IF”, becoming their own thing, a very intelligent and highly successful mixture of mechanics, subverting labels. So I hesitate to call them IF - they are so many things! - and am not sure whether this discussion would profit in including these games as IF… unless the overall conclusion is that IF has to become 80 Days and Sunless Sea to survive commercially, which, well. y’know, could happen. I hope not, though.

I buy all parser games except Malinche Entertainment, and am sorry Textfyre ended the way it did (the only contrubution I could give was “I’m gonna buy all your games, guys”. I did, but one guy’s buck isn’t really enough :slight_smile: ). CYOA: I intend to buy To Be Or Not To Be, I’ve purchased every Inkle Studio game and intend to continue doing that.

80 Days won both Best Game and Best Story in the XYZZY awards! I’m happy to concede I have a much broader definition of IF than most, but I think you’re in the minority if you want to exclude 80 Days. Anyway, I don’t want to derail another thread with this. Games I have spent money on that some people might consider to be IF are:

Fallen London, Sunless Sea, 80 Days, A bunch of Tinman Games gamebooks (I don’t remember all of them by name), Kingdom of Loathing. I’m also going to buy Hadean Lands as I’m curious to check out a commercial parser game.

I would have spent over $100 collectively between these games, but I spent a lot more than that on Fighting Fantasy books when I was a kid - make what you will of that.

I bought most of the Scott Adams adventures for my Sorcerer in the 1980’s and then the Zork trilogy on CP/M floppys. Also got ‘The Lost treasures of Infocom II’ & 'Classic Text adventure Masterpieces in the '90s (both of these I still have). Too long ago to remember the price of these now. Not sure after that, I either got them from Bulletin Boards, cover disks of magazines or the internet. I don’t remember if I paid for any of them though - probably not.

Hadean Lands, Eczema Angel Orifice, Sunless Sea, 80 Days, Sun Dogs, and meant to buy Blood & Laurels but it was taken off the app store before I could. I think I may have spent money on other games as well, but that’s what I can recall off the top of my head.

I can recall buying Sunless Sea, A Choice of Robots, a couple of visual novels. Even Saints Row IV has a CYOA section. :slight_smile:

I think I don’t want to buy any parser game because English is not my native language and parser interface is already hard to crack. CYOA is all Twine now and these can be anything from bad to weird so I don’t follow that community.

So, naturally, I think there are two problems with commercial IF now: marketing and accessibility. The freeware games usually don’t give much thought to these.

I don’t exclude it, I just have a hard time including it. :slight_smile:

Possibly because the parser is what I love in IF, what drew me to IF, and the reason I’m here at all, and the reason I have a huge collection I am happy to share, and because any other form of IF bears only a passing interest to me. It’s easy to see how that would affect my judgement.

Or possibly because I find it transcends a label like IF, and has gone on to do its own thing. Which I find amazing, BTW.

Anyway. You’re quite right, I’m in the minority.

Same here! I think I had the whole collection, in Portuguese.

I spent plenty on IF back in the 80’s though I’ve no idea how much. I was a kid back then so technically it was my parents buying it for me as birthday and Xmas presents, though I’m sure some of my hard-earned pocket money went on it as well.

In recent years, I’ve purchased Hadean Lands, 3-4 Tin Man Games, 3-4 Choice of Games games, Future Boy, World’s Fair 1892 and a couple of Sorcery books on Inkle (though I haven’t enjoyed them much and won’t be buying anymore).

I had bought everything from Legend Entertainment and Software 2000 in the 90’s.

I never bought anything in recent years. Today’s games are small and cute, but not really comparable to the AAA games of the 90’s.

A commercial text adventure today that I would buy, would probably need a Kickstarter campaign and raise something like $100.000.

I forgot that I did buy Infocom adventures back in the day.

Kickstarted: Ice-Bound, Hadean Lands, Historical Williamsburg Living Narrative, Sunless Sea, [Top Secret], A House of Many Doors, Silver Tree, possibly a couple of others depending on how you’re defining IF.

Bought: Frankenstein, 80 Days, Wheels of Aurelia, assorted Choice of Games pieces, assorted Tin Man Games gamebook apps, 18 Cadence, a bunch of CYOA ebooks (most of which can be found in review on my website, though there are a few that I thought were sufficiently non-awesome that I didn’t bother reviewing them), Arcadia, TOC, various Fallen London content, the Photopia rerelease, various stand-alone Twine pieces from itch.io (more than I can now recall/reconstruct). I haven’t bought Patanoir because I played it already in free release and I doubt I would play through a second time; but I do buy nearly all new releases (that I hear of) in the parser space and a significant amount of choice-based work.

Got comped (either on an individual basis because I was reviewing, or as a free key because I was judging something in which it was entered): Sun Dogs, Elegy for a Dead World, The Reprover, PRY, assorted others depending on how you draw the line around interactive fiction.

Supported via subscription: a bunch of individual authors on Patreon, Sub-Q magazine, the Interactive Fiction Fund.

Recently (say post-Steam), I estimate I’ve spent $50 total on various IF things. Maybe a smidge more because some of those come from bundles and I’m not counting those. I’d certainly be happy to spend more but there’s only so much out there.
(add: forgot, I spent $40 for the Hadean Lands Kickstarter, so add that)

If you extend way back into the 80s, I bought about $1000 worth of commercial IF all the way up to Wonderland, also the Legend and Infocom collections when they came out in the 90s, Once and Future when it came out, some feelie sets like City of Secrets, and Losing Your Grip.

I’ve bought Blood and Laurels, and several visual novelish things–most prominently Analogue: A Hate Story, and a bundle containing Hatoful Boyfriend, Hate Plus, Long Live the Queen, and some others.

Also Dominique Pamplemousse (in a bundle) and Kentucky Route Zero, which I would classify as graphic adventures rather than IF, although hard-and-fast definitions make the baby Wittgenstein cry (sorry, I’m on a grading break). For that

I intend to buy Hadean Lands sometime when I can really settle down with some puzzles, which given how far behind I am on IFComp might be this summer. Though my playing habits tell me what I really want to buy next is Weird Worlds, which is not IF.

Anyway, the total is around $25 for the stuff in the first paragraph and $20 more for the stuff in the second paragraph, though I forget the exact prices everything was on sale for.

Oh, yeah, I don’t want to leave this out: I’m backing a handful of people on Patreon and have a Sub-Q subscription. This is just as crucial a way to think about paid IF as Hadean Lands, 80 Days, etc., and it might be telling that I blanked on this initially when considering where I’ve spent money on IF.

Bought: Choice of the Deathless, 80 Days, The Right Side of Town, Tentacles Growing Everywhere.

Kickstarted: Distress.

I almost hate to ask for fear of making this my niche, but what were your thoughts on Tentacles Growing Everywhere? Were you glad you paid for it? (Feel free to PM me if you’d rather not get into price etc. on this thread.)