Hey Hi, I'm an adult novel based game developer, and here I am looking for a "writer" for my game, if anyone is interested, please comment or ming me at my mail [email protected] I can pay you also!!!!
Hi there! I have a couple of questions that I think all of us writers reading this would appreciate hearing the answers to: Is this your first video game? If not, I'm sure we'd all love a link to your back catalogue, so we can see what style of games you like to produce. What demographic are you designing your game to appeal to? Kinks? Tone? Scenario? Genre? What's your monetization model? Is it a fixed-length project like something you'd see on Steam, or more of a Patreon-funded affair where the goal is to keep adding new content for as long as possible? I ask because this will affect the time commitment we authors would need to set aside for you in order to accept the gig. Would we be making up the story from scratch, or is there established content/lore/IP we'd be building off of? How important is interactivity to your game? Is the story "tall" (a few long branches) or "wide?" (lots of short branches) Is the art in your game Daz Studio, anime-style CG, or something else? (This affects tone more than you'd think, and may help writers decide how well their writing style/comfort zone matches your game.) Literally anything else you can tell us about the scope, scale and nature of your project. This is important: If you don't know yet, it's better to say you don't know than to make up an answer on the spot. These are big decisions that will affect the future of your game. If you know the answers, then great! Let us know. But if you're not sure yet, it's perfectly fine to defer the decision until you check in with the rest of your team, or to leave it up to the writer. (Though if your artist and your writer disagree on something, it's always faster, cheaper and easier to get the writer to change their text to match the art, rather than the other way around. ) Thanks, and good luck!
This is kind of interesting, since a different user pinged a few authors including myself yesterday in a conversation about an opportunity to write for a different game on the app store. Coincidence, or is CHYOA starting to get some genuine interest from projects in search of writers? There is a lot of talent around here, though most people I talk to don't seem to be aware of the site. Just curious how word is spreading.
Not a coincidence, but probably not talent, either. An increase in amateur developers - perhaps those that have self-taught Python or JavaScript, or learned tools like RPGMaker - will lead to an increase in demand for complementary skills in collaborative projects. The growth of platforms like Patreon puts money into play where it otherwise wouldn't be a factor, so it's easier to pay artists and writers instead of making it a community effort. I can't say I've ever seen a CHYOA writer of a professional level.
CHYOA is a weird beast, because it's almost build from the ground up to attract and reward amateur writers in various ways. I consider this a feature, not a bug. The way you transform amateur writers into professional writers is by giving them feedback, and eventually, when they earn it, money.
It has been nice, and I appreciate that I have been able to make some money from writing on here. I have also been pushed to write stories much longer than my actual limit, with an audience bigger than my friends or creative writing class. However, I wish it was possible to make a living from writing on this site. I don't know about the rest of you, but I feel like my stories are crying babies, and if I don't feed them, these ugly, miserable things die.
Everything dies if you don't keep feeding it. That's normal. What's unique about CHYOA is if you DO keep feeding it at regular intervals, it's guaranteed to get time on the front page again. You can't say the same about most other social media websites, where the algorithm does whatever the algorithm's gonna do, and you either float to the top or get buried in obscurity. That said, CHYOA is a small site. As long as it remains small, at best you'll be a big fish in a small pond. The obvious answer, once you've honed your writing ability and start to feel confident, might be to move on to a bigger site, or even a more lucrative medium. Text games on Steam, perhaps. Or maybe Visual Novels. Ebooks. Whatever. As I say this, I realize that this might be part of the problem-- writers moving on to greener pastures as soon as they start to become seasoned. I've noticed some people occasionally plugging their other accounts, and running accounts across multiple adult fiction sites simultaneously might in fact be the best approach. But of course, it's more work to maintain, and all creatives eventually settle on a platform and neglect the rest of their babies, as it were. The other solution would be to link to your CHYOA on other sites, essentially advertising both your work and the platform, and potentially drawing in new users. Generally, though, that's backwards. The smut you write is supposed to be the draw, in the first place-- the top of the funnel. The bottom is wherever online you get paid. Other content, sites, or even mediums won't change this fundamental dynamic, but diversifying your skills and your social media presence might help show you where your true talents, passion or audience lies. Just keep feeding those babies, though. Without feeding your babies, you have nothing.
Maybe, but CHYOA truly is best for specific kinds of writing and really fosters collaboration better than any other site I've worked with. Ebook and other long-form writing sites can sometimes feel like pitching it into the void. Game writing is just a whole different animal in my experience. Unless you, the writer, intend to drive the entire production then you'll be at the whim of the guy who is. And typically these are driven by a Patron development model, which means it needs to be released on a consistent schedule and written in a specific order. This can cost you down the line if you suddenly have a great idea that you can't implement without upending some underlying game mechanic.
What does this even mean? If professional simply means that they publish for money (Amazon, Smashwords, etc.), or even that they publish enough to live on, then I assure you that professional writers are nothing special. Many are noticeably inferior to writers on this site, and many here craft content that would easily sell for money if published on other platforms.
Well, yes, that's a consequence of writing in the erotica genre and of self-publishing. I guess I could have worded it better as a writer at a level of professional interest. What I mean is that someone with the relevant skills and experience to know what they need from a potential writer - a pertinent example would be someone from a functioning indie game studio - would not actively seek any CHYOA user I know of based on their portfolio on the site. Though there no doubt exists one somewhere on the site, I've never read a chapter that was not clearly of insufficient quality to, for instance, be accepted by a publisher. For this reason, I strongly doubt that CHYOA has developed any sort of reputation for talent.
Ah, maybe. It's subjective, that's for sure. Ironically, despite CHYOA having (limited) built in game-mechanics available for stories, most stories here seem designed as simply collaborative stories, rather than actual games, so I will at least agree that if they are looking for writers experienced in writing game-type branching dialogue, they might not have any better luck here than anywhere else.
