Category: interactive fiction

Dear Emily,

I am a professional writer–22 years plus of making my living from my pen–who is just now sticking my toes into the world of IF… I recently had a chance to revisit the world of IF in drawing up a planned project for a grant proposal. It’s been many years since I’ve played in this world, and it’s changed monumentally. Your blog has been tremendously helpful in giving me an overview.

I haven’t yet, however, come across an entry from you where you really get into the nuts and bolts of which engine you consider the best for independent writers hoping to create a commercially successful game as a  phone app.

Like a lot of newbies to this form, I don’t come from a programming background, and have little facility with coding. After trying Adrift and Inklekwriter, along with a couple of others, I settled on Quest, but I’m finding the lack of a GUI and the amounts of coding that are expected pretty daunting.

Before I jump down yet another half-dozen rabbit holes to try to find the best solution for me, I thought I’d ask you. What, right now, November 2017, would you recommend as the best IF engine for creating content for a phone-based app, that would work best for experienced writers with little coding experience?

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So the short answer to this is: I don’t know of any solution that requires no programming or technical savvy, but that will let you write free-concept, text-only IF and sell it on mobile, with reasonable odds of making money, and without going through anyone else’s platform.

“Commercially successful” does introduce technical requirements, because that does imply that you’re going to need attractive, non-generic screenshots, and that it has to be an app; merely being able to play the resulting IF on a phone, e.g. as browser-based IF, is not enough to meet the asker’s criteria.

Furthermore, most genuinely commercially successful IF has the advantage of an experienced studio putting it together (Big Fish’s Lifeline series, Choices), a really attractive front end/additional gameplay (inkle’s stuff), and/or a brand concept that has been developed with a bunch of titles over time (Choice of Games, Episode, Choices again).

Also, I consider “commercially successful parser” to be such a hard target that I’m not covering it here. And it’s harder to get solid results out of a parser game unless you’re willing to code more. So I think we can rule that out.

However, there are a few approaches that I consider currently realistic, given the right combination of circumstances.

Continue reading “Mailbag: Writing Commercial IF for Mobile Devices”

I know IF is hard to sell, but I’d appreciate it if you could give any advice on how to find my audience. I want to learn more about game promotion. I’m not familiar with the IF community, so I don’t know how to reach them. And well, my goal is to expand beyond the IF community, too, so perhaps you have any thoughts on the subject. 

The IF community used to be a pretty cohesive group with a few well-defined venues for interaction. You could be good or bad at making a splash in those places, but at least there were specific places to go.

That is no longer the case. There are lots of subgroups of people who write and play interactive fiction who don’t speak to one another much and who are basically unaware of one another. People who like traditional parser IF are probably hanging out in the intfiction forum, people who like ChoiceScript are on the Choice of Games forum, classic gamebook aficionados are somewhere else, and people writing Twine are all over the place. Different language communities have their own locations.

So putting your game on IFDB, announcing it on the intfiction forum, etc., are still good things to do — and an IFDB entry is mandatory if you want to be in contention for a XYZZY award. You can meet other IF authors on the euphoria channel, which is often a good way to garner some informal feedback. And there’s a fair amount of activity on Twitter, too — always an especially ephemeral and challenging way to network.

Competitions are another way to get some eyes on your game, including most notably IF Comp, now running. Sometimes, placing well in IF Comp leads to job offers from commercial IF publishers, and over time, a good standing in this context can build you a (localized) reputation. On the other hand, IF Comp‘s 79 entries this year mean that you’re swimming in a bigger sea than ever.

All of this is very much a retail kind of process, one that may get you a few dozen mentions on people’s blogs and some feedback from individual fans.

If what you want is to build the kind of profile that would allow you to do major crowdfunding projects or sell your IF online in the future — if you want this as a stepping stone, not just to being hired as a contributor, but to having your own creative brand — then it’s likely not enough.

At that point, you probably need to behave like an indie game developer. Figure out what games resemble yours, and how those games are being presented, where. Participate in those conversations, wherever they’re taking place. Consider taking part in some game jams and going to some meetups, so that you build a network of people who are also working in your sub-niche and can help boost you. Perhaps develop an itch.io portfolio. Look at submitting your game to indie game festivals and expo booths that are open to IF, from WordPlay to IndieCade to AdventureX. Look into whether you can/want to do public playthroughs or readings from your work, at a local IF meetup or as part of something literary-themed.

There are a handful of Steam curators that specifically curate IF, too, so if you have a game on Steam, it might be worth knowing about the Choice of Games curation list. Less IF-focused but still of possible interest: Choice and Consequence.

Another useful move is to write about or otherwise engage with other people’s interactive narrative work, and make yourself part of the conversation.

There’s a ton of advice online about how to do indie game promotion, so I’m not going to try to offer a full list of resources here — impossible! But the GDC Vault contains lots of past talks from the Indie Games summit, some of which are now free to watch. Also, presskit() is cool and Rami Ismail is an inspiration. [ETA: I’ve been told the indie games content is all free. Bonanza!]