Too much content?

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Ozitiho
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Too much content?

#1 Post by Ozitiho »

I've started writing choice-based paths for my game, but I feel like this one scene is going a bit overboard in containing 'content'.

So like, at the start of a very particular day, you decide on one of four activities that you and your friends will do. Then during each of those activities, you choose whom you hang out with.
There's four different activities and four different characters to choose between. In the middle of writing it I thought to myself, who on earth is going to do this whole scene four times? Especially since there's only four paths, on each playthrough you'd probably just pick a different activity and not bother with reading each activity for each character... Right?

So is this a bad thing? Or is more choice generally better?

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Re: Too much content?

#2 Post by Haze »

I think there are a couple of things to consider here:

Does choosing a different character make the scene different? Even a minor difference will help those who play your game feel like the choice was important; a couple lines of different dialogue, for example, can really help players think that they made a choice with an important and noticeable result. If the difference in the scene after choosing the character is practically or completely nonexistent, though, then you should probably just have the player choose an activity.

How much you want to write? Like I mentioned above, choosing a different character should result in a good amount of different dialogue. The amount of different dialogue that results from the choice is up to you, but do you want to write all of that dialogue?

Finally, what do you think will be better for your game? Choosing just the activity and choosing the activity+character are both fine. The question you should ask yourself, along with the questions above, is "Which one enhances my game?". The fact of the matter is, on a subsequent playthrough, some people will be willing to read the same activity/different character text, and some won't. I probably would, but another person responding to your post might not want to. So, don't worry about want you think people want; think about what makes your game better.

I hope this helps. :D
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Re: Too much content?

#3 Post by RotGtIE »

Four activities, and four characters in each activity, each with their own scene within each activity. So, sixteen different possible scenes, all sharing roughly the same timespace in a single day of your story. My first thought is that these scenes must be very brief and not necessarily critical to the plot, since there are simply so many of them sharing parallel space with each other. Otherwise, this represents an enormously ambitious goal in reader choice and plot development. Then again, if your whole story takes place over the course of a single day, then even an hour-long activity would be a major plot point. I doubt that, though, so at first glance, it appears that you might be mapping out too much work for yourself.

I would suggest taking a look at the plans you have for each route and, when going over every scene you have on the board, ask yourself why this scene in particular must exist. What is it teaching the reader about the characters or the setting that they wouldn't know, or wouldn't get to know better, without it? What is it doing to advance the plot, or provide momentary relief from it? And when we put up the fourth wall, why are the characters themselves involving themselves in this scene? Can you make it work, or are you just taking up the reader's time with a block of text that isn't really going anywhere? If you can clarify to yourself what the purpose of a scene is in addition to the events which take place within it, then you'll find yourself less unsure about whether you really need that scene.

As for who would read through sixteen different iterations of what happens in the space of a single activity during the day of a story, I dare say you underestimate the unfathomable powers of the completionist. The VN audience is composed of a rather lot of these; they're here for the story, and you can be pretty damn sure that they'll gobble up as much of it as they can, provided they are enjoying your story at all in the first place.

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Re: Too much content?

#4 Post by Ozitiho »

Thanks for the responses. Always nice to get someone's opinion on this stuff.

Generally these things apply. They're all running out completely differently, but they're all short and not plot-critical. The only thing I have a hard time excusing is the purpose. When I finished the chapter they fit into I felt like the chapter was far too rushed and everything happens in such short sequence that it needed some filler. All of the scenes are kind of like "just random nice events" but I do feel like they're good to have to make the characters seem more fleshed out.

I'll probably keep them, mostly because of what you said about VN gamers being completionists. Personally, there's not a single VN that I've only finished. If I play one that I like, I'll play everything there is to it. I'm just paranoid people won't care to take the time for it.

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Re: Too much content?

#5 Post by RotGtIE »

Character development is a fine purpose in and of itself, particularly in a light-hearted work like a comedy or slice-of-life. You can certainly throw your characters into situations which have nothing to do with the greater plot just to show the audience how those characters react to any given situation. It also fulfills the "show, don't tell" guideline to do this - for example, say you've got a stereotypical braniac or super-smart character. You can brush past this character trait of theirs by simply establishing briefly that they, I dunno, get good marks in math or something, but if you simply leave it at that, you'd be missing opportunities to really flesh them out and take them from a trope to a character. Worse yet, your audience might not believe anything they're told about one of your characters until they get to see that character demonstrating those characteristics in action.

But when you do this, beware the potential pitfalls. The devil is in the details, and if you screw up those details, your audience will know, and you and your characters will become a laughingstock. You don't want, for example, to pull a Hidamari Sketch, making your "smart" character say that the error in "Love and Piece" is that "it's a fragment." You also don't want to pull a Hanamaru Kindergarden by making your "smart" character completely forget what the burden of proof is, and say that "there's no proof that ghosts don't exist." Properly developing a character with details and demonstrating their traits by throwing situations at them which allow them to demonstrate their particular characteristics is a good way to make your readers believe that your character is who you say they are, rather than expecting your audience to take your word for it. You shouldn't feel like you're wasting time or adding filler by doing this - especially if the personalities of your characters are the focus of your story! Just be aware that you can screw it up by not paying attention to the details.

You may even have to do research to write a character if they do something that you do not do yourself, or have little knowledge of. Got a character who figure skates, plays an instrument, or goes to the range to shoot in their downtime? You might want to use your google-fu to learn about that kind of stuff so you can at least allude to it competently. You can get away with skirting around a lot of technical details for your readers, but if you screw something up, they will always catch it.

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