Writing for Hosted Games
Anyone can publish a game under the Hosted Games label. Hosted Games are written without editorial support from Choice of Games, and you do not need to submit your ideas in advance.
At this time, we can only publish Hosted Games in English, but we do accept submissions from non-native English speakers written in English.
Hosted Games authors may be invited to pitch us to write for Choice of Games after publishing a Hosted Game.
Hosted Games Publishing Process
- You independently write and complete a game written in ChoiceScript.
- You complete a public beta test of your game on our forum. This must be a beta of the full, entire, complete game, not a demo of some portion.
- Submit your game on our Hosted Games submission form or by emailing the files to hg-submissions@choiceofgames.com. You will also be asked to provide assets (icon, cover art, etc.) for publication.
- Your game will be reviewed for content, and when that review is complete, you will receive a contract for your game.
- If we deem your game appropriate for Steam, we will send it to copyedit at this time.
- Copyediting will take time. Depending on the length of your game, months is an appropriate time frame.
- Copyeditors will make direct changes to your game files, correcting typos, grammar, and improving clarity.
- Copyeditors will also make a list of “notes” that point out inconsistencies, sensitivity issues (akin to the Content Review), and/or other points for your consideration.
- You are welcome to reject individual changes by copyeditors, especially if you feel the copyeditor didn’t understand your intention somewhere. You may also choose to do little or nothing with their sensitivity notes, if you have our approval. We are happy to delineate what must be changed from what should be changed from what we would like to see changed.
- Once received, reviewed, approved, possibly copyedited, and under contract, your game will go into a publishing queue; Hosted Games are published roughly on a first-come, first-serve basis.
Hosted Games Editorial Requirements
- Games must be at least 30,000 words long; the word count includes code.
- Games must not contain deeply offensive material, such as scenes that glorify sexual violence or racist attitudes.
- Games must undergo beta testing on our forum at forum.choiceofgames.com
- Games cannot infringe on other people’s intellectual property; we can’t host a Harry Potter or Star Wars game.
- The title of the game cannot contain the word “choice.” We reserve the word “choice” in game titles for games distributed under the Choice of Games label.
- The title of the game must be 30 characters or less. This is a hard requirement of the Google and Apple platforms.
Hosted Games Contract
- 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.)
- You will retain full IP rights on your game, granting us an exclusive, perpetual license to publish your multiple-choice game electronically.
- You cannot publish the same story in a competing format (Twine, Ren’Py, Choices/Chapters/Episodes, CYOA book, Visual Novel, etc).
- You can publish sequels, prequels, spin-offs, etc in a competing format.
- You can publish the same story in a non-competing format (traditional book, side-scrolling computer game, animated computer game).
Hosted Games Publishing Details
Hosted games are published on:
- Our website
- iTunes App Store for iPhone, iPad, and iPod
- Google Play Store
- Amazon Kindle Fire (Amazon Appstore for Android)
- Publication on Steam is subject to approval
Required Assets for Publication