Dear Choice of Games and Hosted Games,
\nThis is a love letter to you from a blind gamer, me. I know you get a lot of these. I know your mailboxes must be full of candy hearts and expensive chocolates, but I couldn\u2019t stop myself from writing one of my own. You see, I unabashedly love you. I love your words. I love your happy moments, and your sad ones. I love the choices you offer, and I love their consequences. When there is a long stretch between new games, I ache. I weep. But then, when that email finally reaches my inbox, when I learn that a new release has finally arrived, my heart soars. I stretch my arms toward the heavens, and I smile, for you have, at last, returned.<\/p>\n
It is impossible for me to truly convey what you give to blind gamers like myself. It is a sentiment that I know has been echoed by others, but it is one that I wish every single Choice of Games and Hosted Games author could hear. Your engine, the way it essentially presents itself as web pages, is completely, 100% accessible to us. That outward simplicity which hides so much inner complexity is completely and totally playable by us, and I\u2026 We couldn\u2019t be happier.<\/p>\n
We live in a world filled with story-driven content that we cannot take part in. So many narrative-based video games are still completely inaccessible to us. We could watch playthroughs of these games, but then we aren\u2019t the ones making the choices. It isn\u2019t our personal experience. Not so with you. You offer us worlds even we can explore. You offer us a moldable, shapeable character that we get to create, and a story in that character\u2019s life that, for a little while, we get to live and experience. There are hundreds of characters to meet, foes to join and defeat, and worlds to either save or destroy, all thanks to the choices we make, and the character personality we crafted.<\/p>\n
I just wish I could express to you how big a deal that is. I\u2019ve been a gamer my entire life, enjoying the games I can play, and struggling with those I wanted to, but ultimately couldn\u2019t. I\u2019ve also been a reader, and a lover of stories of all kinds. To have your utterly immense and completely accessible library of stories and experiences literally right at my fingertips is mind-boggling and amazing in a way that I cannot properly convey to you. You are awesome!<\/p>\n
I know what you\u2019re thinking. \u201cWhy now? We\u2019ve been around for years. Where is this letter coming from?\u201d Very true. This has honestly been building for a long time. With tremendous titles like Zombie Exidus, Hero\u2019s Rise, and perhaps the most technically impressive, Tin Star, my desire to write something like this has steadily increased. The final straw, though, was one of your newest games, Choice of Magics. I have now played through this particular story in its entirety 3 times, and I am considering a fourth. Each time, I\u2019ve gotten an ending that was completely different from the ones before it, but it\u2019s about more than just the ending. The ways in which the story can change, even as it\u2019s going on, are so drastic. There are things that can happen that I didn\u2019t believe until they did. It\u2019s an incredible experience, and up there with your best. It is what made me decide it was time to write this. You should be proud of it, as should its author.<\/p>\n
Now I\u2019ll admit that I\u2019m also a lover of audio drama, both for good audio design and great perfomances. For that reason, there\u2019s a part of me that wishes your games had the backing of music, sound effects, and voice acting. I think experiences like that could be incredible, yet I also understand why that\u2019s not a part of your design. To have a fully realized video game version of the adventures you guys create, though, (and a fully accessible one at that), would draw in others who haven\u2019t checked you out for whatever reason, and I guarantee they would stay. Here\u2019s why.<\/p>\n
It goes so far beyond accessibility with you guys. Both Choice of Games and Hosted Games stand as proof that it is possible to write games in which your decisions matter, something that it seems most developers struggle with. I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s because of publishing deadlines, or the unwillingness to put in the work, but to reach an ending of a choice-heavy game only to discover it\u2019s basically the same as the last ending you got is never fun, and with you guys that almost never happens. If someone directly transferred some of the amazing works I\u2019ve mentioned here into video games, they would be spectacular.<\/p>\n
Please understand that this is basically an idle fantasy. As successful as I think they\u2019d be, I ultimately would not seek to change your vision. Personally, though, I wish EVERYONE appreciated you guys as much as I do. I know you get tons of praise as it is, and I am delighted at your success, but I wish everyone who hasn\u2019t checked you out could tear their eyes away from those graphical masterpieces for long enough to check out the unrivaled stories you have to offer. Don\u2019t get me wrong, I know some of those graphical masterpieces are truly great games, and I wish I could play in them too. Still, you guys deserve to be held high for what you do, and that is my goal with this letter. I\u2019m putting you on a pedestal whether you like it or not.<\/p>\n
Aside from being a love letter, this is also a thank you. Thank you to the Choice of Games team for having this vision, and thank you for crafting the choice script engine. Thank you to the authors who spend countless hours creating these masterpieces, and putting in the work to keep all those variables in line. I don\u2019t know how I would manage to do what you guys do. Thanks even to the other Choice of Games readers and Hosted Games, who have given them the attention and success they deserve. Thank you all.<\/p>\n
Sincerely,
\nBrandon Cole
\nYour not-so-secret admirer<\/p>\n
For those who haven\u2019t, seriously, check out their stuff on IOS, or even play it on their web site if you like. I don\u2019t think you\u2019ll regret it. And as always, thanks for reading. Please comment, leave feedback, and conversate. Continue to be awesome!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dear Choice of Games and Hosted Games, This is a love letter to you from a blind gamer, me. I know you get a lot of these. I know your mailboxes must be full of candy hearts and expensive chocolates, but I couldn\u2019t stop myself from writing one of my own. You see, I unabashedly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[36,97,119,126,76,189,194,195,190,191,192,193],"class_list":["post-273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-accessibility","tag-accessible-gaming","tag-audio-gaming","tag-blind-gamer","tag-blind-gaming","tag-choice-of-games","tag-choice-of-magics","tag-hers-rise","tag-hosted-games","tag-ios","tag-tin-star","tag-zombie-exidus"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brandoncole.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brandoncole.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brandoncole.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brandoncole.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brandoncole.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=273"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.brandoncole.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":274,"href":"http:\/\/www.brandoncole.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273\/revisions\/274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brandoncole.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brandoncole.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brandoncole.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}