Choice of Games
Choice of Games LLC is a video game developer based in California that creates interactive fiction.
History
The company was founded by Dan Fabulich and Adam Strong-Morse in 2009, to explore whether people might be willing to pay for digital gamebooks. Alongside it, a lighthearted game called Choice of the Dragon, a language called ChoiceScript they’d used to write it, were also launched. Despite eschewing graphics or a visual UI for a deliberately simple interface styled like an ebook reader, Dragon too proved wildly popular, with the free game eventually attracting more than a million downloads.
One of the key values the Choice of Games founders had brought to their company was a sense of social responsibility, which manifested in the ways they treated both their characters and their writers. Jason Hill, who joined the company shortly after the release of Dragon (and had been friends with Fabulich since “the first day of eighth grade”), noted that a core principle of the company was “trying to be as egalitarian as possible, so that anybody can find themselves in the story.” Rather than leave representation up to writers to include—or not—the founders decided every game they published would let players choose their gender and sexuality. In 2010 queer representation in games was still rare and it was still noteworthy for a game to offer same-sex romance options. The company encouraged authors to give their players even more opportunities for expression, too. Choice of Games also differed from many competitors in sticking to a traditional up-front pricing model, rather than using in-game currencies or premium choices. If you bought one of their stories, you bought the whole thing, something many players appreciated.
The company strove to treat its authors equitably as well. Rather than originating ideas in-house and hiring contract writers to execute them, the company has come to operate more like a traditional publishing house, with authors pitching ideas, receiving editorial support, and maintaining control over their intellectual property and storytelling. Weyrwood, like most Choice of Games titles, was developed over a period of more than a year, working its way through a pipeline that had been refined across dozens of authors and releases. Initial pitches would be workshopped with the author to hone in on the right set of stats that captured the story’s themes and allowed for interesting decisions for the player.
