We’re Looking for Writers

Choice of Games is the world’s largest publishing house for interactive novels. Our award-winning games are entirely text-based—hundreds of thousands of words and hundreds of choices, without graphics or sound effects—and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination. Choose your path: your choices control the story.

Using ChoiceScript, the scripting language we’ve created for developing interactive novels, an individual author can write a full-length branching narrative, hundreds of thousands of words long, all in a single voice, under one creative vision. A player might read around 20% of those words on one playthrough, ensuring that our games remain fresh each time you play.

Choice of Games is a feminist, egalitarian, sex-positive company. All CoG games allow you to choose your character’s gender and sexual orientation.

We’re looking for authors to develop new interactive novels for us. Our standard contract for published authors offers $10,000 – $15,000 advances against royalties. Choice of Games is a qualifying professional market for SFWA membership. 

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We have three publishing labels: Choice of Games, Heart’s Choice, and Hosted Games

We’re looking for published authors

Writers can query our editorial team to write for the Choice of Games label. We seek applications from authors with published works:

  • Ideally, an applicant will have short stories in publication, a published novel, or an academic thesis.
  • If you have experience writing tabletop RPGs, narrative games, but not fiction as such, we’d be glad to consider you as well.
  • Game designers with little experience writing narrative or additional experience writing fiction are not a good fit for what we do, but we encourage such applicants to try our Hosted Games label.
  • Our games, their design, and our company values are inclusive and egalitarian. We encourage applications from LGBTQ writers, disabled writers, writers of color, and writers of marginalized genders.
  • Our interactive novels have a recognizable “house style,” especially in terms of game design. Please try a few of our games to get a gut feel for what we’re looking for!

We have limited capacity for taking on new writers and projects.

If you’re a writer interested in writing under the CoG label, you’ll go through a process of consideration with our team, which may lead to you developing and writing a game. That process has several steps and the first one is to email us your CV at cog-submissions@choiceofgames.com. Be sure to mention how you heard about us.

Do not send us a pitch, game idea, writing sample, or game concept before we ask for one, even if you have a really great idea. Just begin by sending us your CV. At any time in the process we may decide something about your writing sample, concepts, or outline isn’t working for us–we don’t have any contractual relationship with you (and you don’t have any obligations to us) until we have a signed contract. If the process doesn’t work out for whatever reason, we’ll invite you to write your game for our Hosted Games label. You can apply to write for our Choice of Games label again in 12 months.

Choice of Games Editorial Process

  1. You email your CV to cog-submissions@choiceofgames.com
  1. If your CV demonstrates sufficiently your background as a writer, we will invite you to submit a writing sample. Otherwise, we’ll invite you to write for our Hosted Games label, or let you know we’re currently at capacity instead. (Due to the nature of email, sometimes emails don’t get through; if you don’t hear from us at all within a month, feel free to reach out to us again.)
  1. If your writing sample works for us, we will invite you to submit concepts written against a guide to writing concepts that we provide.
  1. If one of your concepts works for us, we’ll invite you to submit a full pitch for a game, in the form of an outline, again, written against a guide to writing an outline we’ll provide to you.
  1. If we accept your outline—most go through several rounds of revision with our team—we’ll offer you a contract to write a full game.
  2. Once you’ve signed a contract with us, we’ll review your work and give you editorial notes and feedback at a number of word-count milestones. Your game will have a lead editor who will support you and your work throughout the writing process, as well as other staff who will contribute editorial input at various milestones. Most games take a year to 18 months from initial query to release to develop, write, edit, and produce.

Choice of Games Contract: $10,000 – $15,000 advances against royalties

If we accept your outline, we’ll offer you a contract, under one of the following terms:

$10,000 Advance against 25% Royalties: 25% royalties, and we’ll pay a total of $10,000 over a series of milestones. Authors retain IP. 

$10,000 Contract Milestones:

  • Invitation to Pitch: We’ll pay $100 when we ask for a pitch.
  • Outline accepted: We’ll pay $400 when we accept your outline.
  • First chapter: We’ll pay $1,000 when we accept your first chapter.
  • Second chapter: We’ll pay $1,000 after we accept your second chapter, at least 10,000 words of ChoiceScript.
  • Fourth chapter: We’ll pay $1,000 after we accept your fourth chapter.
  • Sixth chapter: We’ll pay $1,000 after we accept your sixth chapter.
  • Eighth chapter: We’ll pay $1,500 after we accept your eighth chapter.
  • Full Draft: We’ll pay $2,000 after we accept beta-ready draft of your game.
  • Final Draft: We’ll pay $2,000 after we accept a copyedit-ready draft of your game.

$15,000 Advance against 10% Royalties : 10% royalties, and we’ll pay a total of $15,000 over a series of milestones. Authors retain IP. (Not all game concepts qualify for this plan, so please let us know early on which plan you’d prefer.)

$15,000 Contract Milestones:

  • Invitation to Pitch: We’ll pay $100 when we ask for a pitch.
  • Outline accepted: We’ll pay $400 when we accept your outline.
  • First chapter: We’ll pay $1,000 when we accept your first chapter.
  • Second chapter: We’ll pay $1,500 after we accept your second chapter, at least 10,000 words of ChoiceScript.
  • Fourth chapter: We’ll pay $1,500 after we accept your fourth chapter.
  • Sixth chapter: We’ll pay $2,000 after we accept your sixth chapter.
  • Eighth chapter: We’ll pay $2,000 after we accept your eighth chapter.
  • Full Draft: We’ll pay $2,000 after we accept beta-ready draft of your game.
  • Final Draft: We’ll pay $2,000 after we accept a copyedit-ready draft of your game.
  • 90 days after publishing: We’ll pay $2,500 90 days after the release, or 150 days after acceptance of the completed game, whichever is first.

This is a short, non-binding description of our contracts. Contracted authors–please read your full contract for the legal details.

You’ll retain all intellectual property rights to your work

Under all of our current contracts, the author retains all intellectual property rights to their games, except for portions of their games contributed by Choice of Games or Hosted Games (such as the ChoiceScript engine and artwork paid for by Choice of Games).  Authors are welcome to use other IP that they own–such as a setting developed for pre-existing novels, short stories, comics, or games–in developing their games to be published by us, and our contracts do not threaten authors’ ownership of that IP or ability to continue using it in other formats.  Authors are also welcome to develop additional works using IP that they developed for a Choice of Games publication.

Occasionally, authors wish to use IP that they do not own in their games–for example, creating a licensed work using IP owned by another author.  That can work, but only if the author is in a position to secure a license to use that IP for a Choice of Games or Hosted Games publication.  Neither Choice of Games nor Hosted Games can publish games that rely on intellectual property owned by someone other than the author or us without a valid license.

Choice of Games Publishing Details

  • Choice of Games is a qualifying professional market for SFWA membership. Writing an interactive fantasy, science-fiction, or horror novel with us will qualify you for Active Membership, including the right to vote in the Nebula awards.
  • We’ll provide cover art.
  • A professional copyeditor will review your work.
  • We’ll advertise your work online.
  • Only Choice of Games label games are highlighted on the landing page choiceofgames.com
  • “More apps by this developer.” On the App Store, when users view “more apps by this developer,” Choice of Games label games appear there; Hosted Games do not.
  • When we publish your ChoiceScript game, we’ll make it available in the following ways:
    • Our website
    • Our Choice of Games omnibus app in the App Store, for iPhone, iPad, and iPod
    • Google Play Store
    • Steam
    • Amazon Kindle Fire (Amazon Appstore for Android)

Other Issues/Frequently Asked Questions

  • We accept work from authors under the age of 18 for Choice of Games. This requires a parent or guardian to be a signatory to your contract.
  • We accept work from authors outside the U.S. 
  • At this time, if you live or work in a country without a tax treaty with the United States, we ask that prospective Choice of Games authors let us know that at the beginning of the process.  Canada, Mexico, most Western European countries, many Asian countries, and some African and Latin American countries have a tax treaty with the U.S. See full list here: https://www.irs.gov/businesses/international-businesses/united-states-income-tax-treaties-a-to-z
  • We pay authors advances and royalties via secure electronic deposit, PayPal, or if necessary, by cheque. PayPal is accepted in the following countries: https://www.paypal.com/webapps/mpp/country-worldwide.
  • If we’ve rejected your application to our Choice of Games label, feel free to apply again after 12 months. Don’t forget that you can always write a game for our Hosted Games label. Writing a solid HG is highly relevant experience for the Choice of Games label.