User blog:Man Mountain/The PB Crisis

Hi everyone,

I know this is a fairly unpopular view amongst people in the community but I thought it might cause people to take a minute and look at things from PB's perspective. I'm not trying to indoctrinate anyone or anything, just stating things from how I see it.

This blog post is a blog post about the way PB is going with Choices and the general "crisis" of trust between writers and players.

​​​​​​PB's Latest Books
If I’m being honest, Passport to Romance and Ride or Die: A Bad Boy Romance aren’t great books, in fact, they’re not even particularly good. I could probably throw in High School Story: Class Act, Books 1 & 2. Sunkissed, Platinum and possibly, Wishful Thinking (although I actually think it will be quite decent), from what we know so far, don’t look great either and they don’t seem like they are gonna make their mark on the game like something like the It Lives Anthology Series or Endless Summer did.

Don’t get me wrong, they have their little bits but they’re not good.

And maybe it’s just me but I don’t their particularly meant to be good (I know, bear with me). This is what I mean: in every successful franchise, there has to be clear lines on what has been made well and what’s been made badly. We have series like: It Lives, possibly Endless Summer, definitely The Crown & The Flame and Perfect Match that have sort of defined the game and now we know that these are the best of the best, the ones that if someone new started playing Choices and asked you what story you should play, you would be able to say, “You should definitely play the Endless Summer series.”, right? Cos it’s a good series, it has its ups and downs but it’s good overall.

I don’t think that’s the case with these new books, I personally just think they’re here to make up the numbers. Over time, the writers have hinted at creating new content so that they can expand their library and I personally think this is their attempt at trying to do that because if they really wanted to they could have made the books good by making little changes to things, I just don’t think they wanted to with these but it seems like they will with Nightbound, Bloodbound, Book 2, Untitled The Royal Romance Follow-up Series and probably Red Carpet Diaries, Book 3 as well as the Super Top Secret Project that Andrew has been raving about.

The So-Called “Five-Year Plan”
But this brings me on to my next point about Pixelberry and their plan for Choices. I said in the paragraph above that PB have time and time again hinted at having these small books so that they can fill up their library and get onto the books that they actually want to do. But my problem with that is this, you can just about tell which books they want to do and which ones they don’t. I mean, you can tell sometimes which series they are passionate about, but it doesn’t seem like there’s much difference between the good books and the bad books.

We know that they want to do these big amazing books, they said as much last year and in the reddit AMA. Last year, when they did the big news outlet, they asked people which genre of books they wanted and almost everyone I know that plays the game responded and in the AMA, they again hinted at their so-called five year plan. (please bear in mind that I created this phrase, I don’t think I’ve ever heard PB use it)

I’m hoping that with this new “Choices Insiders” thing, it will allow us to see what PB are doing behind-the-scenes and where they plan to take the game because I think if we’re being honest, they’re sort of biding their time at the moment with America's Most Eligible: All Stars, High School Story, Book 2, some elements of Desire & Decorum, Book 2 and Passport to Romance, although AME and D&D are passable because of the constant, sometimes-not-forced drama (see what I did there, TJ, anyone?)

At this point, us players are practically playing with blind faith just waiting for some of the good stories to come back or for PB to make good stories that will have that legendary feel like some of the originals. It’s not too much to ask for a little something, so we can trust them a bit more…….., is it?

Subverting Stereotypes
Another thing I kind of wanted to voice my opinion in was the stereotypes. Again, I don’t think PB can be blamed for the stereotypes in some ways because we know that these books (RoD, PTR, WT, Sunkissed and Platinum as well as some other ones) aren’t serious, “meant-to-mean-something” books. They are, in essence, filler, at least that’s how I see it.

And so, even with stories being gender-locked, I was on Twitter yesterday and I read PB’s reply to someone asking about what books are going to have only female MC’s and they said, “We also have other books on the way with more gender options such as Nightbound (and some unannounced books).”

The thing is, (remember, just my perspective), I’m actually alright with having just a female MC, if (and only if) the story is good! I’m in line with all of you who are like “Some of these stories are crap.” Because stereotypes don’t work! And going back to that bit about some unannounced books, I think we all need to know that we’re not just waiting for crap but actually waiting for something good which is why this is a serious crisis for PB because they’re losing the trust battle at the moment but that’s why I’m hoping and praying that “Choices Insiders” (PB’s new insider subscription) will give us that hope back. The kind of hope that we had at the start of the game.

I’ll end by saying that Choices is a good game but it’s also like a tv show, if things don’t change quickly, the fans will start losing trust and things will just go downhill from there. And because it’s like a tv show, that also means that there’s a lot of competition and it can be extremely hard (and I know this from personal experience) to come up with new exciting, high-quality content…, but if PB are gonna continue the game, there needs to be some serious changes in the way they’re doing things.

End of.