Choose Your Own Adventure poll\survey

[CharlesX]

I wonder how interested and enthused we are about FFs chief competitor series? Let's find out via this poll!
   I welcome any comments about the series below, positive, negative or otherwise. The poll itself is more a survey to find out our level of interest in and engagement with this other commercially successful series (in other words, it asks how much you have played CYOA, not the extent of your enjoyment). Any specific comments about CYOA are more than welcome, and very much the purpose of this thread.
   For example, I've found the series to be very variable. Yes, some of the works are aimed more at younger people, or just rubbish, others are gems - my favourites include Knights Of The Round Table and Mutiny In Space.
  This poll closes on 10 p.m. Sunday 20th February. Oh, and in case there's any confusion, this poll is includes all spin-offs of CYOA from the CYOA founders with the CYOA name, such as CYOA for younger readers, Star Wars CYOA, Disney & Indiana Jones CYOA, but not general gamebooks with a CYOA-like format, such as Goosebumps series.

[a moderator]

How are you defining 'read' for the poll? My total will vary quite a bit depending on how many of the categories listed below count.

• Gone through in depth, finding the path to every ending.
• Played through several times, but not exhaustively.
• Played through to one or two endings.
• Looked through it to see if there are any cool deaths, but never properly played.

[The Count]

I can only think of 3 or 4 that I've read, though it was probably more.

[CharlesX]

Feb 13, 2022 15:14:21 GMT a moderator said:

How are you defining 'read' for the poll? My total will vary quite a bit depending on how many of the categories listed below count.

• Gone through in depth, finding the path to every ending.
• Played through several times, but not exhaustively.
• Played through to one or two endings.
• Looked through it to see if there are any cool deaths, but never properly played.

I'm afraid it has to be down to you how you define reading, but my own intuitive definition would be definitely not just seeing the cover, and probably one playthrough (that is, through to one ending, not mapping the whole thing). I guess I'd generously regard flipping through a CYOA as half, but I can see why others would count it as zero or one (you flipped through a few pages, you read the endings and saw the illustrations).
   Thank you for taking an interest btw.

[petch]

I read a fair few when I was very young, but my collection is long gone, and I have only a very vague recollection of the ones I read. I'm guessing it was around 15-20.

[a moderator]

Definitely over 40. Could be over 50 including CYOAs I only tried once, but almost 4 decades on, it's hard to remember whether or not I had a proper play at some of the titles I remember giving at least a little attention.

[vastariner]

I think I read one when I was about 11 and found it was way below what I had come to expect from interactive fiction.

[stevendoig]

As well as the few I own, there were LOTS of 'swappies' at primary school and the public library had them as well. Saying all that I've probs only read a dozen or so

[kieran]

Probably slightly over a dozen. They used to turn up a lot in libraries and whatnot. I think I only ever owned one though. I like them but as far as simple gamebooks go, I always preferred Endless Quest or stuff like Dave Morris' Reboot gamebooks.

One thing I always appreciated about CYOA is how wildly the stories could diverge based on your decisions. Definitely not a series that could be accused of railroading.

[a moderator]

Feb 13, 2022 19:17:08 GMT kieran said:

Definitely not a series that could be accused of railroading.

That depends on the book.

The first two choices made in The Deadly Shadow will put you onto one of four paths. On one of those paths, every decision ultimately leads to failure and death. But that's not the railroady bit. That comes on one of the other paths, where you can arbitrarily and without warning receive instructions that force you to switch to the 'death only' path.

[kieran]

Feb 13, 2022 20:41:59 GMT a moderator said:

Feb 13, 2022 19:17:08 GMT kieran said:

Definitely not a series that could be accused of railroading.

That depends on the book.

The first two choices made in The Deadly Shadow will put you onto one of four paths. On one of those paths, every decision ultimately leads to failure and death. But that's not the railroady bit. That comes on one of the other paths, where you can arbitrarily and without warning receive instructions that force you to switch to the 'death only' path.

Maybe it's just the ones I played then!

[terrysalt]

I have no idea, I know I loved them as a kid but I have next to no memories of anything specific. There was one that went straight from page 12 to 14 and had a note that if you were looking for page 13, your character was dead. I don't even remember the name of it but that is my one enduring memory of the series.

[thealmightymudworm]

I think between 1 and 5 – at least I can only remember about 3:
- A ninja one in which you are a ninja-trained girl trying to rescue a boy (a fellow ninja as it turns out) who has fallen foul of the yakuza. Edit: The Lost Ninja
- The one where you time-travel by grabbing a stone in Stonehenge and

- One with I think a haunted house (I recall something about a maid who offers you poisoned cheese and crackers, but if you get her to talk and she then flees, she drops dead. Also there's something about a sinister piano-playing cat.)

[kieran]

I vaguely remember enjoying a time travel CYOA where you go back to Byzantium IIRC and there is a character with a goat's head. Anyone remember that one? I think I asked before on the Yahoo groups but the titles suggested didn't seem quite right.

[CharlesX]

Feb 14, 2022 17:21:10 GMT kieran said:

I vaguely remember enjoying a time travel CYOA where you go back to Byzantium IIRC and there is a character with a goat's head. Anyone remember that one? I think I asked before on the Yahoo groups but the titles suggested didn't seem quite right.

My favourites were the ones with a time travel theme. They were quite numerous in CYOA, and fitted well with the out-there spirit of the series.

[schlendrian]

I didn't really know them under the name CYOA back then, so it's hard to tell, but skimming over the list there's three I do remember:Sugarcane Island, Through the black hole and The worst day of ypur life

[CharlesX]

Feb 13, 2022 17:04:34 GMT vastariner said:

I think I read one when I was about 11 and found it was way below what I had come to expect from interactive fiction.

It's a large series and heavily variable. I wouldn't pass on the entire series on the basis of one or two.
  Possibly you were past the target age group? I remember ordering CYOA via a book club in Primary School (i.e. before I was 10).

[CharlesX]

With the poll over, it seems like - based on the people polled - we're fairly evenly split between those of us who have read fewer than 10 CYOA, who perhaps didn't entirely get into the series, and quite a few of us who are fans, or at least read loads of CYOA in spite of its cheesiness and other shortcomings. For me, a big takeaway is that no one who responded hadn't played at least 1 CYOA. I think this might testify not only to our preference for interactive fiction, but also to the commercial success of CYOA, because as some have pointed out here and elsewhere, CYOA might be one of the first - and most influential - popular series of interactive fiction, but it is possibly not always one of the best.
   Thanks to everyone who participated, this has been really constructive.  🎉

[vastariner]

One factor is the age when discovering FF. I got in pretty much at the start. The FF series books were the second interactive fictions I had come across (the other being the Tracker books, I had Road Racer and Codebreaker International, but they had seemed to be a dead end). And only seven had come out when I first read one.

So having got into FF, seeing CYOA was a) a step backwards, given its younger style - and b) a major fiscal problem because CYOA was already in the dozens by then (I think). It was easier to cobble together the pocket money to get up to 7 than to get up to 37.

[Peter]

I started buying CYOA at charity book fairs recently, with the aim of getting the whole series. Then I discovered there were 186 plus several off-shoot series. Looking on eBay they go for about $5 each, so I have given up on my plan.

The broad range of subjects means some have specific appeal to my family, so I have found it worthwhile to hunt down particular titles, but not the whole lot.

[a moderator]

Feb 20, 2022 22:17:19 GMT CharlesX said:

For me, a big takeaway is that no one who responded hadn't played at least 1 CYOA. 

That doesn't necessarily mean anything - there could be a significant number here who never played any CYOA, and consequently didn't bother looking at this poll. The results might have been different if the poll's title had been more specific about its intentions: 'Did you ever play Choose Your Own Adventure books?'  gives anyone who had no contact with the series something to say, while 'poll/survey' is just as likely to be a comparison between individual titles/authors/sub-ranges, which would discourage input from such people.

[CharlesX]

Feb 21, 2022 9:51:54 GMT a moderator said:

Feb 20, 2022 22:17:19 GMT CharlesX said:

For me, a big takeaway is that no one who responded hadn't played at least 1 CYOA. 

That doesn't necessarily mean anything - there could be a significant number here who never played any CYOA, and consequently didn't bother looking at this poll. The results might have been different if the poll's title had been more specific about its intentions: 'Did you ever play Choose Your Own Adventure books?'  gives anyone who had no contact with the series something to say, while 'poll/survey' is just as likely to be a comparison between individual titles/authors/sub-ranges, which would discourage input from such people.

The wording is tricky, and I chose to go with a slightly formal wording which didn't seem to me to be clumsy or particularly partisan. While I think this thread has been successful I think 14 votes isn't truthfully enough to take real conclusions. I doubt very much there is actually no one on this board who hasn't read any CYOA; and even the poll itself has quite a few people who read 5 or fewer, implying they have limited interest in it.

[King Gillibran]

40-50 and always looking for more. Only around 30 completed

[CharlesX]

Oct 19, 2022 14:10:13 GMT King Gillibran said:

40-50 and always looking for more. Only around 30 completed

I'm keen to do another survey like this at some point, possibly before the end of the year, with the better wording suggested by Greenspine as well as maybe different parameters. There have been many new members, for example.