Episodic Gaming Changing Gamemaking?

Chris Morris, of CNN's Game Over column, talks this week about how episodic gaming may be changing the way games are made. He explores the possibility that, with the success of GTA and Half-Life 2, developers may start looking towards more of a 'Saturday Matinee' approach; shorter individual game units, but a longer story overall. From the article: "Whether Valve will continue with episodic content after "Episode Three" hasn't yet been decided. The company knew its fans would likely buy the first installment regardless. But they don't know if players will stick with the formula. 'So far the feedback has been really positive and led me to believe we'll be continuing to do this in the future,' acknowledged Newell. 'But we want to get these three out, then sit back and do a post mortem. ... We're really interested in trying this, then sitting down with some customers and asking them, Do you want a TV series or do you want movies - or a mixture of both? It's like they've had a diet of feature length experiences for a long time and this is their first chance to try something different.'"

Movies

[tarun713]

I'd rather have longer games released less frequently. TV shows are aired once a week, whereas episodic content still takes a long time to produce. I'd rather wait 2 years for an entire game rather than 6-12 months for episodic content where I forget what happened in the previous episode in between. I feel episodic content really loses a game's momentum to keep you gripped and involved.

Cheap little games? Sounds good to me

[Temuar Skylari]

At first glance, I like this idea, mostly because they're suggesting lowering prices. That's always nice to hear, even knowing that the episodic games might end up costing the same or more overall. Obviously, having to buy 3 games at $20 each costs you $60 for the whole story, but with the episodic plan you might buy the first one, decide you don't like it, and save yourself $40. If you do like it, plenty of games start retailing at $50 or $60 as it is, so it's not like they're cheating you out of money. Full speed ahead, Valve!

Re:Movies

[kannibal_klown]

If the games were closer together I'd rather have the episodic games. If 6months was the high-end of the wait period, then great. But 12 months is too much. My problem is some games start out great, but after a while they sort of taper off. It's almost like the writers/level designers ran out of imagination or got bored and start throwing repetitive garbage at us, or just some horrible gameplay. Look at Halo, with the whole repetitive-loop Library maps and such; almost like the writers were really struggling to give us those x/hours of gameplay. If they can provide small bundles of fun each time and get them out quick enough, then I'm all for it. But if the lag time is too great (or the quality just isn't there) then forget it.

I doubt it.

[O'Laochdha]

The stories in GTA were mostly self-contained, and barely interacted. Think about it: which was the most popular in the GTA3 series? San Andreas...and this one unquestionably had the deepest of the storylines, on its own. It tied back to the other two, but that was it. People wouldn't have played Half-Life 2 if they hadn't already gone through the first. No one's going to pay $60 for a "to be continued" marquee.

Like anything else..

[Anonymous Coward]

it all depends on the *quality* of each episode/arc.

When the Timothy Zahn "Dark Force Rising" Star Wars books came out they were well crafted and captured the essence of the 'original' 3 SW movies. Each title was an engrossing story and could stand on its own but when combined they crafted an even better, more involved story. I looked forward and kept track of each book's release date (probably the single thing I've ever done that made me feel like a nerd the most).

The second series of books I tried was the "Ambush at Corellia" series which were just god awful. The writer was just a hack that was trying to cash in on the famous 'trilogy' story device. The first book's 'cliffhangar' was some alien accusing Leia of being a bad politician (HORRORS!) with the words "...to be continued!" on the last page. I never even bothered with any of the other books in that arc.

I skipped on Descent 3 because after weeks of fighting my way through Descent 2 I was greeted with a 3 minute cut scene (which felt tacked on at the last minute at that) that answered nothing and concluded with "....to be continued!" I was furious and felt cheated, like I had just played an incredibly long commercial for a (at the time) who knew when to be released game.

I want something that can stand on its own and not feel like a glorified commercial for the franchise and/or next installment. Let game producers make what I want and I don't care if they call them "sequels" or "episodic content" and let it be transparent. If a game feels artificially shortened with a blatant implication that I'll "need" to buy the next one will make me walk away from the franchise completely.

TV Shows Vs Movies

[Brothernone]

I think both ideas boil down to the same thing. Overall in any givin game, more specifficaly PC games (as that's what valve mostly makes)have a tedency to have a good beginning, and great end.. but a more or less mediocre middle. I think what episodic content does is give them more time to focus on each peice so it seems more or less great all the way through. I feel that most "Movies" or full length games theese days are mostly boring filler, and should probably be cut down a little anyway. Episodic content does very well for this purpose, and I have really enjoyed EP1, and look forward to EP2.

Re:Movies

[mikeisme77]

There's no reason they couldn't do weekly, monthly, or bi-monthly releases. Most TV shows are filmed all in a large block and then they release the episodes through out the season. There's no reason that the game creators couldn't produce a "season" worth of episodes and then release them weekly. Not all episodes would necessarily be ready when the first episode comes out (just as not all episodes of the TV show are ready), but the story should all be there and all of the art should be created. It should just be an issue of "editing" and such. I mean, sure they could just release it in one large block for $50, but with episodic content they are selling episodes for $10-20 a pop and could get $100+ for a season where they would normally just be getting $50. Great for them, sucks for us...

Welcome to 1991 -

[RoffleTheWaffle]

Who here remembers the Shareware boom? You know, back when studios like Id were still in their infancy, and Apogee and Epic Megagames were big players in the PC game industry? Back then, not only were games released in episodes, you got the first one for free. Each successive episode was about $15 to $20, or you could get hard-copies of all three games and some other goodies for $30 to $35. Sound familiar? It should.

While I'm thinking I might not be reading enough into this, it really looks like that business model is making a return, but with one big catch. You have to pay for the first episode now, and it's usually the biggest and most expensive of all the episodes. This is the only difference I've seen thus far, and it really wouldn't surprise me if game studios reverted back to that old model of 'episodic content' now that it's become the in-thing to do again. I'm not complaining, I'd really like to try a game before I wind up wasting my money on it. I'm just wondering why they're treating it as though it's some big, new thing, when not only is it an old practice, it also hasn't been in style for about ten years. Just my take on it.