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Why Hasn't Episodic Gaming Taken Off?
Thanks to GameSpot for its 'GameSpotting' editorial discussing the potential lure of the episodic videogame. The writer ruminates: "Imagine your favorite first-person shooter, role-playing game, or action adventure game. Now imagine that game broken up into one- to two-hour sequences. Now imagine that the first part was free and subsequent parts were delivered to you automatically for five bucks a pop, each month. Would you take the bait?" He suggests this approach could work particularly well for "...a lot of people out there who want to be gamers but don't want to make the commitment of living the 'gamer lifestyle' of having their entire existence revolve around their hobby." Could you see yourself buying into episodic gaming?
no. thanks for asking though!
itd work a lot better than most people realise........addiction is a funny thing... although itd have to be EASY to do.. i.e. easy for kids as well as adults
Sometimes I want to play for like 10 hours, sometimes I don't want to play at all. I like to have the choice to decide what I do and when I do it.
Also this would just totally make the publishers rip us off by delaying the end until the game got its intended revenue.
This idea sounds much like Commander Keen or Wolfenstein 3D (which had episode 1 free, and you could buy ep 1-2-3 or 4-5-6, or the full "hexalogy")
I wish we could see more shareware now, when broadband is becoming ubiquitous
The concept of making an addicting game is easy; it's the execution that kills most devs.
I want a game with a great storyline and good graphics.
I don't want to spend $5 a month (on top of the $50 to buy the game) just to get updates on a game that should come with a complete story line right out of the box.
What's next? When will they start charging us for patches?
Now I enjoy a good console/PC rpg but if I wanted to pay a monthly fee to get the next part of a story I would be playing a MMORPG. If Xenosaga and .hack are any indication of episodic gaming then they can keep it.
"I am a kernel in the linux army"
I pefer games because they are long and I dont have to wait for the "next instalment". Now games with sequels are fine, but one to two hour instalments monthly? I would most likley lose interest very rapidly and go back to my 20 to 40 hour games!
Okay, the first question is: How would you target the non-gamers, and telll them about what this really was? I mean, it's simple for peoples that have played Wolfenstein, etc, to know what it means, but imagine that you are a non-gamer! It would create confussion... I haven't got any good examples, but you could imagine it yourself if you have some fantasy...
:P
Anyways, second, wouldn't this spawn "fulltime" gamers in the end? I see your point, but wouldn't it mean that there were too few non-gamers to keep the business running?
My post, probably not worth 2 cent
Imagine your favorite first-person shooter, role-playing game, or action adventure game. Now imagine that game broken up into one- to two-hour sequences. Now imagine that the first part was free and subsequent parts were delivered to you automatically for five bucks a pop, each month. Would you take the bait?
Well, my favorite FPS games are online, so you can break that story up however you want, all I need is the part that puts me into multiplayer. My favorite role playing games would break up into 20-30 parts like this, and they can stick it up their asses if they expect me to pay $100-150 for what currently costs $50. The real problem is the writer's point of view here, as we can see further on in the article.
People like to complain that both Max Paynes are too short. I suppose they are, but only if you compare them to other games. [...]Meanwhile, I think the main reason Max Payne and its sequel seem so short is that they present captivating storylines and entertaining action, which collectively compel you to play through these games as quickly as you can.
Only if you compare them to other games? Welcome, Captain Obvious, what should we compare them to? Sit-Coms? They seem so short because they're 8 hours long, even if you have to replay several parts a couple of times. Even someone that can only play an average of 1 hour a day can beat an 8 hour game in slightly over a week.
I recently played through Metroid: Zero Mission for the Game Boy Advance, casually in an afternoon. It's a cool game, but the depressing thought then occurred to me that it's going to be months or years until the next one is released. The game is quite short and recycles most of the same assets and gameplay as its predecessors--it uses a tried-and-true formula, that is.
I have two complaints about this comment:
1) He keeps talking as if he's a casual gamer, but in my area Metroid Zero Mission came out yesterday. Sure, that's within the realm of "recently", but how many casual gamers go down to the game store in the middle of the day on a Tuesday to pick up a new game?
2) He talks about the length of the game, and it's use of "the same assets and gameplay as its predecessors", using a "tried and true formula". Did he even know what he was buying (this actually makes me wonder, because MAYBE a casual gamer wouldn't know)? Zero Mission is a remake of the original NES Metroid, so of course it's going to be using the same gameplay and a "tried and true formula". It's also supposed to be longer than the original. I'm sure there are plenty of people out there that will be trying to get some sort of speed record on Zero Mission, but for most people the first time through will take about as long as Max Payne, and most of us are probably aware of that. Interestingly, a short Metroid game is more acceptable to me, probably because I know I'll get some replay out of it, unlike Max Payne.
Gamers are growing older. We don't all have time to spend eight or 10 hours at a time playing Final Fantasy. We also don't all have time to play games every single day. Sometimes we go back to a game we were playing and don't even remember what the heck we were doing.
You know what, I fall into all of these cases, except that I can occasionally, on a weekend, find 8-10 hours to string together playing a video game, maybe twice a month. I've come back and not been able to figure out what I was doing, the most blatant offender being FFVIII, which I had already spent 25 hours on.
Sometimes we spend $50 on a game, never get all the way through it, and then wish we hadn't wasted our money. I think there are a lot of people out there who want to be gamers but don't want to make the commitment of living the "gamer lifestyle" of having their entire existence revolve around their hobby.
These are the parts I don't agree with. If I wish I hadn't wasted my money, it's because I don't like the game, not because I didn't finish it. I never worry about not finishing
-PainKilleR-[CE]
Why hasn't this exciting trend taken off yet? Why don't people want this?? Want kind of sick world do we live in when a perfectly viable gaming option isn't being welcomed with open arms by elite gamers everywhere? WHY?
If I'm into a game, I'll play through 4 hours a day. Playing for 1-2 hours and then having to wait a month for the continuation? Inconceivable.
The online collectible cardgame + space civilization sim Star Chamber is a good similar idea. Free download, free trial play with sample decks. You pay money for booster packs at a low cost of $20 for 16 (240 cards total, more than enough for a good deck). It plays better and is more fun than games twice as costly. You go into a chatroom and play against other people and trade. There is an entire section of the system that even allows phantom sealed deck tournamnets.
Episodic gaming is hard to get off the ground, I my opinion, because the first episode has to deliever a lot of promise, and the next part(s) have to maintain that promise without disrupting the cost vs. content and length balance. Myst: Uru will hopefully open the way for more installment type games, with free downloadable extra content.
Murphy's Paradox... the more you plan for success, the more avenues there are for failure.
I can see myself buying in to this, mainly because most games these days are just too long. I play video games five to ten hours a week. Most games takes 40+ hours to complete. That sucks.
I don't want to spend eight weeks with a game. I would probably play more different games for a shorter time, while coming back to favourites when new episodes are released.
temporarily sigless
So why is it such an amazingly bad idea. Well quit apart from the administrative overhead (10x5 bucks costs more to transact then 1x50 bucks) and the tiny little problem that not everyone has credit cards or fast lines to download new episodes.
There is the problem that people hate waiting. Is it me or is there more then simply the wish to pirate behind people downloading tv episodes? It is not like you can't catch a repeat. No we want it now and we want it when we want it not when some executive somewhere decides we can have it.
Playing a game then having to wait god knows how long for the next part would suck. Especially when you got the nagging suspicion that the next episode never comes.
Also lets face it. Very few games have a really gripping story line. The few that do, RPG's, are best when they are open and this hardly allows you to divide it up in chapters. Adventures would work but they have a hard enough time selling as it is.
Perhaps sometime in the future. I think the first maybe the MMORPG when they finally get around to add a story that is.
Nice idea, file it with 3D glasses and interactive movies.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The thing about episodic games is this. It seems like a good idea at first, but it really would be hard to execute. First off a game is about gameplay. It's not a tv show or a movie where plot is the main element. Interactivity is the main element in any video game. By creating more episodes, even if they come with more levels and maps and such, you are mostly just adding more plot elements and making the game longer. The interactivity will remain the same. So over time the number of people who are going to pay for the next episode decreases.
Secondly the effort required to create a game doesn't decrease when you break the game up into small pieces. Let's say you wanted to make Half-Life 2 episodic. Well all the engine work and such remains just as hard and takes just as long. Also they'll have to spend time making just as many levels and maps. Making the game a serial will just give them a bit more time to do so. The thing is that nobody will pay 50$ for a single episode of a game. Likely each episode will have to be less money. But then you're giving people the whole game for too little and they might not buy future episodes. Well, what if you promise the first 5 episodes for 50$. People might not take because if they pay 50 and only get a part of what they paid for immediately they might not take.
Episodic video games aren't a very feasible idea. It seems cool in your head, but try to think of a profitable way to do it and you just wont come up with one. Video games are like movies not like tv shows. They have sequels and prequels not episodes. This is mainly due to high production times and costs. The closest you can get to a serial video game is an MMO with a special event based plot. I think the future really is in an MMO game with a persistent world, skill based gameplay, and plot directly affected by players.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
1. Gameplay gets boring/too dragged out (.hack series notably)
2. Game would be WAY too short (imagine a game like Max Payne 2 cut up in chapters)
3. Some gamers don't buy games immediately when they are released and some are nearly impossible to find after a period of time.
4. Companies would go evil on us, by making insanely long, dragged out, overdone, just milking the series additions to a game *cough*TheSims*cough*.
5. Its easier to own just one DVD of a whole game than to freak out that you lost part X of Y.
To a degree, isn't that what MMORPGs are, except drawn out to a new episode every few months at a higher subscription cost?
This is especially true of them when they are first released.
Also, look at the Sims. About every 6 months they had a new expansion on the market.
Insert Sig Here
It's been monthly episodic for what, 4 years and a bit now? $13 to play (finally up from $10) and that includes monthly updates -- there was one expansion pack that offered a lot of goodies but you didn't /need/ it, and now that it's hard to find in stores is being given away free to all players.
AC2 has done the same thing, tho a lot less successfully. Too dumbed down.
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Mod developers have been tinkering with episodic gaming for ages now - The Cassandra Project have even released something (worth a look, by the way - not your typical FPRPG fare at all).
In the context of modding, episodic gaming is a fantastic idea. It prevents modmakers from losing focus halfway through, because they've only got a small amount of stuff to be working on at a time. Additionally, once the base coding is done, there's very little extra technical work to be done per episode, meaning nothing's holding the content team back from work.
Bow, nigger. h
Anybody remember Majestic by EA? Prototypical episodic gaming. The game calls you or sends you an email or some such, you play for an hour or two, or until you figure out the puzzle, you do whatever it is you have to do, and then you wait for the game to contact you again. Repeat 3-5 times per episode, about an episode a month. It came complete with cliffhangers ("Will the Black Helicopters catch Billy as he drives across the desert? Who was the agent talking to during the raid? Answers to these and more next week!") and other trappings of episodic drama.
Now, I enjoyed it, but apparently not enough other people did, as it is now "Does anybody remember?" instead of "Is anybody playing?". Whether this is due to the viability (or lack thereof) of episodic gaming's economic model or another factor (EA mismanagement, gigantic overhead, poor story, etc etc) is a question best left to history.
Dare to Hope. Prepare to be Disappointed.
I think there's potential for this model, it is just a matter of timing and a killer app. For timing, well there just have to be enough interested people with broadband access. I think stuff like Windows Update may actually get people used to this model - having their computer go and get stuff for them.
;) But it will be something that just clicks with people and really makes them want see what is coming up in the next month. Unfortuneately I suspect that the killer app won't be a hardcore gamer's type of game, it may just end up being something light and fluffy that appeals to the mass market. However that may just open the doorway to niche titles using this model.
As for the killer app, well if I knew that I'd have an even faster laptop by now, and a new house and car etc.
But I think a bunch of companies are going to get hammered trying to force this next big thing on people for the sake of doing it.
and I bought the other two episodes, too. Unfortunately, I forget their names.
In retrospect, I preferred the episodic form to the straight-line 32 levels of Doom II. Only problem was that you lost all of you accumulated booty when you started the next episode.
My favorite game of that era was Hexen, and its hubs were an interesting compromise between episodes and straight-line levels.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
I remember Blake Stone. Great game on my ol' 486. It came out the same time as the original Duke Nukems and such. You got about 10 levels for only $5 or $10. Then they advertised the rest of the 20 levels and new baddies for another $20. Get you hooked, then try and sell you more. That was back in the early 90's now, so this ain't new. My $.02 anyway.
I'd just mentioned something like this a few weeks back on a blog...
While you're making the first game in the series, you plan ahead. Get good plots stretching over a few games, maybe even running themes and reoccuring secondary characters.
After the first game, you've got virtually all of the technology needed, save updates and fixes on the 'finished' engine. You've got a small library of content that can be used in the following games if any situation asks for it. This saves money already after the first game. Then, with each subsequent disc, you have a larger library of content to draw from. Assuming your chapters are only 4 hours of gameplay, you should be able to fit some rather nice-looking art on the disc, I'd think.
I already buy DVDs that have 5 or so hours of entertainment(movie, extras, and commentary) for $20. What's 4 hours of gameplay for $5 or $10?
Hell. I buy comics for that and get less time out of them. Think of it as a way to make video games like comics, not movies or TV shows. Like any good comic, you should be able to pay a few bucks and jump in at any point and get into it, but having the whole set would probably enrich the story.
People paid two full prices for GTA3 and Vice City because they were two different games (by content), even if they were nearly the same in gameplay. Good content would make this feasible, I feel.
Of course this would only work in content driven games.
A company can't afford to do all the upfront coding and tech support for a 'free' first episode, only to risk most of their potential audience drifting away. They can minimize this by licensing a proven engine - but it will never go away entirely. they'll still have to do support, and no-one wants to do that without revenue.
Second is distribution. what would a 2 hour episode take to download? 50 meg? 100? 200? Sure, for us hardcore gamers none of that seems unreasonable for a good game. Let steam/kpp/bittorrent/etc download that while i watch south park. no problem.
but what about the majority of game buyers with less-than-broadband? what about the game buyers with no internet access? these people are still out there, and the numbers show that there are many more of them than there are of us.
Barring digital distribution, one must press discs, package, ship, and stock a box every month to be sold for roughly $5. This just isn't going to happen, as any content not headed for the bargain bin costs at least $5 just to ship, stock, and get shelf-space.
So to do episodic content, you essentially limit your target market to broadband owners, and you put almost all your cash investment out up-front, with no guarantee or ability to forecast revenue.
Then there's the content problem. Most casual gamers don't finish most of the games they buy. They buy games based on (comparatively) little research and often find they don't care for a game's style, gameplay, story, etc and simply stop playing. To ask publishers to essentially allow these players to try before they buy, is to guarantee less revenue because most will lose interest and never pay for enough episodes to allow the publisher to cover their costs.
Let's not forget the lesson of Stephen King's 'Riding the Bullet'. That was top-rate content from one of America's most celebrated and popular authors, with a rabid, built-in fan-base.
And what happened? He stopped releasing chapters of his novel, because he wasn't getting enough online revenue to make it worth his while. But it wasn't his paythrough rate that was dropping. His downloads themselves dropped after each chapter he released.
Most people simply drifted off. They decided the story wasn't quite 'for them', or they forgot about it, or who knows what else. They simply stopped showing up.
So if Stephen King can't manage to make it worth his time to dish out episodic content, what chance does a game publisher have? They won't have his exposure, they won't have his fan base, they won't have his potential market, and they won't get the free publicity he got. His cost was merely time, imagination, and a word processor. Game developers have comparatively massive up-front costs.
and King failed.
I personally believe that games, like novels, are media that are desireable to consumers, as they are paced solely by the consumer. You can put it down, pause, pick it back up, or blast through it 6 hours at a time, wholly unlike tv or radio.
Consumers of book and game expect to be able to continue when they're engaged. They don't want to stop - and forcing them to stop essentially puts their excitement on hold, and may lose it entirely.
Episodic content has only ever worked in the broadcast media, because with them there was no other way to do it. Broadcast means people have to alter their schedule to consume the content, and most people aren't about to block off 3 hours of one night for a single story. So they cut up a story into several more reasonable parts.
People put up with 24, 1 hour at a time, not because they want to, but because they have no other choice. If 24 released on DVD at the same time as the first episode was released, what do you think would happen? Most people would buy it, and watch it on their own time, at their own pace.
So if episodic content was simply a business reality, and never about a desireable presentation of content - why do people keep trying to force it?
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
I beta-tested Majestic, playing the episodes usually at least a week to a month before they hit the players. As soon as it ended, I had a bad taste in my mouth. I'd keep reading, from time to time, how innovative Majestic was and just laugh.
But you know, after getting more distance from it, I actually miss it. It really only took a few hours a week, but it became something of a daily habit to get an email or fax or phone call from Majestic. I really do think they were on to something, and I think its failure - and the failure of episodic content in general (remember Wing Commander Prophecy?) is largely due to several factors. Since I didn't pay, I don't specifically remember how much Majestic cost but I want to say that it was $10. I'm not sure it was worth that. $5, maybe, but $10 is outrageous. There's the notion with episodic content that it ought to significantly cheaper than a full game.
I think the blame is often laid at the consumer's feet. But it's also an issue of pricing with the publisher. I don't think a publisher could justify charging any less than $10 a month. Why? Uf game designers can sell you a $50 game and %25-50 of those buyers will pay $30 for an expansion pack (essentially the next episode), why bother with a monthly subscription rate and risk someone dropping their account in the 8 months it takes to get the same amount of money?
At least when I go to pick up a game at EB, the game is finished and in my hands. It might not be a terrific game, but at least I've got it.
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
"Imagine your favorite first-person shooter, role-playing game, or action adventure game. Now imagine that game broken up into one- to two-hour sequences. Now imagine that the first part was free and subsequent parts were delivered to you automatically for five bucks a pop, each month. Would you take the bait?"
...it's called an MMORPG...
Some other people seem to have posted similarly to what my first thoughts were -- hasn't this already been done in the form of expansion packs? Most expansion packs are cheaper than the original game and don't involve a lot of code.
The only difference I can think of is that perhaps the proposed system would be on a subscription system -- but that means that the onus is on players to cancel if they don't like the first. I don't think I'd want to have to do something to avoid buying the second.
Other problems with episodic stuff -- if a change has to be made that changes the earlier portions of the game due to an issue towards the end of the game, it's not possible to do a fix for the earlier sections of the game. If you find that the vast dogfights planned for the final levels of your World War II game simply kill computers when they use the degree of special effects that you planned and shipped in the less-crowed earlier versions, you're faced with changing how the game works in the last section.
It places constraints on the structure of the game. Generally, episodic products need to stand alone, to some degree. You can't just sell someone "the next 15 minutes of a movie". There needs to be some degree of resolution to an episode to ensure that the episode is a worthwhile product. This is a constraint that can be rough for a game designer, who now has to make lots of little plots.
One of the major factors in addictiveness of a game is how easily one gets back in to the game. In Quake, I click a mouse button and I respawn. Quake is quite addictive. In, say, older platform games, if I die, I need to play most of a level over again to get to where I was. This doesn't have the same degree of "just one more life" appeal. The idea is to keep the game player in an interested mood, and not provide breaks where they have to do something significant to continue playing with new material. If I require a player to stop, wait six months, then start playing the next "episode", they have a non-trivial irritation factor, a break out of the game. It's hard to start playing again.
I postulate that an episode approach may have a tendancy to lead to declining quality. Once you have the first episode out, review writers need to write their reviews. People decide what to buy. After than, there is much less incentive to keep the quality at the same level.
I suspect that the existence of episodes is somewhat due to the nature of TV. You watch an episode for half an hour when it comes on. Game playing doesn't necessarily stop at particular points. As folks have pointed out, MMOGs let providers provide new content continuously, instead of in "episodes". MMOGs could use an episode-like format if they wanted, but they can also do smaller updates.
May we never see th
I find it really weird that nobody's mentioned dot hack yet in this thread. It's probably the closest thing in actuality to what the blurb suggests (in true /. fashion, I did not read the article). Part four (the big finale) just came out a week or so ago in the U.S., and the reviews for it were decidedly less enthusiastic than those for the first in the set. Why? Because (and this is just my own speculation here) at $50 a pop, people expected four different, unique games and instead got the same game four times in a row-- with little to none of the fine-tuning that occurs between sequels.
This is how I would have done it. Release the main game for a console with a HD (at this point XB, but I really hope the HD catches on in the next generation-- it's more useful than console developers currently realize) at the basic price point of $50. Then, release the expansions for $5 online or $15 in the store (if you want to include extra goodies in the package, go for it, but it'll raise the price point). In short, this is exactly what PC developers have done and done successfully for close to twenty years now. The paradigm can and should work on current consoles-- in fact, it does; three words: Final Fantasy XI.
"Why Subscribe?" Good question...
About a year or so ago, ABC released a game series called "Alias Underground".
http://abc.go.com/primetime/alias/underground/
If I remember, your first download contained the game engine, and the first 2 missions. Subsequent missions were released every other week or so.
Oh, and it was free (as in...). Of course, during the game, Sydney drives a Ford Focus®, and communicates with Marshall via her Nokia®, cell phone.
It's pretty much a Tomb Raider knockoff. Fun, nonetheless.
One of the business plans mooted by their live team is for content(eg new monsters, classes, spells, and items) to be freely available to all, all small episodic(but professionally made*) modules using this content to be downloadable for around $5-10 each. It's not really a surprising move, when you consider the idea of episodic content has been integral to P&P RPGs and card games since the 70s. All the computer industry has lacked is a suitable distribution medium, which the internet(and mroe specifically widespread broadband) now provides *Mind you, considering the quality of the average NWN player made content, Daikatana looks like a neglected masterpiece
There have been a lot of good points raised on the practicality of producing such a game successfully, but assuming someone could do it and make money on it I would definitely be interested in a format like this. I've been playing games for a long time and I still think like someone who plays a few hours a day, but in reality I now have a time-consuming job, a wife and 2 kids, and I'm remodeling my house. I'm lucky if I get 2 hours a week to relax. With a lot of games it is too much effort to sit back down after a week away and remember what the hell you were doing. I'll pick up a game like KOTOR or Morrowind when I have some vacation time coming up or if things are going to be slow at work for a few weeks, but it would be cool to have a game that was designed for episodic play. Even if, in the long run, it is more expensive than your typical $50 game. I'd rather pay $75 for a game that I could enjoy and finish over time than blow $50 on a game that I never get through because I can't put in enough hours to stay engaged. And I know that there are a ton of people in the same situation.
Also, I think that if this was done well it could generate a lot of attention as the game progresses. If there was anticipation and a general "buzz" as each episode was released it could really grow.
Ok, so I got my playstation2 a few years ago, and I love perusing screenshots of the latest games online, thinking to myself "Wow, if only I had time to immerse myself in THAT!"
So its really hard for me to justify dropping $50 on a game that I know I'll only get to play for 5-10 hours in a month. And I know that about 50% of the time, I get bored or stuck in a game before finishing it.
My solution is to put the games in my amazon "save for later" queue and check back periodically as the games get cheaper and cheaper, and become available via the "used" channels. When I can get a game for $20 or less, I buy it. The disadvantage of this is that I usually have to wait a good 4-5 months before games are this cheap, and by then I've seen 5 other games that I'm drooling over at that moment.
A model like this would help serve my "that looks cool right now!" urge, but I wonder about the monthly-installment type of thing. When I do get bored/stuck, it is after about a month of gameplay. I might be willing to pony up $5 or $10 during that first month to buy the next installment or two early, while the game still has my attention... especially if I started the game for free. My net cost could be lower and I'd probably get the same enjoyment out of it..
There are so many problems with episodic games... Where to begin?
First of all, there is linearity of design. Generally, your character will acquire experience, gold, weapons, abilities, etc throughout a game. If a person jumps into the fifth month of a game, he will be at a severe disadvantage to continue if it is even possible at all. So in any game that contains character development, like the Metroid series, you will need to keep customers buying the packs in a linear fashion.
Which brings us to a position where you don't have an episodic presentation at all, you have a pay-as-you-go model combined with a content-in-patches model. People will start 8 months after the game is released and it starts to get some buzz, will play though the first available 9 hours, and will wait every month for the next level. And that, my friends, is a crappy way to experience a game. Even if you can only spare an hour a week, you will be left with nothing to play for 1/5th of the time, and a tight story experience that is spread out over two years. It would be jilted and terrible. Whatever coherent emergent experience the game may be presenting would be lost amidst the sea of time. Could you imagine watching LotR one hour at a time, spread out over 9 months?
And let's be honest, no monthly episode would ship on time. It should be in QA for the a month before it is ready for prime time. You have to create textures, unique characters, a map, a new musical track, and fresh voice recordings. You have to balance the difficulty, ensure compatibility, and test. You would have to develop the entire game before hand, and simply release it monthly. It would simply be a matter of withholding from your potential audience.
After a year, what then? If it took you two or three years to develop the first game, and you've been futzing about during the intervening year listening to player criticisms, altering gameplay balance, and adding areas, you now will have had maybe a solid 6 months to design and develop the next game. That's really not enough time, even using an existing engine. The reviewer complains that Metroid Zero is too short, and would like to see more content released monthly, but the reviewer doesn't say where this development time would come from. It's nice to say that a game is too short, but Metroid Zero isn't too short because they were waiting for the expansion pack. Game designers not "worrying about having to pad these episodes out"? These episodes would be all padding.
As for the first hour free... Has Greg Kasavin even tried demos? I know he's the executive editor for GameSpot, so he probably knows to avoid the slimeware that GameSpot's demo area tries to install on your system, but there are other sources. If you want the first hour free, go to a real demo site, like 3DGamers, and enjoy yourself.
It is true that games need to become shorter, more intense experiences... More Metal Gear Solid than Xenogears. But chopping up an otherwise perfectly fine game and making it monthly is not the answer. It may be a reasonable-sounding solution, which is why it is repeated all too often, but in reality this no-brainer really is a no-brainer.
The ______ Agenda
I had a concept like this to get paid for making open source games. Release the game in episodes 4-6 hours long and have a donation system setup that when the total donation reach a certain level a new episode would be released. Each episode would have to be a complete story but part of an epic overall adventure.
I played the demo level in Dark Forces: Jedi Knight dozens of times, and it made me want the full game (which I asked for and got for xmas one year). If I hadn't played that free, short demo, I wouldn't have wanted the full game.
All the benchmarks and reviews in the world can't substitute for actually playing a demo of the game.
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Ok, so any game like Tetris, Quake III, Unreal Tournament is out of this equation. They don't really have stories so breaking them into parts makes no sense.
Any game with a multiplayer component is out too - If you release new content, presumably there will be some new models etc. If I don't have those models because I didn't buy Episode 3 or whatever, then the versions of our game will be out of sync and we won't be able to play together. Episodic games fragment the multiplayer community which is the opposite of what you want.
That leaves us with single-player story-driven games. Again, there are two sides. On the one hand we have games where the plot is open and your choices have real consequences to how the story unfolds (Western style RPGs (Fallout, Neverwinter Night: Shadows of Undrentide, Planescape Torment)). Let's include in this catagory games where the plot will unfold in more or less the same way but you have a lot of freedom as far as how you explore the world (Metroid series, Myst and Uru, Grand Theft Auto). None of these are suited to Episodic gaming because if you limit your content to, say, 5 hours of gameplay per episode then there will be very little that I can explore and unless you are willing to write a series of different episodes for different decisions in previous episodes, my actions won't be able to significantly affect the way your plot unfolds.
This leaves us with story-driven, single-player, linear, non-exploratory games. They would be very good episodic games. Unfortunately, there aren't very many games like that and most of them are made for consoles (ie, parts of the Final Fantasy series, Viewtiful Joe, Metal Gear series) which generally don't have large Hard Drives to store new episodes on them.
I have a lot of opinions about Cyborgs and Architects
Something else I've thought that may impair a company's willingness to develop episodic content is that it becomes much more of a democratic process than merely releasing a $50. What I mean is that if you're going to develop, say, 10 levels, and you have the choice of selling these at $50 for all 10, or $10 a month for each level, with the entire game each level does not have to be the absolute strongest it can possible be. If you have a subpar level, most players will be forgiving as long as you make it up eventually.
But with episodic content, that becomes problematic. You make one poor level for one month, and you may very well have lost a substantial amount of subscribers.
www.arena.net is the site setup for the refugees from blzzard who are working on Guild Wars, which loosly follows this model. It's an Everquest-like mmorpg, but has no monthly fee, and instead relies on repeat expansion buys to pay the bills.
Sounds like this may get tested this year.
-chitlenz
Imagination is the silver lining of Intelligence.
For almost any of the computer games there are free demo-versions, which user can download and play. Than what would be the point of splitting game into short episodes and selling them separately? Nobody sells 1/10 of the book or movie, right?
From the original article:
Sometimes we spend $50 on a game, never get all the way through it, and then wish we hadn't wasted our money.
You should read reviews first... Wait, you are an editor. Then you should find people who write informative reviews, hire them and then read reviews first.
Sequels can be made as episodes of a (supposed to be) larger history, sometimes they are actually made considering the history will finish in the sequel, hollywood has implemented this system successfully: star wars, kill bill, the matrix sequels and to some extent lord of the rings. Since american games tend to follow movies Is pretty possible we see a game named "TITLE:volume 1" in the near future.
Anyway in games this already has been done with some success: legacy of kain per example tells a "history" which can be only fully unraveled by playing all episodes (games), the baldurs gate D&D (supossedly) and of course the ".hack" series do pretty much the same.
In other case, small (1-2 levels) episode games can only be practical for shareware, demoware or internet based developers who are trying to make downloads easier on users. Other than that a company cant afford to invest in a full game project which will only have an asured sell of only 20% of their content at 30% of its price, I mean, who can asure if users will only get the first 2 episodes and then quit because they found is too dificult or something else new is out by then? is a known fact that only a small percenteage of gamers finish all the games they buy. What about the other epidodes developing packing and *shipping (*if they get shelf space) who is going to pay for that?
Is not practical for users either, you buy a $20 buck game and play it for 2-4 hours then you have to go and buy the next episode. if you have 5 extra episodes thats 6 visits to the software store. Even a less than brilliant person can realize is easier if you just pick all the episodes in 1 trip (unless you are considering quitting early or not playing all episodes). Besides who is going to buy a 2 hour game when they can get a full game for the same quantity at retail price? is a no brainer.
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There are very few companies that deliver content worth the cost of an expansion pack as is. (The only one I can think of off-hand has a name that starts with B and means a fierce snowstorm, though there was those few famous free expansions to the original IWD and WC Prophecy (that prompted me to go buy the original games off the bargin bin).) If the prices were low enough, I'd consider it. But most companies I suspect won't be able to or interested in selling their content that cheaply.
Actually, Baldur's Gate has a reasonable model - a world you can wander aroud in as you like that can paste new additions onto the world map relatively easily. Had Interplay not cannibilized BIS, I'd consider paying 20-30 for an initial package and $5 a month for a new area. No idea if that's as profitable for them as selling the game for full price upfront though - I never made it more than a few chapters into the original BG cause I was really busy at the time, and I'm sure they'd have made less money had I been paying as I go....
So it's like Xbox Live (which lets you download content), but without 90% of the content of the original game. Or like a standard PC game with extra units, maps, campaigns, etc. downloadable from the 'Net, but now it costs money. Sounds great.
For example, I can imagine game publishers saying, "OK, now you only need to make 10% of the content by the time the game's released, so instead of getting twelve months, you only need three." Sure, it may be possible to make 10% of the content in 25% of the time, but it is not possible to do 100% of the programming in 25% of the time.
The problem with Majestic was that it catered to the lowest common denominator. The puzzles were way too easy; most of them didn't even require any thought. I don't think this is a problem with episodic gaming, though, just a problem with EA's implementation of it. After all, the "free" Majestic Revelations episodic side-game was far better than the game I was actually paying for because the puzzles were actually good and required teamwork to solve.
Rob
It was a (technically) free episodic space sim on freeloader.com that was a lot like Wing Commander Secret Ops. It was about 2/3 of the way or so finished when the creators yanked it and put the game out for retail about a year later. I have a copy of the retail game, but I haven't played it yet. The game seemed too weak for retail, though.
Rob
I like the idea a lot. An ambitious company could even try to restructure the game industry to look more like broadcast TV. I mean, once you have good game engines stablized, you can start hiring artists, voice actors and writers to produce regular episodics. These episodics can be occasionally interrupted by advertising and delivered, for free, to the end user.
Ultimately, this would change the industry to stop focusing on technical advancements (renderers, etc) and focus on gameplay and story enhancements instead. Some of us seem to be waiting for that.
Of course, you could also shoot for a subscription model instead of ad-support, but most people already pointed out the problem with that: current gamers are reluctant to move to a monthly-fee model when they can already buy 60-gameplay-hour games for $50.
If anybody's seriously interested in this, and brainstorming some ideas I'd be curious to talk to them.
..but there is a major element missing in many games that limits the appeal of this - good storylines
Its the story that keeps you coming back to TV shows or book series or movie series and the same should be true for episodic gaming. Whether it would actually succeed is a whole different issue, but the chances are quite slim. The time required to produce each episode will be too long, sure once the core engine is written it will speed up as developers learn the system, but it will still be no small task to produce each episode. Maybe one day it will be a possibility but I don't think yet
I am a lazy american game programmer! I have become my own worst enemy!
(Not really)
You're partly right in terms of licensing an existing engine... except that a good engine costs upwards of a million bucks. So right there, the publisher has the challenge of getting their investment back with the first episode. How can they do that if the game is sold for less than the average full-length title?
Then by licensing a _cheap_ existing engine, the product's quality suffers. Right there, that's shooting yourself in the foot again, because people are less likely to buy subsequent episodes if the main episode's quality isn't quite up to snuff.
There's no easy way around it. Imagine the Lord of the Rings movie split up into 9 episodes, 1 hour long each. Would you have gone to see each and every episode? Even if your movie ticket was half price?
The idea just doesn't work.....
Reading the post, it reminds me of the Apogee Model from way back.
I would be interested in episodic gaming - I never get immersed in gaming and something that can be down in a night is personally better for me.
Besides, wasn't it tried before back in 1998 (the name elludes me, but it was a shoot 'em up)?
-nt
the .hack series was released as 4 seperate games that continue the story right from were the last one left off. And Xenosaga is soppused to be episodic hence the name Xenosaga episode 1.
If games were episodic and for any reason the company left the series out, you wouldnt have the complete history of the game ever!
I hate to bring it up because they are great games, but the shenmue games are supossed to be episodes 1,2 of 13, so the history is not complete at all, and theres no signs of shenmue 3 (or its other 11 parts) ever going to be released.
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I'm not too sure how popular this would be. It reminds me of the now defunct divx format. When people pay for software, they want the whole thing, not just a part of it. They don't want to pay for it over and over again. Admittedly, there is a slight difference. In the episodic games, you're paying for new content with each installment. In the case of divx, you were paying to view something you already had seen.
'Q' is for Dr. Tran
A buddy of mine owns and X-box... We are getting together with others to play multi-player all the time, but it's starting to get old... But imagine a game like Halo merged with the BioWare model. You buy "Halo X" for half of the cost of a regular new X-Box game... But all you have is the single player game and one multi-player map. Now when you log on to play online, you can either only join games with that one free map, or you can connect to MS and for the low-low price of $? you can download the "New, Improved Fantastic Multi-Player Map Y"... Each month, MS releases a new map... The game keeps changing, old players continue to be challenged, new players can come into a new map on (somewhat) equal footing... I'd pay a couple of bucks for a new map. Maybe in LAN games, only one person would need to have the map, that way you could 'preview it' in a LAN game and decide if you wanted to purchase it...
This content is significant: three towns have been destroyed over the course of the 4 year storyline -- Arwic, which was the TRADING HUB of the game at the time, and has since been rebuilt in impressive fashion (over the course of 3 episodes about a year back); Tufa, which has been sorta-rebuilt on the edges of the water-filled crater; and Yanshi, the residents of which now live in a nearby tent city.
Epic storylines culminate in huge battles which are of course for the Fate Of Dereth (tm). Political intrigue abounds. That, and it's a fun game, too, with killing aplenty!
The developer, Turbine, has recently purchased the rights for the game back from Microsoft, and are going to release an expansion pack soon. The game is not currently available for download (MS had dropped it when AC2, a bad game :), tanked) but it will be in the next couple of weeks. Highly recommended.
.hack already does this, little more exspensive than 5 bucks a pop, but it's probably the best option so far.
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I have a few games that have ended with a "to be continued" type endings. The problem with this is that these games did not get any sequals, which makes it annoying to play through the darn thing only to be left with a short and cheap ending. Would you pay $10+ to go to a movie that lasts for 10-15 minutes and ends with "maybe to be continued next month?"
One example of such a game is Shenmue. It hasn't got to its end yet, and from the looks of things it might not even get to finish. It also dosn't help them if they keep changing systems each time. If they do release Shenmue III, they better include the first and second one because I really doubt that many have played the first two. Also I doubt that many will want to buy it if the game is at the end of its story. It is kind of like buying a novel, and just reading the last few chapters.
Plus that way you can actully experience some of the things didn't carry over to the Xbox; i.e. the collecting, fighting moves, money, arcade games, etc.
To clarify just how difficult a particular segment is relative to the rest of the game.
At the point in the game where this happens, you can, at best, survive 3 or 4 beam shots from the SA-X. Not bad you say? Here is the difficulty.
When you meet up with the SA-X at this point, it is walking back and forth in the room. You are hanging off a ledge on the right side of the room (so sneaking past the SA-X is impossible). You have to drop down to the floor, use a diffusion missile (which flies slightly slower than your beam weapon) to freeze the SA-X for a paltry 3 seconds. Run to the room to the left.
This room is one large corridor with a series of gates. On the ceiling of the gates, thre are red sensor you must shoot at with your beam weapon to open the gate. At this point you are running away from the SA-X, so you must run and shoot diagonally (the game allows you to do diagonal shot easily fortunately) at the sensors to open the gates. All the while the SA-X is chasing you. You can stop to fire a diffusion missile at the SA-X, but it's going to open fire at you, so you have to be quick. So, you're running like crazy opening each gate until you reach a wall. The wall can only be dstroyed with a Power Bomb. The Power Bomb takes 5 seconds to detonate. So, you have to plant the bomb, and freeze the SA-X while you wait for the bomb to explode then run again to the next room where there is a large wall you can jump over and hide.
After this segment, future SA-X battles were not nearly as difficult. The whole game has spikes of difficulty which really make the game balance feel off.
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In a way isn't this what "Serious Sam" is all about?
I'm suprized that everyone here assumes that the storyline must be continuous for every episode. Take for example, Shelock Holmes. The short stories aren't enough to make a full game (usually), while quite possible for much shorter ones.
This would also be far preferable for independant game makers, who can't afford to spend years to build a game. 1 month isn't overly long to make a short game though. The game itself thus has to depend on content rather than fancy graphics only possible by a longdevelopment time, but then, indy developers usually have to depend on that anyway.
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I've played a few games similar to this concept.
My favourite was You Don't Know Jack Netshow from the now-defunct bezerk.com. Ordinary YDKJ fare, but free and updated with new questions weekly. In lieu of subscription, the user was forced to watch a few short TV-style flash commercials between each of the 3 rounds. The commercials were very tolerable considering the quality of the game, but I guess they didn't pay the bills.
Another fine, free, episodic game is (was) Wing Commander Prophecy. I believe this game, the same in gameplay to other WC titles, was intended to be a commercial product but, like Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, development could not conform to schedule and\or budget and was released to the public pro bono. Episodes were released incrementally (I forget the span as I didn't try it until all 6 episodes were available) and professionally written story text and fanfiction could be downloaded to whet one's appetite between releases. The game can be downloaded but the game originally required registration and the website is now gone so I can't promise it will work for you (plus it's a Win98 game - Direct3D).
Depends what you call parts and what you call expansions.
Does a part have to end in a cliffhanger, not be complete on its own ?
Else, many games are doing this already. I don't mean the old Apogee/ID software technique of making part 1 free and 2 and 3 commercial.
A lot of work is done on the engine/game, but content also takes a lot of time. If you just release when you have enough but keep on making new content with the same engine, you can sell it again.
Half-Life, then Opposing force, then Blue shift. Medal of Honor, a year later Spearhead and now Breakthrough. The Dungeon Siege expansion. The expansions/new stories for Morrowind and Neverwinter Nights. Road to Rome for Battlefield 1942 (not much of a story but still something new). Almost every game seems to get an expansion/new release a year later with additional content.
It looks like this business model is already being used a lot.
See title...
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