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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?
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
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.
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
"I never worry about not finishing a game, because there're always one or two dead periods in which very little is released worth playing, and I can come back to many of my games then, whether I finished them before or not."
You're the exception, not the rule. 80% of players will not finish a given game. It makes loads of sense, therefore, to break a game up. If the difficulty structure (TM) of a game follows a series of buildups and peaks, it's going to be a hell of a lot more interesting than your standard start-off-easy-end-hard fare. Especially since, if you couldn't finish last month's episode, you can start this month's anyway (after a quick "previously on..." catch-up, if it's narrative led).
There's more. If you buy the first episode and decide you don't like the game, what have you lost? Ten quid? Rather than, say, fourty?
Obviously, episodic structure only works for certain game types. Coincidentally, however, these seem to be exactly the games that typically *don't* hold the player's interest up until the end.
Bow, nigger. h
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.
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...
it'd be very hard for developers to handle the difficulty curve if you're assuming that players can skip whole episodes of the game, while still trying to appeal to those that will finish each episode.
Why? Even now, some games offer to let you skip a mission if you fail it (e.g.) three times. It means that the primary, driving element behind playing the next episode is not to see how many enemies they're going to throw at you, but what interesting new things they're going to do with the game (not to mention What Happens Next plot-wise). Operation Flashpoint is a great example of something that could work fantastically in episodes - "I heard you get to drive a tank next month!"
Yet what no one's explained so far is how breaking a game up into episodes is going to hold someone's interest any better than getting the whole game at the start would have.
I think I've been doing just that, actually.
Beyond that, you have to wonder how many developers are going to finish releasing episodes if a game doesn't do well in the first couple of episodes.
It'd force the industry to adopt a more content- than technology-oriented approach to making and selling games, which is the direction it's been moving in anyway. Less focus on coding engines (which would ideally be the job of entirely separate companies, but let's not get into that argument here), more on getting some good design down in zeros and ones. Selling games is about style these days, which is, for example, the entire reason Rockstar exists - to sell "cool" games to "cool" people. If a game was something you picked up for next to nothing at the petrol station, think of the massmarket penetration.
Bow, nigger. h
Why? Even now, some games offer to let you skip a mission if you fail it (e.g.) three times. It means that the primary, driving element behind playing the next episode is not to see how many enemies they're going to throw at you, but what interesting new things they're going to do with the game (not to mention What Happens Next plot-wise).
The games that are doing well currently either already have this element or can be played with absolutely no concern for this element. Breaking it up into episodes doesn't really change this, and if the plot can't already move people forward through a difficult point, then it won't do so in episodes (except that you can skip it, which brings us to...). Furthermore, if the difficulty stays the same throughout the game, many people will simply become bored with the game. Remember that telling the story isn't the only element of a game. Though some games stretch it at times, this isn't a movie or a TV show.
Operation Flashpoint is a great example of something that could work fantastically in episodes - "I heard you get to drive a tank next month!"
Operation Flashpoint is a good example of a game I've never purchased nor played, so excuse me if I miss your point on that one. On the other hand, why wait until next month to drive a tank if there are 3 other games on the shelves that let you drive a tank right now? There was about a whole year where everyone wanted to know if FPS X would let you drive vehicles because FPS Y and FPS Z promised they would be able to do this. A lot of people were about to wet themselves to drive a tank in an FPS, and when it finally happened, each implementation was either cool for a little while or sucked from the start. It's hit & miss, and if you're releasing a game as a series of episodes, 1 episode can drive people away from the next.
I think I've been doing just that [explaining how episodes will keep interest better than a whole game], actually.
Perhaps some group will be interested in buying the next episode if they couldn't get through the previous episode, but it seems far more likely that they'd simply go play something else. Why not just let people skip portions of existing games (you've already said some games let people do this) and get the plot points if they're having trouble? They continue on, and they don't have to wait for the next episode to do so, they're not stuck with fixed points at which they can rejoin the plot.
It'd force the industry to adopt a more content- than technology-oriented approach to making and selling games, which is the direction it's been moving in anyway. Less focus on coding engines (which would ideally be the job of entirely separate companies, but let's not get into that argument here), more on getting some good design down in zeros and ones.
But content takes more time to develop and still costs a lot of money, plus you still have to license the technology. If your content takes longer to develop than your episodes have between releases, then your cost is almost entirely up front, you develop a full game and split it into episodes just because it's the new model people want to try out (same as the old model). This is why there are more artists than coders on most game development teams in the first place. You build an engine and development tools, then bring in an army of artists and work bugs out of the tools and engine as the artists bring together content that you can actually load into the engine to discover bugs. As you said, the industry is already moving towards being more content driven, this is simply a different model of selling the games, and really only effects development in 2 ways:
1) cost of development is returned over a longer period of time (if at all)
2) you have more time to refine content for later portions of the game, so you can release an unfinished game and fewer people will notice.
None of this really addresses, though, the question I asked, which is why would a publisher or develope
-PainKilleR-[CE]
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.
Go ahead MOD my day!
More opinions here
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....
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.
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.
Heya. I'm from the up-stairs thread on this story arguing PainKilleR. (He's a trouble-maker.) Can I borrow a cup of sugar?
*ahem* We've mentioned that many people do prefer to wait for collected works (DVDs of TV shows, for example), but many people still can't wait that long. They prefer to see episodes as soon as they're available. I can appriciate your comparison. It's a damned good one. But I think it's a little off.
His first eBook sold 400,000. I'm not positive, but I'd guess that's rather low for a Stephen King novella, as he sold 3million copies of Green Mile and thought that was abysmal. So by direct comparison, he should avoid electronic means of transport altogether. And following that line of thought, so should games. After all, they DO sell much better in stores. But that's a flawed thinking in my opinion.
I do think that the writer of the article was wrong to suggest download massive amounts of new content on consoles, as the hard drive would fill up and you'd have to lose the content you paid for. I'd suggest selling the first (full size or near) game at the retailed for an amount proportionate to the content, with new chapters available for $5-$10 dollars at the counter. Cash in on peoples' impulses. Please feel free to join us 'up-stairs' in my thread if you want to go on about this idea any. I just genearlly think that you're wrong to compare books (low-tech) to games (high-tech) in terms of marketing. Games are much closer to video, which is often serielized with success.
..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
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)?
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.
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.
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