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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!
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
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
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
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.