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?

Comments

Shareware

[Blaskowicz]

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

Not the path I want my games to take.

[darkmayo]

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.

Personaly?

[Pamplemousse]

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!

Episodic games?

[PainKilleR-CE]

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

Re:Episodic games?

[aanand]

"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.

Re:Episodic games?

[PainKilleR-CE]

You're the exception, not the rule. 80% of players will not finish a given game.

What makes me the exception, then? I probably haven't finished more than half the games I have.

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.

A lot of games currently follow a series of peaks in difficulty. Most people (myself included) tend to stop playing a game because one particular peak ramps up too quickly, rather than because the game simply gets progressively harder and they eventually can't get any further. A good example from my personal experience would be Metroid Fusion. One particular part of the game has an encounter with SA-X (an enemy nearly equivalent to the player's character at full power), near the middle of the game, that requires you to run away to a particular area, then wait for the SA-X to leave. I stopped playing the game for 2 months because I was having a hard time with that particular sequence. When I came back to it, it still took roughly 6 times to get past it, but then most of the remainder of the game was closer to the original difficulty curve, with 2 or 3 more encounters that were significantly more difficult.

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).

That might be a nice way of doing things, but 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.

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?

We used to have demos for this. Unfortunately, demos have become less relevant as they release early code or portions that aren't relevant to the overall game. There's always the shareware model, as well, which is closer to what the article actually described (as many others have pointed out, Wolfenstein 3D and Doom were released much in this way). Rentals are another consideration for people that aren't sure about a game, and I'd have to say that rentals got me through most of my childhood. If you buy a game and don't like it, take it back, get something else. If it took you 2 months to figure out you don't like it you might end up losing a bit more money on it, but it's not much of a loss if you find out fairly quickly.

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.

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. 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. With the front-heavy costs of building a game in the first place, the developers will take even fewer risks in that sort of structure and any game that isn't doing well in the first 2 episodes will probably be written off and left incomplete. Just as with sequels, subsequent episodes will draw a smaller audience, which only helps give publishers incentive to cut their losses after the first episode.

Re:Episodic games?

[aanand]

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.

Re:Really

[Momomoto]

I believe that you're missing the point of the article. The point of episodic gaming is that the game itself would be provided free of charge, with extra content and storyline available at $5 per month.

Star chamber and Uru, for example

[Murphy's Paradox]

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.

Right....

[SmallFurryCreature]

Yeah I remember a few games that were supposed to go along these lines. Blair Witch was the only one to even come close and it was really three sequels released really close together.

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.

Here we go

[Apreche]

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.

Good on paper, bad in reality

[MMaestro]

Simply put, theres too many things that can go wrong. Heres a quick runthrough:

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.

Re:I can

[PainKilleR-CE]

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.

Why do you need games to be episodic to do this? I usually have 3 or 4 games next to each of my systems and cycle through them, putting one back on the shelf every time I get a new game for that system (the new game going next to the system), or get sick of or finish that particular game. If I think I might have a problem coming back to a particular game, I write myself a note. If I have a guide for that particular game, I'll stick the note in the page that's roughly where I'm at in the game. If I don't have a guide, I'll just put the note in the game's case. I have a hand-drawn map of Metroid on my coffee table at the moment because I've been playing through the emulated version of the NES Metroid on my GameCube, and it helps me remember where I've been and where I'm going. What I'm trying to do is something I can usually figure out from there. The first "episode" of .hack has a note sitting in it that probably tells me something like "level up before going to area (whatever the name of it is) to finish this game", because I got sick of spending so much time on the last boss only to die. There's a similar note in my FF Origins case, except that I'm nowhere near the end of FF2 afaik.

What it comes down to is simple, games need better facilities for tracking your progress so that you can fire a game up after not playing it for a month or so, load your save game, maybe read a little info from the map or an in-game journal (ala Baldur's Gate and derivatives), and you have a pretty good idea of what's going on. The games are getting more complex, your goals get more complex, so the games need to help us handle that complexity. After all, any of us can pick up almost any Super Mario Bros. game today, no matter how long ago we last played it, and have it all figured out in a couple minutes.

Episodic modding

[aanand]

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.

I already did!

[Divide By Zero]

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.

the economics aren't there

[*weasel]

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?

"Tell Kendra to Get out Now!"

[superultra]

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?

Actually they are called "sequels"

[AzraelKans]

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.

Rushed Games

[JonoPlop]

If this did take off, would this leave a lot of retail releases very rough around the edges?

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 future of the industry?

[torinth]

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.

Another detail about this.

[AzraelKans]

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.