The Impact of Episodic Gaming

GameDailyBiz has a piece up looking at what episodic content is, and what it means to the future of the games industry. From the article: "Our age is one of aging. Mainstream gamers are now older on average than they have ever been. When you are single and unemployed, it is easy to play The Godfather for nine straight hours the day the game hits the shelf. When you are married, it becomes tougher. When you have kids, it might be impossible. It is difficult to slice some time for yourself. And in that slice, you have to carve a portion for gaming. It is no wonder casual games that require no more than 10 minutes to play continue to grow in popularity. This is why we are more likely to login to Call of Duty 2 on Xbox Live to play a quick five-minute Team Deathmatch and leave the Lobby."

Comments

Re:Not a joke

[GmAz]

I hear that. I used to love to play World of Warcraft all day on Saturdays and after work. But since my baby was born, I get to play when she doesn't need attention (for those of you who don't have kids, thats rarely ever). And when I do play, I can't do anything that takes a while to do because before you know it, she's crying and I need to put the laptop down. It really changes things.

Re:nine hours?

[Odin_Tiger]

32 hours at a friend's frat house. Morrowind, about 3 months after it came out on XBox. The rule was that you could play as long as you wanted, but you had to a) keep drinking (beer, coffee, pop, water, didn't matter), and b) hand over the controller to the next guy when you needed a piss break.

Re:On top of old-foggie.

[Valdrax]

What with all these "getting older" stories? Is the gaming community having a mid-life crisis?

Basically, yes.

Those of us who grew up as the first generation of video gamers are growing older. Sure, there's all sorts of new gamers, but we're starting to see gamers in their thirties who started on video games in elementary school. As a result, there's a lot of navel-gazing about people who still love games but can't play all the games they used to as a kid.

I'm a big console RPG gamer. When I was a kid, I used to regularly rack up over 50 hours on a run through FF4, and I probably played the game from start to finish over 8 times. I'd disdain strategy guides on the first run or two while trying to find everything myself.

Now, as a gainfully employed adult, I'm lucky to have enough time to play through one of my RPGs once. I don't have time to get everything I missed on a second run, so at this point, I'm hitting FAQs from before I start the game and using cheat codes at the end to bypass some of the tedium of finishing side quests. I have a lot of games that I've bought thinking that they'd be great that are sitting on my shelf unopened because I just don't have time anymore.

I also haven't played a good 4X TBS game in ages because I just can't see myself spending a week to finish one play-through.

That's a demographic shift for gamers that does actually mean something in terms of what kinds of products we buy, and since we're the money makers now, the industry is catering to us. That's why you're seeing so much about this.

Oblivion

[SmallFurryCreature]

Now if there is one recent game you can't complete in 10 minutes that is it. 9 hours? HA!

So if this article got a point this superlong game would not be selling. Except that it is.

So the story is complete and utter crap.

What is "important" for people with other demands on their time is the ability to segment their gaming. Or in other words. Save anywhere.

Call of Cthulhu is another Betsheda game yet while it is much shorter (except for some fake replay forcing) I can play it far less. In Oblivion I could play for say 5 minutes before saving and doing whatever is demanded of me. CoC would mean I had to quit and next time do whatever I did over again because I had not reached a save point.

The online 5 minute FPS section offcourse can't be saved but then again doesn't need to. Same with MMO games wich in way save CONSTANTLY.

I think the most important lesson game companies should learn is that older players with real live demands on their time will have less patience for being forced to play from savepoint to savepoint. Being forced to replay a game if they want maximum difficulty (what the fuck is up with that? Consoles are weird) or all the goodies.

Putting out games in small bits is not going to solve anything. So what if the godfather was segmented into 1 hour episodes. That STILL would not meet your 5 minute game session time.

I just wish gamemakers would wake up and realize that savepoints are a leftover from the days consoles didn't have enough memory to save a full game.

It is a tech limit NOT a design feature. I paid for the product, I decide how to play it.

If you think about it savepoint system is like that recent Philips patent to disable your TV controls during ads. It is the content maker telling you how you should play. Fuck that.