Epic's Mark Rein Not an Episodic Fan

Next Generation reports on comments by Epic Games VP Mark Rein, a man who doesn't like the phenomenon of episodic content. At the Develop Conference in Brighton, England he railed against the trend in game design during a keynote speech. He also covered topics such as the costs of next-gen game design, and the ways in which Intel has done disservice to the game development community. From the article: "He said that episodic games could never compete will full-priced products. 'They're competing against massive marketing budgets. Distribution without marketing is worthless. You can't buy retail marketing with a wholesale price of $15.' He added, 'Full-price games have a cohesive start, middle and end.' Rein acknowledged that the game industry already has an episodic model through game sequels, such as Madden, Zelda and Final Fantasy. He said these work because they are full-price and backed by marketing."

Comments

Mostly right

[andrewman327]

I believe that there is room for the little episodic developer, though it is shrinking daily. Sports games (like TFA's Madden) will continue, as there is a distinct point after which the data from the old game becomes invalid (after the season). Even without massive amounts of marketing, there are still people (like me) who go out of our way to look for any promising title, not just the one's I've already heard about. I appreciate the effort that goes into these games, and I do not have time to justify paying recurring subscriptions to an MMORPG.

Cynicism meters

[Jerf]

What sets my cynicism meters a-twitchin' is that episodic content seems ultimately to derive from the game companies desires to turn periodic purchases into purchase streams. I've yet to see a case where a company turns something that is naturally a periodic purchase into a stream and actually benefit the consumer more than leaving it alone. You can't create revenue streams by corporate fiat. If you want streams, you're going to need to offer products that are naturally streams, live "server access" (MMORPGS) or other such things.

Against the little problem of "I don't think they have a customer-benefitting reason to exist", all the other problems pale into insignificance.

(Note: I speak of generalities. It's great that you love episodic content, but you are not the totality of the game market. Are gamers as a whole really clamoring to be nickle-and-dimed to death, especially when that saying translates to $5-$10?)

Episodic Gaming is BAAAD

[Lord_Dweomer]

Episodic gaming is BAAAD as I have previously discussed in detail in my previous posts here, here and here.

There's nothing wrong with episodic releases.

[WidescreenFreak]

I see nothing wrong with episodic content as long as its applicable to the game. I don't think that most games would do well in an episodic format, but for some games it might work, depending on the genre, cost, and time between releases. Graphic adventures are probably the best suited to this.

Small developers certainly can use episodic releases to their advantage. For example, if a small developer waited to release the whole thing and the game was releases with a ton of bugs or other issues that gamers don't like, the company is dead, and the customer is pissed that he spent $50 on a bug-ridden piece of shit, e.g. Ultima: Ascension. (I'm not saying that U:A would have worked in an episodic format, mind you. NOTHING could have saved it from the completely irresponsible ways that EA managed that project.)

At least with episodic content, the developers can get a bit of money up front to keep them going and the gamers get the opportunity to say, "Well, here's where you had problems" or "I didn't like..." and the developers can fix the issue or make changes based on user feedback into the next episode. Meanwhile, the customer only spent $15 or so. So the remaining episodes could be tweaked to implement the fixes/changes with less egg on the developers' faces than if they released the whole game with the same bugs and problems for 3x the price or more.

Personally, the anti-episodic attitudes that I read about seem to stem more from a selfish "I want it and I want it ALL NOW!!!" attitude that doesn't help anyone.

And need I remind you that PJ's Lord of the Rings trilogy was episodic with two books released in movie format every year. (LotR was actually six books, not three.) Yet no one seemed to bitch about how that was handled. I never heard anyone complain that PJ should have finished all three, then released them. But video games, which are no more or less of an entertainment medium, are held to a completely different standard. Interesting.