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Episodic Gaming Changing Gamemaking?
Chris Morris, of CNN's Game Over column, talks this week about how episodic gaming may be changing the way games are made. He explores the possibility that, with the success of GTA and Half-Life 2, developers may start looking towards more of a 'Saturday Matinee' approach; shorter individual game units, but a longer story overall. From the article: "Whether Valve will continue with episodic content after "Episode Three" hasn't yet been decided. The company knew its fans would likely buy the first installment regardless. But they don't know if players will stick with the formula. 'So far the feedback has been really positive and led me to believe we'll be continuing to do this in the future,' acknowledged Newell. 'But we want to get these three out, then sit back and do a post mortem. ... We're really interested in trying this, then sitting down with some customers and asking them, Do you want a TV series or do you want movies - or a mixture of both? It's like they've had a diet of feature length experiences for a long time and this is their first chance to try something different.'"
I'd rather have longer games released less frequently. TV shows are aired once a week, whereas episodic content still takes a long time to produce. I'd rather wait 2 years for an entire game rather than 6-12 months for episodic content where I forget what happened in the previous episode in between. I feel episodic content really loses a game's momentum to keep you gripped and involved.
They can sell more games this way.
At first glance, I like this idea, mostly because they're suggesting lowering prices. That's always nice to hear, even knowing that the episodic games might end up costing the same or more overall. Obviously, having to buy 3 games at $20 each costs you $60 for the whole story, but with the episodic plan you might buy the first one, decide you don't like it, and save yourself $40. If you do like it, plenty of games start retailing at $50 or $60 as it is, so it's not like they're cheating you out of money. Full speed ahead, Valve!
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I really wasn't that impressed with the story in HL2 to begin with so I never even considered getting EP1. Hell, the only reason I'll get EP2 is because of Team Fortress! Having episodic games means having a good story to begin with.
I recall reading about Nintendo saying that with Wii, they are going for shorter and simpler games that cost less. They consider that the future of gaming and thats very similar to the episodic gaming that is striking the PC market.
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive." - C.S. Lewis
The stories in GTA were mostly self-contained, and barely interacted. Think about it: which was the most popular in the GTA3 series? San Andreas...and this one unquestionably had the deepest of the storylines, on its own. It tied back to the other two, but that was it. People wouldn't have played Half-Life 2 if they hadn't already gone through the first. No one's going to pay $60 for a "to be continued" marquee.
it all depends on the *quality* of each episode/arc.
When the Timothy Zahn "Dark Force Rising" Star Wars books came out they were well crafted and captured the essence of the 'original' 3 SW movies. Each title was an engrossing story and could stand on its own but when combined they crafted an even better, more involved story. I looked forward and kept track of each book's release date (probably the single thing I've ever done that made me feel like a nerd the most).
The second series of books I tried was the "Ambush at Corellia" series which were just god awful. The writer was just a hack that was trying to cash in on the famous 'trilogy' story device. The first book's 'cliffhangar' was some alien accusing Leia of being a bad politician (HORRORS!) with the words "...to be continued!" on the last page. I never even bothered with any of the other books in that arc.
I skipped on Descent 3 because after weeks of fighting my way through Descent 2 I was greeted with a 3 minute cut scene (which felt tacked on at the last minute at that) that answered nothing and concluded with "....to be continued!" I was furious and felt cheated, like I had just played an incredibly long commercial for a (at the time) who knew when to be released game.
I want something that can stand on its own and not feel like a glorified commercial for the franchise and/or next installment. Let game producers make what I want and I don't care if they call them "sequels" or "episodic content" and let it be transparent. If a game feels artificially shortened with a blatant implication that I'll "need" to buy the next one will make me walk away from the franchise completely.
I think both ideas boil down to the same thing. Overall in any givin game, more specifficaly PC games (as that's what valve mostly makes)have a tedency to have a good beginning, and great end.. but a more or less mediocre middle. I think what episodic content does is give them more time to focus on each peice so it seems more or less great all the way through. I feel that most "Movies" or full length games theese days are mostly boring filler, and should probably be cut down a little anyway. Episodic content does very well for this purpose, and I have really enjoyed EP1, and look forward to EP2.
He whom you called four-eyes yesterday, you call Sir tomorrow.
The main problem is going to be the frequency of release. I'm really not interested in purchasing a 3-6 hour game every year or more. If they want to make this an effective strategy, they need to stick to a 6-8 month time frame.
And so far, how many companies have hopped onto this apparent bandwagon? Valve at least has actually done something with it. The kids behind Sin: Episodes? We haven't heard a peep out of them since Emergence was released on Steam.
As a series of expansions, I think there's defintely something to episodic content. Coming up with a whole new engine just for a couple of hours worth of gameplay doesn't sound particularly cost-effective, and its likelihood of snagging players' attention in the same way that a full game does is pretty low. I'm interested in Episode 3 because I want to know how the destruction of City 17 pans out (though admittedly, Portal is a huge draw too), but I couldn't care less about the next installment of Sin.
Who here remembers the Shareware boom? You know, back when studios like Id were still in their infancy, and Apogee and Epic Megagames were big players in the PC game industry? Back then, not only were games released in episodes, you got the first one for free. Each successive episode was about $15 to $20, or you could get hard-copies of all three games and some other goodies for $30 to $35. Sound familiar? It should.
While I'm thinking I might not be reading enough into this, it really looks like that business model is making a return, but with one big catch. You have to pay for the first episode now, and it's usually the biggest and most expensive of all the episodes. This is the only difference I've seen thus far, and it really wouldn't surprise me if game studios reverted back to that old model of 'episodic content' now that it's become the in-thing to do again. I'm not complaining, I'd really like to try a game before I wind up wasting my money on it. I'm just wondering why they're treating it as though it's some big, new thing, when not only is it an old practice, it also hasn't been in style for about ten years. Just my take on it.
...they are a staple of other medias?
Would it be terribly bad for a quarterly or twice yearly video game that continued and expanded over time.
One benefit I can see (and have seen over the Xenosaga through three episodes) is that people get better over time with the practice. Each of the three games have had their own problems (X1, too childish characters, X2 had an overly-complicated complicated combat system, X3 is actually a much better, scenimatic story with just a few glitches in combat. But I'm really enjoying the story so far.
But I can definitely see an evolution and improvement over time.
I actually hope that more companies actually look at doing a more "episodic" type format. I like my characters over a longer time!
I mean, where would TV shows be if they were all maxi-series with new characters, all the time?
No! It's a *SIG*. Keep the Special Interest Groups away! (Con joke!)
Interestingly enough, CNNMoney is running an independent story on the same topic. Episodic Content: A Survivor for Gaming
I hope Valve will make a trend of their idea to put out a major blockbuster followed by little spinoff episodes. It gives them a chance to wow the world with an impressive major release with all kinds of new technologies, scenarios, and gameplay mechanics, and then nurture the technologies a little bit further with subsequent optional continuations. The Half Life Episodes give even more bang for the buck since each is only $20, is optional, and works standalone in case you'd prefer a $20 "full demo" before buying the $60 game.
If Half Life is any example of the power of episodic continuations to an already full product, then I'm all for it. I was underwhelmed by the new Sin game, but will give the concept of a fully episodic series a chance with the upcoming Sam & Max games. However, I'm much more interested in a full standalone game that optionally lets me playing if I choose to keep paying.
"No. If anything, this is just the evolution of developing extensible engines and licensing them out, or even just a new spin on the old expansion pack routine-- a handful of new levels, maybe a new unit or two, plus a lot of clever scripting to cover up the flaking paint on the parent engine."
F.E.A.R: Extraction point.
I don't really like that terminology, but I like the idea of shorter, cheaper games, that come with more regularity.
This not only gives me something new every couple of months, but lowers the risk of purchasing an "over-rated" game. At the same time, it gives developers a little more leeway to take risks. If a small "episode" flops, it's $5 million instead of $40 million. (Or whatever your numbers may be.)
The mmporg Runescape already sticks to a strict 'new quest every week' schedule, and it seems to be working very well. There is generally somewhere between 30 minutes and 3 hours of new content that can be played each week (if you have high enough levels), which really helps break up the 'grind' of levelling up.
This approach seems to work really well, and the fact that it's a low-spec java based game means that the cost of developing the extra content is not prohibitive, and when the users have a problem with an update it's not the same sort of 'game over' situation that Star Wars Galaxies found itself in. Things can be redone if needed, for example after 10,000 complaints about the interface changing 7 days ago, a compromise redesign was rolled out today, without interrupting this week's new quest.
This 'lots of content/less glitz' approach fits in nicely with the retro-gaming movement, favouring gameplay over graphics. Runescape isn't the prettiest mmporg, but it sure has a lot of actual content.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
I like the idea of an episodic model, as I'm more likely to actually finish an installment. Additionally, with larger games, you need to constantly increase the difficulty of the levels because the person feels like need ramp up to something better. I feel like with installments, the person is going to have some off time, so you can keep the difficulty curve more flat, allowing for more people to get in on the fun.
Someone mentioned previously that it's the difference between movies and TV shows. It could be easy to interpolate this to mean that the plot lines would suck. Hopefully this will not be the case, and each could be a continuation of what happened last (e.g. Battlestar Gallatica).
One final point, is I think this model is a great boon to small software companies as a whole. As another person pointed out, this is how shareware used to be done. While a big movie game is sometimes nice to play, in the end what really matters is that the game is fun. Shorter development times can help keep the focus on the fun rather than making sure all the bells and whistles are in.
I can see where they get the fresh urge for episodic content, but I really don't think it'll work. They're looking at MMORPGs and the way they keep adding content a bit at a time. The problem is, MMORPGs start out with an established game world (most of the developers trying the 'episodic' trend have to create entire new maps and levels for each new episode), and most of the new content is relatively easy to add in for the time it takes to design and implement it. For episodic content to work well it's going to mean a new release every 6 months at the most - and preferably once a month - with at least 5-10 hours worth of new content per month. These days the average gamer will blow through that 5-10 hours worth in a week or even a day. If that's all they get and have to wait a whole year for the next installment in a "to be continued" series, I don't think most will be too eager to shell out for the next one.. unless the series is really just *that* good. Most aren't, Half Life 2 included. So personally, given the choice between 5-10 hours of content once a year or 40 hours of content every 3-4 years I'm going to choose the latter, and I tend to think most other gamers would as well.
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
I think "episodic content" is a horrible idea for the consumer.
It's great for the devs and publishers. They get to finish a game at their leisure, releasing small pieces at a time for a higher overall price than if they had finished a complete game and sold it for $50.
The biggest problem is that they are getting a positive response from people who are just too stupid to see where this is going to lead.
How are you going to feel when you're half way through a "game", I use quotes because it's just episode 3 for example, and the company then decides not to finish it because not enough people bought the last episode? You're out of luck.
Are you going to still care about a story 6 months later when the next episode comes out? Maybe, but not always.
Are you saving money by buying 1 episode before realizing the game sucks? Sure. Or maybe you would of done more research on the game before the $20 impulse buy, and saved yourself more money in the long run just buying full games at $50.
But don't worry, the people selling the games will be laughing all the way to the bank. At least someone made out!
One thing I'd like to see is ultra-short episodes. Say, they mostly reuse assets from earlier episodes, and you distribute one or two every month for five or ten bucks a pop. This would be better-suited for an RPG engine: add a single dungeon, or a single quest, and add a few new monsters or items throughout the other episodes.
Maybe the first episode contains the start and the end of the game, and a single quest and dungeon, and subsequent episodes expand the game from the middle, so the game is complete from the start but you get to fill it out with the parts you think you'll like.
...but is it art?
Waaaaay back in the early 90's, games like Duke Nukem started appearing in episodes. In fact, I am quite sure this was a practice common back in the late 80's too if not earlier, but I don't have the time to track it all down. Where is the sense of history anymore? Why does each generation think they "invented" everything? This is not new at all.
The big thing for me is content.
Let's look at video. How many 'epic' tv shows can you count? How many movies? I'm betting you have a lot more movies on the list than tv shows, and I bet the tv shows took a LOT more time to get to that status for you.
The same applies to video games. You get a 5 hour game every month for 6 months and it'll just seem ho-hum. If you get a 30 hour game with the same plot, it's a lot more dramatic. Why? Maybe because of how it has to be written. The 30 hour game doesn't have to constantly remind you who the characters are. You remember from last week. The episodic game has to not only remind the players of previous eps, but also provide enough information for new players that didn't start from the beginning. That's time lost that could be telling story, or fighting, or whatever.
No thanks. Give me the old all-in-one games any day.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
For all those people saying "Oh noez!!!1! The developers are being cheap, and trying to give us less for more!", then you obviously don't have much faith in those who build these worlds that you enjoy. Developers don't go out of their way to specifically develop less content, in fact you'll find that if you add up all of the content in the episodes it is much more than a full game would be. Further, because the content is released episodically, the developer can do a post-mortem after each release and analyse what went wrong, what people loved and build on it. Half Life 2 and the Episodes are the prime example. Half Life 2 was an amazing game, but suffered a little in the middle sections as there was too much downtime between brilliant scripted sequences. Cue the expansion, a non stop thriller of amazing setpieces. Plus the introduction of HDR lighting and some amazing new shaders (the pulsing energy ball, anyone?) Other franchises (Sam and Max spring to mind) are going the way of being completely episodic. And like Sin: Episodes, isn't it better that you found out the game was shit and only spent 20 bux rather than the full amount? Yes, episodic content is not new, in fact it is the reason why games took off in such a big way. Everyone who doesn't want to buy the new content every 6 months (more like a year), then just freaking wait until all the episodes are released and buy them in a pack. In the meantime stop whinging. Why am I so opinionated on this matter? Because I make games for a very large, succesful developer. I am working with next gen tech, including some episodic content, and I realise just how much this helps us in creating real, memorable experiences. Episodic releases allows us to keep the technology fresh (or at least appear fresh :P), constantly improve on the gameplay experience and throw in some great cliffhanger moments. Try and tell me that the ending of HL-2 didn't both infuriate and intrigue you. That's exactly what they were aiming for.
I originally typed "buy it" in the subject line, but remembering back to slate's article http://www.slate.com/id/2149694/ on this very same topic, decided it wasn't necessary. One of the examples given there was Kuma\War, which is a free to download FPS based on current events in the Middle East. I haven't played it, so can't vouch for it, but it seems to be doing pretty well, and although I admit that the screenshots are pretty lame compared to the average FPS, I've read that in March the company signed a deal to work on Valve's source engine http://www.kumawar.com/PressReleases/03-22-2006.ph p for upcoming titles using the same episodic ideas. But all other politics and nonsense aside...
A.) It's free,
B.) It releases new "episodes" typically coming out about every three weeks, and they are also free.
CowsAnonymous: We're here to help moo.
Honestly I prefer to buy a game and having a consistent story; Begining, Middle and End. Half-life 2 and Halo 2 were anticlimatic for this reason; they both end up feeling incomplete. (Like buying a full price demo.)
:sarcasm:)
Episodic Content Fails when you release each episode for $20, knowing that you'll lower the price in 6 months. In this manner it fails because people will hold out for the 3 announced episodes so they can buy it in a bundle at a cheaper price ($40 vs $60 {$20X3}). In the end when you pay more for the episodes than you did for the original game it just doesnt feel right.
Secondly, Episodic content fails when the game designers release the content with the intent of treating paying customers as beta testers. When content is released and the designers look at how players are responding to the design with the intent of going back and retooling or completely changing parts of the game. Sin Episodes IIRC had such retooling after reports of it being too easy. If I'm paying for a game I'm expecting quality, not bugs and play testing.(I hear they pay people for doing that
Perhaps the problem isnt the concept of episodic games, but the execution; in this instance Steam's variable pricing and 'we can patch it later' mentality.
These 'great' deals on steam are absurd if you break down the cost of buying individual games the day they are released.
I'm willing to bet Valve will bundle the episodes and give them away for free if they decide to release another sequel. (I did get all those half-life expansion packs for free when they released steam)
When I was a kid, the only video game episodes we had were photosensitive episodes.
And we LIKED IT.
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Here's my concept: a multiplayer game, like SOCOM or Counter-Strike. Instead of playing the same map over and over, they release a new map every so often, and set it up like a TV show. You could easily create a "24" like series within SOCOM or Counterstrike, where every few weeks you get a new mission. Right now, after a few weeks of play you learn all the maps and it gets boring. But imagine if you got not just a new map but a new story every once in a while! The excitement would be awesome - a new episode would generate massive amounts of traffic, and lots of the players would experience the new mission simultaneously when it's released, kind of like a TV show. They could have previews just like TV shows. But I think online FPS titles (especially console titles) could benefit immensly from this - instead of letting the same old content get more and more stale.
They're called micropayments and premium modules.
After a review of the facts and consulting my 18 years of experience playing games and watching styles of game making rise and fall, my answer is:
No.
It won't change the way games are made nowadays, but rather will add in a new avenue for people who have content they'd like to make into something, but don't have enough to create the 10-20+ hour game that some people expect.
Would Descent 2's ending have been so awful had it been part of an episodic series that only cost $5-10 a game?
I am actually waiting for episode 2 to come out before I but episode 1 for the simple fact that I like longer games and when I buy a game I usually play it exclusively until I have finished it. Playing a 5 hour game then waiting for months for the next installment is the best way for me to lose interest in the story since there are many other things that can get my interest during that time.
Plus the fact that Episode 1 is still £20 for what I am told will take me 4-6 hours (on the lower side most likely). When it drops to a tenner or Episode 1 and 2 are combined into a proper game I'll think about it.
As someone said for games like Sam & Max where each episode could be a totally different adventure with recurring characters (Like the cartoon series) that would work.