Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Episodic Gaming Changing Gamemaking?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the if-everything-was-as-good-as-half-life-everything-could-be-episodic dept.

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.'"

13 of 63 comments (clear)

  1. Movies by tarun713 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Movies by mendaliv · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Right- episodic content does take longer to produce than an episode of a TV series. I would argue that each episode of a game is more equivalent to a full broadcast season of a TV show.

      This analogy carries, in that, if a TV show has a bad episode, it might not get cancelled (think The Haunting of Deck Twelve from Voyager). On the other hand, if a TV series has a particularly bad season, it might get cancelled. Likewise in gaming, we could see the death of a series if a particular "episode" is not well recieved.

      An interesting concept might be to move towards making games even more episodic; say, you purchase the season of the game, and once weekly an episode is released. Sort of like how You Don't Know Jack the Netshow worked, except you're paying something. Then, the publisher could more accurately gear changes to the game and make improvements as is necessary. It would lead to the whole week-long break in gaming, so the stories would have to be geared towards this, but this is true of adapting any story to television in the first place; it's doable for games.

    2. Re:Movies by kannibal_klown · · Score: 2, Insightful

      If the games were closer together I'd rather have the episodic games. If 6months was the high-end of the wait period, then great. But 12 months is too much. My problem is some games start out great, but after a while they sort of taper off. It's almost like the writers/level designers ran out of imagination or got bored and start throwing repetitive garbage at us, or just some horrible gameplay. Look at Halo, with the whole repetitive-loop Library maps and such; almost like the writers were really struggling to give us those x/hours of gameplay. If they can provide small bundles of fun each time and get them out quick enough, then I'm all for it. But if the lag time is too great (or the quality just isn't there) then forget it.

    3. Re:Movies by mikeisme77 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      There's no reason they couldn't do weekly, monthly, or bi-monthly releases. Most TV shows are filmed all in a large block and then they release the episodes through out the season. There's no reason that the game creators couldn't produce a "season" worth of episodes and then release them weekly. Not all episodes would necessarily be ready when the first episode comes out (just as not all episodes of the TV show are ready), but the story should all be there and all of the art should be created. It should just be an issue of "editing" and such. I mean, sure they could just release it in one large block for $50, but with episodic content they are selling episodes for $10-20 a pop and could get $100+ for a season where they would normally just be getting $50. Great for them, sucks for us...

      --
      Read my blog posts on usability.
  2. Cheap little games? Sounds good to me by Temuar+Skylari · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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!

    --
    USE colorful confetti ON heavily-armed clown
  3. HL2 by Duct+Tape+Jedi · · Score: 2

    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.

    1. Re:HL2 by Slovenian6474 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I don't think HL2 in itself had a great story line. I do find it more appealing if you followed the with HL1, opposing forces, and blue shift. Also there's a great site here http://members.shaw.ca/halflifestory/ that sums up just about everything. If you single out HL2's story though, it is kinda boring.

    2. Re:HL2 by Ford+Prefect · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The actual storylines of Half-Life and its sequel are practically non-existent. The worlds are brilliant, however, as is the manner in which they are presented to the player. And to be honest, I'd prefer that to a typically bloated game story with endless cutscenes and exposition getting in the way of the actual gaming; being immersed in a realistically portrayed world where everything has its place is much more interesting to me.

      --
      Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
  4. I doubt it. by O'Laochdha · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

  5. TV Shows Vs Movies by Brothernone · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.
  6. Welcome to 1991 - by RoffleTheWaffle · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  7. Re:I hate it by exp(pi*sqrt(163)) · · Score: 2, Interesting
    I don't see how any comparison can be made to TV...last time I checked you don't pay per episode of any show.
    Think of Firefly. Canceled mid-series because it wasn't earning enough revenue. Much of the time, TV series are paid for one season at a time. Think of a season as an 'episode'. One of the trickiest aspects for scriptwriters is to work with the constraint that they don't know how many 'episodes' there will be. For example, Babylon 5 was conceived as a 5 series story. But apparently, due to threats of cancelation, it was shortened to 4 seasons, and then, after the story was accelerated, extended back to 5 seasons. These are the same issues that would face episodic game writers.
    --
    Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
  8. Episodic IS the way of the future... by Juggernautz · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.