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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.
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.
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.
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