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Why Bother With Episodic Games?
Gamasutra is running a piece today entitled Why Bother With Episodic Games? Author Rick Sanchez ponders the rationale behind this business model, and offers up a few reasons why 'the next big thing' is actually a good idea for both gamers and game developers. From the article: "Traditional game development does have a feedback loop, but with years between results. Betting the studio that the design decisions made for a sequel were the right ones can be disastrous if you were wrong. With short iteration cycles, gameplay mechanics that an audience responds to can be used to turn a moderate performer into a hit. This model still needs to be vetted out in the video game world, but it works in every other form of media that we consume, so there's no reason to think it won't work for games."
unlike movies, games have the unique ability to be expanded upon without creating an entirely new game/episode. Modding (even if commercially) is one of the greatest things to have ever happened to games. Just look at the successes of CounterStrike and Desert Combat. It seems the problem with episodic games is that their lifespan, or playability, shrinks down to that of movies. Modding can help keep the original game's work going for years, while at the same time introducing new material.
If Wii Sports is a great game (I'm assuming it is, I still don't have my Wii), and if Nintendo offered to have me download more sports as part of this nontraditional "episodic" collection, I might be interested.
If it's more of the same with monotonous plot turns and poor storylines, I won't be.
Wii Curling for $5, anyone?
-Rob
Biblical fiscal responsibility
I never said they did it by accident T_T
I don't want to spoil anything for folks who haven't seen it but my whole point was I found it *highly disappointing* for a number of reasons as a result. For one, the movie isn't standalone at all, and there is merit in having something not make you feel like you paid for, literally, half of a product and are now committed to buying the other half in order to justify the first.
I like basketball!!1!
You know, people have been complaining about game developers releasing buggy games figuring that "We can just patch them with the next update" since online game updates have been available. It has nothing to do with episodic games, so I hardly see how that is an argument either for or against episodic games. It's completely irrelevant. It's a problem, but not one that is particularly pertinent to this discussion. Shoddy studios will release buggy games figuring they will patch them later, higher quality studios will release games with fewer, less painful bugs, and patch them later, whether they are episodic or not.
As for the issue of content, that's a bit more relevant, but also a problem with non-episodic games. I've gotten games home before that were seemingly 'full' games, just to decide I was disappointed with the provided content, feeling there should have been more game for my $40 or whatever. Again, that has more to do with the studio than whether a game is episodic or not.
If anyone tried to release an epesodic game for $50-60 they would be laughed at and fail.
as for bugs? well, that is standard for most companies now (Release THEN patch)
And for half assed games? If the episode sucks, the peisode sucks and people will not buy it or the next one.
What holds true for full retail games almost always holds true for episodic games. You need to release a good game that works or people will be turned off from yuor future products (be it yourGame 2 or yourGame Ep2).
the perfect examples of this?
SiN Episodes tanked, why? the game sucked.
HL2 Ep2 is eagerly beign looked forward to, why? Most people like Ep1. Same holds true for Sam and Max.
The interestign thing to me is that the 3 big name episodic games are folow up on previous franchises. my question on that is why?
Is it simply that no one is willing to test the watters with a no name game?
Are the developers figguring on cashign in in brand name recognition (stupid idea with SiN as the orig was rather bad)?
I dono.
Do Or Do Not, There Is No Spoon, There Is Only Zuul. Everything in the above post is probably opinion.
Sin Episodes: Emergence didn't suck for me. I'm just pissed that Ritual have kept a media blackout regarding Episode 2. There's no way to tell if they're even bothering with the next ep; they probably are, but a total lack of information regarding it is worrying.
As for HL2: Episode 2, Valve are bundling Team Fortress 2 and Portal with it, and I suspect this is because they're aware of the lack of content in an episodic game so they're gonna try to bump up the value this time round.
You really thought the original SiN was bad? Oh well.
I don't want to spoil anything for folks who haven't seen it but my whole point was I found it *highly disappointing* for a number of reasons as a result. For one, the movie isn't standalone at all, and there is merit in having something not make you feel like you paid for, literally, half of a product and are now committed to buying the other half in order to justify the first.
I really have to disagree in that I thought the movie was just as standalone as, say, The Two Towers. If anything, it reminded me of Back To The Future, both I and II. I don't see anyone complaining about how those ended (e.g. - "To Be Continued..." and "To Be Concluded..."). I guess the argument can be made that BTTF I was containerized enough, but BTTF II ended with the same sorts of open questions about what would happen to Marty being stranded in 1955 and Doc being stranded in 1885. I don't recall hearing anyone on Slashdot complain about that.
Could it be that our standards are just getting higher and higher as we get older? Naah, that's unpossible.
In all of these movies -- Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, Back to the Future II, Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, The Matrix Reloaded, etc. -- the cliffhanger is always the second movie. Why? Because when they made the first one, they weren't sure if it would make enough money to justify a sequel, so they had to wrap up the story. With these second movies, they already know they're going to make a third, so they let it be a cliffhanger.
Incidentally, the "to be continued..." at the end of Back to the Future was rather gutsy, since it was the first movie -- they must have had unusually high expectations for it. Also, note that Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan had a rather weak cliffhanger (just the hint of the last bit of Genesis effect, and the fact that the coffin soft-landed); I would guess that poor reviews of The Motion Picture (and maybe poor sales -- I wasn't born yet, so I don't remember how well it did at the box office) reduced the confidence in a third movie. The cliffhanger at the end of The Search for Spock was much stronger (destruction of the Enterprise), due to the corresponding strength of The Wrath of Khan.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz