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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."
We have "episodic nature of games" to thank for some of the most unfulfilling ending sequences ever. And to say it works everywhere so it should work in video games is rubbish, because it doesn't always work everywhere (I cite the ending of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, which IMO was reminiscent of Halo 2's ending in terms of closure and satisfaction).
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This may be all well-and-good for a $5-$10 game. But if you're going to release a $50-$60 game, you'd better make DAMN sure it delivers more than just promises of FUTURE content and FUTURE fixes.
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
"Episodic content" was already around for a long time in the form of expansion packs (and related tactics.) For example:
- Doom was released - shortly later, there was Doom II and Final Doom.
- Quake was released - it received two expansion packs. (As a side note, a bug involving firing the thunderbolt underwater regressed back into the expansions.)
- Quake 2 was released, and it also received two expansions.
- The Sims is known for a large set of expansion packs - while not technically episodic, it's the exact same system used in episodic development.
I'm a busy guy who likes to game. Specifically, I like to game for a weekend or two, then I might not have time to game for anyware from a couple of weeks to maybe a month. Episodes help me to "finish" a game so I don't have to worry about where I left off when I finally have a chance to get back to it. I don't have to worry about my skills getting stale right at the time the game is hitting me with the really hard stuff because I'm able to "finish" it in one go.
When I here about how long Final Fantasy 12 is or Zelda Twilight Princess, I involuntarily cringe. It's not that I don't think it would be fun, it's just that I don't have time for that much fun in my life.
TW
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.
telling us why episodic content is great and start showing us. Yes, I know about all the advantages, but maybe we should start talking about overcoming the hefty drawbacks rather than pretending they don't exist.
I honestly do not see a future for episodic content. Like microtransactions, the thought of the idea becoming an industry standard makes me sick to my stomach. But hey, I'm waiting for someone to prove me wrong. That's the problem. For all the talk, no one has done it.
Sam and Max is why I bother with episodic gaming. The last episode was a joyous romp through the psychotic universe that only a dog detective and his lagomorphic sidekick could inhabit. Speaking of, I believe a new episode is coming out this week.... I can't wait.
This isn't the first time we've covered episodic gaming here, but I'll say what I've said before. Depending on what the game is, episodic gaming could be a really good move. Tell Tale Games seems to be taking the lead in episodic gaming with Bone and Sam and Max, and so far the feedback that I've read has been quite positive.
:)
Most of the costs for any episodic series would be for the first episode - 3D modeling, bitmapping, fine-tuning the graphics, developing the game engine, and so forth. After that, the rest if just using what tools have already been made available plus additional characters and graphics, possibly some engine tweaks as well. Plus is gives the company a bit of capital to work with to produce additional episodes.
It also gives the gamers the ability to say, "Hey, this is where we think you got it wrong" and let the company make the changes for the next episode - if they feel that the changes are apporpriate, of course. And since episodes are almost always cheaper than a full-blown game, more people would be willing to plunk own the dollars to see if they're interested enough to continue the season.
The only problem that I see with episodic games is the length of the game. It's a very delicate balance between providing enough material that the customer feels that he got his money's worth and not so much material that the release is not cost effective. It's a bit of a gamble, but the feedback for Bone, Sam and Max, and Half-Life 2: Episode One would seem to suggest that episodic gaming is being accepted as a viable alternative for certain genres. I'm sure that gamers would not appreciate an episodic Unreal Tournament 2007.
In fact, the second episode of Sam and Max is out on Friday. I've got to buy the season -- and this is coming from someone who originally was not in favor of episodic gaming but now supports it as long as the game is one that can benefit from it.
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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
Don't.
Don't reward publishers for getting even lazier about creating games. Just sit on your cash while they realize there wasn't anything wrong with releasing a complete product in the first go around (Not that EA was doing this in the first place), and that paying $60 or more for the length of one $40 game you'll play through once before moving on the multiplayer aspects isn't going to fly.
Pirates of the Caribbean is a trilogy, and that's generally the way it works. You get one good movie, with a conclusion, and people like it enough that someone decides to make more, so they turn it into a trilogy. The second movie will expand on the first, opening up a larger universe, but leaves the story entirely unfinished -- in fact, it's often deliberately some sort of cliffhanger. Then you get the third movie, and a conclusion -- and if it's a good series, the conclusion is worth the wait.
After all, the ending of Star Wars: Empire Strikes Back was pretty unsatisfying, and deliberately so. Then we get Return of the Jedi, and a real ending.
Lord of the Rings. First movie was pretty good -- not much closure, but it was still pretty good. Second movie was lots of fighting, actually somewhat of a grind, but still some good elements. And the third movie made it all worthwhile.
The Matrix: Reloaded. Ends with the main character passed out, possibly dead, and a couple of other things. I'm not saying Revolutions answered everything I wanted it to, but again, it did provide closure.
I don't like episodes that run on forever, certainly not if I have to pay for them. But episodic doesn't mean never-ending. Consider: The first 50 episodes or so of Naruto were actually pretty decent, and closed some very good storylines. But, now they're up to some 220 episodes, and it's definitely getting old. Last I checked, they still really hadn't done much about Sasuke or Orochimaru.
And, compare that to, say, Fullmetal Alchemist. Ended after 50 episodes. Or Trigun, or Cowboy Bebop, or Outlaw Star, or Noir -- many good animes end after a season of 25 episodes or so.
By that token, I'm really appreciating the Half-Life 2 episodes, because I know there will be exactly three of them. It helps to know that there's an ending coming, but that we don't have to buy anymore episodes if the first one sucked. It also helps to be able to provide feedback -- and that, combined with the nature of game development, means subsequent episodes can keep getting better. Or Halo 2 -- we know Halo 3 will finish it.
If you don't like it, wait till the conclusion is made, then buy the whole thing -- earlier episodes (or games) will be cheaper by then.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
In the world of television, my favorite example of this is a show like "Malcolm in the Middle." I loved the early episodes, but my wife hated them. As the show evolved, the writers and actors developed a better sense of what the show was about, what jokes made sense and what you could do with the characters. That evolution won my wife over. Episodic games have this same opportunity.
This is a seriously bogus comparison. Apples and oranges. Broadcast TV shows are free to consumers. Maybe you pay a monthly fee for cable access, but at the end of the day nobody is paying $8.99 for an episode of Malcolm. If people don't like the first episode of a video game they had to pay for, are they really going to buy the next episode to "give it a chance"? Not for my dollar. Not the same thing, not the same opportunity.
For another example, check out the third page of his article where the author provides numbers to show that there are nearly twice as many PCs as there are consoles in american homes. He then states that "the PC is, bar none, the most pervasive system on which to play games." Then he goes on to say how "odd" it is that console revenues are more than four times that of PC game revenues. Does it not occur to the author that maybe a lot of these PCs are ancient and most people don't feel like paying Pong or Zork anymore? Or that a more fair comparison might be to compare the number of PCs and consoles sold to families only in the past year or three?
The author goes on to slam the Wii by claiming that "at the end of the day, Nintendo is still selling $40 dollar-plus software that requires a fairly expensive piece of consumer electronics to run it." Riiiight, like anyone is buying a Wii just to play Wii sports. The deeper implication being "why by an expensive Wii when you can already play games on your PC?" Like everyone already magically owns a PC at no cost. Yet if the author made even a little effort to be objective, he might notice that game consoles are a lot cheaper than most PCs. The Wii especially, retailing for only $250.
I hope Gamasutra felt they got their $5 worth (or whatever they paid) for that article.
I think a lot of this depends on the genre, how much "base" is required to make the game possible, and how much "new" (and different) environment is possible.
For example, with Half-Life 2, you needed the awesome base of HL1 (graphics/physics engine etc) to make it work. You couldn't have sold HL2 itself as an episode for $15, because the revenue needed to meet the initial cost of development. Also, I'm still in the middle of "Episode 1" (HL2ep1) but thus far it's not really anything new. Some new enemies (zombine soldiers) and a little more plot, but nothing substantial. For $15 it's not bad, but no new weapons (so far at least) and nothing really differentiates it from the base HL2. However, HL2 itself is a great improvement in terms of graphics/sound/physics from HL1, although the plot from HL1 was supposed to be better.
Next, take - for example - something that is entirely plot-based such as Sam and Max. This is more reminiscient of the old Sierra games. In particular, the concept reminds me of "Space Quest" series, wherein the same style of plot and base character(s) prevailed between games. There were definately some jumps in graphics between various time periods, but overall the best part was the plot/humour, which made the games more episode in the Roger Wilco universe. Others such as King's Quest varied in plot greatly, but Police Quest and some others were similarly episodic (new story, same general universe).
I think this is what makes games such as Sam 'n' Max such as treat for us long-time gamers, and what may lead to the episodic model being quite nice within them. There's no need to spend tons of money on new game engines, bigass meshes for alien baddies, or weird and wonderful weaponry... just keep cranking out quality, engaging plotlines.
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.
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He complains about the cover charge for current generation console gaming (and targets the cheapest solution!) and praises episodic PC content partly for the fact that around 80% of US homes have PCs. I think this is remarkably myopic considering the heterogeneity of home PCs. What percentage of all those PCs are capable of playing the shiniest new episode of [insert game here]? What percentage of those PC owners with PCs NOT capable of playing the shiniest new episodes are willing to buy new hardware to play new episodes? One of the driving forces in the computer hardware industry is the demand for bigger, better, smarter games. Innovation has its place, but humans tend to favor shiny new things. So, quite naturally, developers produce bigger, better, smarter games, and vendors release faster, more powerful hardware to run it on. Console gaming is attractive to the developer because they have a standard platform to develop for. No matter how crappy the hardware, atleast they know that everyone who buys a Wii will have the *same* hardware. Thus, they may develop bigger, better, and smarter games by pushing that hardware to its limits. Similarly, consoles are attractive to the consumer because its new, its shiny, and it just works. There is no anxiety about whether or not your system will handle it, or whether you'll get the best experience from it. So, in order for this 80% argument to work, game developers would have to be targeting much less powerful machines. Intel has the largest segment of the PC graphics market, by far. Yet, you never see favorable benchmarks for it with the latest titles. Many games are "playable" on lower hardware, but that simply isn't the focus of the industry. PC gaming pushes boundaries. It enjoys the latest and greatest capabilities well before the console market gets them. This is a strength. The appparent ubiquity of the PC has nothing to do with the future of PC gaming as long as the push is toward more demanding games and more capable hardware. We may one day digest all our gaming in more bite-sized morsels, but they will still be just as demanding. I dare say no large publisher is targeting the X3000 as the ideal GPU for their next great title.