BioWare Goes Episodic With New Games

The word from the site Computer and Videogames is that BioWare will be offering episodic content for all of its upcoming games. This includes Mass Effect, Dragon Age, and Jade Empire: Special Edition. CEO Ray Muzyka, in an interview with CVG, talks about this and many other elements of the coming year in PC gaming. From the article: "The videogame market is very cyclical and PC and console gaming have an uneasy alliance - as new console systems are released, early adopter fans move over to check those games out and as PC systems reach and surpass console systems at the end of a console life cycle, a good number of those early adopter fans move back over to PC gaming. Console gaming is huge of course, especially when you add in hardware sales, but it's hard to quantify the enormous impact of online gaming on the overall PC market - retail sales just don't capture the revenues from the increasingly successful PC MMOs as well as digital distribution and episodic gaming (which are both gaining strength year after year)."

Comments

Who else dislikes episodic gaming?

[RichPowers]

I have no problem waiting a few extra months, even a year, and paying more upfront for a lengthier, complete game. Besides, I don't like games that intentionally leave you hanging so you'll buy the imminent next episode. Before this episodic content craze, games would at least offer some degree of conclusion because the next installment would be a few years away.

Maybe I'm being too cynical, but why else would publishers push for episodic gaming if not for more profit? Selling less content for more money is all this is about.

Re:Who else dislikes episodic gaming?

[Babbster]

I actually think that the "full" full-price game followed by subsequent episodes is probably the right way to go - maybe not for consumers, but for the industry as a whole.

The up-front investment in developing a new game is huge. Developers have to build (or build upon) a graphics engine for the game, writers and artists have to create a world and a story and, at the most fundamental level, hardware and software have to be purchased in order to do all the creation. All of those costs need to be recouped sooner rather than later, or the money will stop flowing with investors/publishers going somewhere else. With a full game at full price - assuming successful completion and at least an average game - it's going to be much easier to get that cash coming in. On the other hand, a game created to be episodic from the start, with prices to match, runs the risk of being poorly received, which could result in severe losses when nobody wants to keep on playing.

I'm sure some would argue that such a developer might deserve to go under, but considering that even good developers can put out a bad game I would disagree. Perhaps even more important, there have been games where I thought the first hour or three were boring (establishing characters/story, ramping up difficulty, teaching controls, etc.) and ended up loving the rest.

It's a bit strange to think that putting out a bigger game might be a lower risk than putting out a small one but I really do think this would be the case for many. While an established franchise (Halo, Half-Life, Star Wars, Warcraft, etc.) might be able to survive a bit of clunking in the first episode and get the chance to continue development of more content, any new gaming IP carries with it such a high risk total failure that I don't think new stuff should kick off with short episodes.

Note that all of the above primarily applies to the more "high-end" games. Obviously, Xbox Live Arcade and similar services on thePC and other consoles can provide homes for the "smaller" games that don't require the same kind of development resources as, say, a Gears of War. Episodic gaming on a smaller scale such as this could indeed work out being episodic from the start. I would also note that we've had "episodic" gaming for years thanks to the "expansion pack" phenomenon.

In other words...

[MaineCoon]

Translation:

We need to ship this game ASAP, but we don't have enough content for the game. Therefore, we are going to ship what we have now, call it "episodic" so you don't feel quite so ripped off, and if it sells well enough we'll release the content we had originally promised, for a fee we feel is reasonable, and thereby hopefully get even more money from you than we could have otherwise.

MMOs shouldn't have expansions

[Wilson_6500]

Burning Crusade is a bad example of an expansion pack. You pay that monthy fee partially because you expect new content to be delivered without your having to fork over _even more_ money. The whole draw of MMOs, I always thought, was that your continuing investment paid for continuing support and improvement of the game.

Re:MMOs shouldn't have expansions

[Valharick]

New content is added without having been charge more than the fee. See Battlegrounds or Zul'Gurub for instance. Yes, I'm a part-time WoW player :)

Episodic games can mean better games.

[ChaosDiscord]

The way the industry works now, almost no developer can afford to self-fund a "full-size" game. For most of those who can, it's an all-or-nothing bet; if the game tanks (And many great games regrettably do), the developer goes out of business. So for the overwhelming majority of developers, to do a full game it means getting a publisher to fund development. Publishers are understandably cautious about funding more risky (but potentially great) games. As a result you tend to see lots of knock offs, sequels, and crappy movie licenses. Innovation is stifled. Add on that most developers exist only so long as they keep getting publishers to fund them.

One way to escape this is to simply develop smaller games. That's great if you like that sort of game, but not so good if you really want to develop a sprawling RPG, a large FPS, just about any adventure game, or something similar.

Episodic content is potentially a way forward. These days the overwhelming expense in a large game is the content, not the programming. A first episode that represents, say, 20% of a game may only need 40% of the content. (Even better, episode two probably only needs 15% more content to generate the next 20% of the game, assuming you're releasing episodes quickly enough that you don't need to update your engine or art.) It's a much lower risk. More developers can afford to self-fund in this model. More risky ideas can be tried. I'm quite confident that Bone and Sam & Max weren't going to be funded by a major publisher as full games. As the developer typically self-publishes, if the game is a success the developer can bank it to support future development, possibly even more traditional big-single-release games.

Episodic content is problematic. As a customer you're left hanging mid-story. (Did we say you'd be playing Episode Two within six months of episode one? Did you purchase Episode One on that basis? Hope you don't mind waiting six more.) If the developer goes bankrupt or cancels an unprofitable line you may never see the conclusion. (Sucks to be you, Sin Episodes fans. Of course, you can suffer that even in "full" game releases.) While episodic content is almost exclusively sold online, reducing overhead and costs, you pay what overhead there is once per episode, driving costs up. I'm not a fan of episodic content for these reasons. But I believe at least some developers are embracing episodic content as a way to escape extremely cautious publishers.