Episodic Content Article

[Kaspian]

The Armchair Empire has posted a new article (http://www.armchairempire.com/Editorials/episodic-mal-content.htm) discussing episodic gaming, and how it has come along over the last year. How "episodes" are defined is examined, as well as whether or not the whole concept is simply turning into PR jargon, and not a bonafide business model.

[Tentaro]

Bonafide. Not to nitpick, but typos/misspellings in frontpage news articles make us look unprofessional. :P Unless you really did mean http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=bonified

On topic:
Wow, all they have to do is sum up threads on the internet. I am more and more not seeing the purpose of all this "journalism". But I guess I never really have.

[Roc Ingersol]

The sad part is, there is great material for an article to be mined:

e.g.
Does episodic gaming even work for the medium?
Has it ever actually been done in an interactive context?
Do the developers even like the idea?
How do the Sam & Max creators make the schedule work?
Why can't Valve seem to make the schedule work?

But that would require actual journalism.

[emjoi]

So where is the Episodic Content anyway?
Valve have managed a grand total of ONE episode, with ep 2 so long in the future that it may as well be just another Expansion Pack. And Ritual managed just one Episode of Sin.

[Telefrog]

My take so far? Episodic gaming is crap. It will remain crap until everyone can come to a consensus on the schedule and pricing standard.

Most TV networks have figured this out. Make a schedule. Stick to it. ("Lost" hiatus notwithstanding.) Be fairly consistent in the content.

Episodic gaming is doomed if developers/publishers don't figure this out.

[Sloth]

I think it is a complete failure. The product is not there, but what if it was there? Would it be better revenue than the current model of release and then release expansion packs later?

The fact that they call Half Life 2 Episodes, doesn't make them any better than if they called them expansion packs.

I think it would be wise for the industry to simply distance themselves from the idea.

[Xerxes]

Yeah people don't want it so stop feeding it to them and make a real game.

[RMan]

For discussion, figured I’d answer these.
Does episodic gaming even work for the medium?
I think it does, although I’d agree there are few examples of it now. However, I’m quite sure when TV was coming of age, there were similar growing pains and people unsure how to adapt existing methods/markets. I think from a logical view, episodic content works really well with online delivery, in much the same way that scheduled programming works really well with the kind of delivery that TV offers.
Has it ever actually been done in an interactive context?
Likely not successfully, but then, the ability to do it hasn’t been available very long.
Do the developers even like the idea?
I think developers that are setup or accustomed to a 2-4 year cycle, heck no. Again, the ability to do it hasn’t been around enough to cultivate a following. If you ask me, yea, I like the idea.
Why can't Valve seem to make the schedule work?
Yea, there’s a tough one. I really wouldn’t call what Valve’s doing episodic, even though they call the releases episodes. They’re packing a bunch of stuff in the next one, it’s hardly just a story/content addition that I’d expect when discussing episodic content. At least with EP2, it seems like more stuff by a long-shot than the average expansion pack, and I think when people discuss episodic content they’re thinking of smaller/more frequent releases than what Valve’s doing.

What really needs to be done, IMO, is just keeping episodic content short and cheap. Right now we still, IMO, don't have games besides puzzle games at wal-mart that can be called 'impulse' buy products. Regardless of the price, everything takes too much of a time investment to play, so players just aren't willing to experiment enough to make these new products fly. It’s very much like if TV shows were all 5 hours long, if that were the case, I’d watch at least 5 times fewer shows since there’s only so much time I’ll watch TV.

[emjoi]

I think that is the failing of Valves mythical Episode 2. They are trying to do too much with it. If you only put out an episode every 6 to 9 months, well, you aren't going to have many episodes.

I would be quite happy with the deal "Here a handful of new levels and a cliffhanger ending, for ten bucks", if we actually got a new episode every month or two. Which is what I imagined would happen. Neither paying much, nor expecting too much content in return.

[KingGorilla]

The sad part is, there is great material for an article to be mined:



But that would require actual journalism.

Does episodic gaming even work for the medium?

Part of maturing as a medium is diversifying how you release your content. Comics come in daily form, monthly books, collections of books, etc. Visual media comes in TV, DVD, Movies, Cable, etc. Games have been relegated to disc format nearly exclusively for far too long.

Has it ever actually been done in an interactive context?

I would consider expansion sets to be in this vein. And what about series? We get yearly installments, or bi-yearly installments of Ghost Recon, Splinter Cell.

Do the developers even like the idea?

Not all of them, but there are a myriad of comic artists who also stigmatize web comics. But PVP, Penny-Arcade, many more are rather respected and loved. But would Joe Kasada do that?

How do the Sam & Max creators make the schedule work?

Discipline, a plan, and a long lead. Each game is made a few months before its release, the voice actors are held to a rigid schedule.

Why can't Valve seem to make the schedule work?

Game makers never make deadlines, never finish their products, and always seem to get a few more months out of development time. It takes a lot of work to make a deadline for the rest of the world(magazine, television). It is like asking "Why does it take Sam Raimi so much longer to make a movie than it does Jeff Loeb to make Heroes." Some forms are more conducive to actually getting it done. Valve is notorious for missing deadlines and crippling development hassles(Halflife 2 was actually hacked into for example).

Valve, also picked a game that was simultaneously perfect and completely wrong for episodic content. HL2 is 50 bucks...you will end up paying 100 dollars for the epidodes, when all is said and done. Sam and Max got a sweet deal with Gametap(and seems to have really helped the service) and they are releasing a collection at the end of the year(35-40 dollars) and they are offering downloads for a fee. That was PLANNED. Valve, on the other hand, has episodes and an etherial sense that eventually a collection will be available. At the pace Valve is currently at, all 5-6 episodes will have taken longer to release than Blizzard spent working on all of Diablo 2. 1 episode every year-18 months is not episodic, that is pathetic.

[Roc Ingersol]

To clarify: I wasn't looking for opinion answers to those questions.

What I meant was: the 'journalist' should've got off his ass, tracked down some developers and got some first-hand information. Summary opinion stuff is where he went wrong.

I don't care whether he thinks about a topic. Any one of our opinions is just as valid as his, and he didn't present any data that your average informed forum poster doesn't already know.

I want an article to bring me information that isn't already well known.
I want it to approach the material or ask questions of the material that haven't been done to fucking death.

Talk to Valve. Talk to the Sam & Max Guys.
Compare them directly. Compare their actions and their priorities to their PR statements. Ask Gabe Newell point blank whether he still thinks he's creating episodic content at this point.

Research interactive episodic content. Actual episodic content. Not expansion packs. There are MUDs that have released 'story' content on a regular schedule over time. ISTR that's basically how ATITD works. There's bound to be interactive fiction released on a semi-regular schedule. Shit, talk to Scott McCloud. That guy loves to talk about the future of regularly scheduled interactive content. He'd probably point you at some great research material.

Look at massmogs in general as a closely-related genre.
Conventional wisdom says you can't build the episodes too far in advance - as your game will 'fall behind' graphically and lose sales. Yet millions of gamers pay monthly to access games that haven't really changed at all in several years.
Beyond that: millions upon millions of console gamers pay full price for games later in a console life-cycle that barely look better than those that came three years before.

We know that most gamers don't finish most games. Take that fact to a promoter of episodic content and ask them, point-blank, whether that concerns them. Most developers, even those that churn out highly regarded games, seem unable to hold an audience for an 8-10 hour title -- even though the gamer has already paid full-price for the title. It costs them nothing but time to finish it, and most don't.
How does an episodic game designer confront that?

Ask a publisher point-blank whether they're honestly concerned about falling behind graphically, or whether they're more afraid that people will play two episodes of Prey/Far Cry/Halo/GTA and wander off because the game starts to get repetitive and lame -- turning a $50 purchase into two $8 episodes.

ya know -- journalism.