What ever happened to episodic games?

[Shadari]

Wasn’t episodic gaming supposed to be the next big thing and the panacea for all ills in the gaming industry? So where are all the episodic games? Half Life 2? Nah, they ain’t episodes if it takes over a year per release. Sin? Nope. Sadly, that franchise seems to have died a fairly unspectacular death. The only success story that comes to mind is Sam and Max. Well, I assume/hope it was a success story. At the very least they kept pretty close to their schedule and the releases were close enough together to be considered episodic. I hope they did well financially.

[Charles]

I think people don't like paying 20-30$ for a couple hours of gameplay. And that's what 'episodic' content means right now. Till the game industry starts making it worthwhile, it's not going to take off.

[Quitch]

I disagree, how many of them failed? Sam & Max are doing fine, the Half-Life series continues to make money, and the first SiN episode repaid itself AND the second episode with Ritual getting bought up for other reasons.

So really, in terms of making money, Episodic content did just fine. I suspect it's just that it's "another business model" rather than the end of all worries, and so it's rather down to whether someone sets up a business case as to why game X should be using the new way and how it will benefit X. It looks to me like the idea was it would be good for FPS and it turns out that even with the underlying technology in place, map making takes time, and thus the word "episodic" tends to be... not so much.

[Shadari]

I think Obsidian or someone else could do rather well with an episodic RPG in the form of a series of NWN2 modules.

[krokodile]

Penny Arcade's games are shooting for this, and so far, they've gotten good press for it.

[RichardC]

Telltale was the only one that understood that 'episodic' includes the word 'regular'. Most of the others got ridiculously over-ambitious in terms of what they were making (Sin sucked, but there was a ton of content in it. AGON did something similar. So did most others) and the inevitable happened.

[Shadari]

I disagree, how many of them failed? Sam & Max are doing fine, the Half-Life series continues to make money, and the first SiN episode repaid itself AND the second episode with Ritual getting bought up for other reasons.
I'm sure the HL2 'episodes' will all do very well financially. But they're not really episodes. They're basically sequels.

[Charles]

I disagree, how many of them failed? Sam & Max are doing fine, the Half-Life series continues to make money, and the first SiN episode repaid itself AND the second episode with Ritual getting bought up for other reasons.

Sure, they didn't fail. But are games that come out every year or two truly episodic? I'm thinking no. At that point, they are just expansions. And Valve's pricing and game length has been in line with their previous expansions.

[Sneaky]

What is the difference between episodic content and an expansion? Are MMOs that release an expansion every 6 months episodic?

[krokodile]

I always viewed Episodic meaning its almost entirely 1-2 players, with a small storyline, but enough gaming time to warrant purchasing it for however much.

An expansion usually entails adding on Multiplayer content, not necessarily singleplayer content, while also adding more onto the basic game. An episode is just the basic game continued.

[Charles]

I always viewed Episodic meaning its almost entirely 1-2 players, with a small storyline, but enough gaming time to warrant purchasing it for however much.

An expansion usually entails adding on Multiplayer content, not necessarily singleplayer content, while also adding more onto the basic game. An episode is just the basic game continued.

Never played any of the Half Life expansions, huh?

[Sarkus]

I'm on board with the lack of regular "episodes" being the flaw so far. Episodic will have to be every six months at the least and I'm not sure that an industry that has such a major problem with release dates can actually pull that off unless someone is willing to invest in considerable lead time. In other words, the only way a six months type schedule could work would be if they were well along with the second episode before the first was ever released.

[Cossix]

Which is pretty much how Telltale handled the Sam and Max series, which did pretty well I think? Considering they're doing a second season.

I don't think anyone else is doing it though, no.

[RichardC]

Yes. They were designing one while writing another and releasing another. And with plenty of lead time for asset generation and planning.

Now Bone, there's another story...

[Andrew Mayer]

I've been pitching episodic games since 1994, but clearly the problem is that nobody wants to invest in what it really takes to make these games.

In a lot of ways the risks are the same as MMOs; lots of extgra expense in the front end that could end up biting you in the ass if no one shows up. They tried it with Wing Commander and it flopped totally in spite of the fact that they were giving the content away.

On reflection MMOs are probably the closest we've come to making this kind of content work.

[RichardC]

Wing Commander was a massive download for the time, mind. No FMV, no real story, just pilot chatter and missions straight from the already boring Prophecy. Not surprising people got wound up over it.

There was another one along similar lines, Halcyon Sun, which did the rounds on services like Freeloader and got a CD release later. Not great, but they did a surprising amount of content. Even if part of it was a half-hour cut-scene at the start...

[Igor Muravyev]

Aw, crap, Ritual got bought up again? I guess that means no SiN Episode 2.

[unbongwah]

I think Obsidian or someone else could do rather well with an episodic RPG in the form of a series of NWN2 modules.
That's kinda-sorta what they did with the NWN 1 Premium mods (http://nwn.bioware.com/premium/), which I gather did reasonably well. Shame Atari stopped them. And, of course, lots of fan-made NWN 1 mods have been episodic in nature.

Anyway, who else has done episodic gaming?

Telltale: they released the first season of Sam & Max fairly regularly, with the second season due out soon. OTOH, they seem to have put Bone on the back burner, since the last game was released a year and a half ago.

Ritual: they got bought out by MumboJumbo at the beginning of the year and AFAIK SiN Episodes has been canceled after only one game. Not sure how well it sold.

Valve: HL2 Episodes has doubtless sold well and will continue to do so, but it took them almost 2 years to get the first one out after HL2 came out and 15 months to finish the second. That's a pretty generous definition of "episodic."

American McGee: his Grimm tales series starts next year; like S&M, it'll be published on Gametap. We'll see if he can release them regularly and make them not suck.

EDIT: Siege of Avalon - IIRC, this was an indie RPG released online in six chapters before being compiled into one retail release.

[Kool Moe Dee]

and the first SiN episode repaid itself AND the second episode with Ritual getting bought up for other reasons.


This is definitely not true. Sin episode 1 did not sell very well.

[jfletch]

I just remember how we were supposed to be getting Episode 3, not 2, by now. Of course, Valve is dysfunctional so I am still not sure if AAA games can be done proper episodically. I think most people don't even want to try, but I also think a lot of companies probably crunched the numbers and saw there's just not much of a benefit.

[Andrew Mayer]

This is definitely not true. Sin episode 1 did not sell very well.

Perhaps the female character's breasts were not large enough.

[RichardC]

The Source engine couldn't push enough polygons for the Vision.

But no, Sin tanked. IIRC, they mentioned that they hadn't even hit their low-ball figures, never mind done well enough to fund an Episode 2.

[RepoMan]

Please, Andrew, no. No.

[ZekeDMS]

That's why I'm hesitant with Episodic gaming. I really enjoyed Sin:Ep1, but I was a huge fan of the original/expansion. Episodes can get me completely attached but never to see anything else due to low sales.

I like the idea of regular new content, or that episodes can be used to fund the next part of the game, rather than needing the time and budget for 20 hours right away, but except for Sam and Max, it doesn't seem to happen that way yet. Sin bombed, HL 2 episodes take forever and are akin to expansion packs at their size.

We're at 1/3 for episodic games I'm familiar with.

[Shadari]

That's kinda-sorta what they did with the NWN 1 Premium mods (http://nwn.bioware.com/premium/), which I gather did reasonably well. Shame Atari stopped them. And, of course, lots of fan-made NWN 1 mods have been episodic in nature.
Like you say, kinda-sorta. By episodic modules, I meant ones where there was a continuity between them. The premium modules were all stand-alone. Witch's Wake was planned as a series of several modules, but it never got past the first one, unfortunately.

EDIT: Yes, some of the non-premium NWN modules are, indeed, episodic in nature.

[Chuck Jordan]

The biggest part of the "problem" is that what makes an episodic game is still being defined. All the comments so far have been talking about what the developers are doing. But if it's ever going to take off, the audience -- meaning players and reviewers -- need to be on board as well.

Half-Life 2 has been episodic in the same sense that the Spider-man movies are episodic; they're still doing a TON of stuff with each installment. Doesn't matter that Ep1 had some outstanding set-pieces and was a totally satisfying and memorable 8 or 9 hours; they STILL get dinged on the length, and the time between installments.

With Sam & Max, people kept comparing season 1 to Hit the Road. In terms of quality of content, that's fine -- everybody's got his own sense of what's funny and what's not. But in terms of quantity, that's just unrealistic; it's simply not possible to release a full-length SCUMM game once a month. But when you read a review that sounds like they liked the music, characters, voice, writing, and concept; and then complain that they finished it in four hours or so, you have to wonder: what part of "episode" didn't you understand?

I'm a little optimistic in that it seems like people are just now starting to get it. But the pessimist in me believes that audiences and reviewers claim they're all for episodic content, when what they really want is a whole new full-length game every month.

[ZekeDMS]

As a reviewer, bah. I don't mind short episodes, that's why they're episodes. HL2's episodes can't be knocked on length, they're full games by today's standards, for less price. And if Ep 1 is any indicator, they're as good as a full release.

Sin- Ep 1 was short, and that's fine. It lent itself to replay, and the arena mode added later was a great bonus.

Sam and Max, short as they are, are very good, and that's fine. It's not a long wait for the next one.

[stusser]

HL2:ep1 was 5 hours long. That is not a full game by today's standards. The absolute minimum acceptable length is 10 hours, and even then those had better be some seriously entertaining hours.

This playtime attrition needs to stop. For one thing, if you can rent it and beat it in a single night, why would you buy a game ever again?

[Cossix]

Episode 1 was $15. Fifteen dollars. I'd be hard pressed to complain about a really really focused 5 hours for fifteen bucks. They can whittle down game time as much as they want if it makes video games better. I'd rather play six radical hours of video games than ten really really mediocre hours. I mean, throwing one really tedious hour long sequence inspires internet rage that is unquenchable, and you want developers to start dragging these things out?

[stusser]

I wasn't complaining about HL2:ep1's price, I was commenting on Zeke saying 5 hours is a "full game by today's standards". That's bullshit.

[unbongwah]

The premium modules were all stand-alone. Witch's Wake was planned as a series of several modules, but it never got past the first one, unfortunately.
Shadowguard was also a "Part 1 of..." mod; and both Kingmaker and WCoC suggest that there's more to the backstory at the end (i.e., room for sequels), IIRC. I don't know if sequels for any of them were planned, much less worked on, but they definitely were leaving that door open.

[ZekeDMS]

It's a bad trend, but there's a significant amount of games these days at that length. When Max Payne 2 did it we were stunned. But now a significant number of games, especially on consoles, are getting shorter and shorter. Halo clocks in at what, 6-7? Gears of War, same. Enter The Matrix, soulless abomination that it was, 5-6 hours. Games are getting shorter and shorter at this point, shooters especially.

Bullet Witch, 4-6 hours. Stuntman:Ignition, I might overestimate it at 5. The actual amount of gameplay is short, the replay is high. Ace Combat 0, as much as I love it, is a very short game, I can play through the whole thing in 4-5 hours. Heavenly Sword just dropped at 5 hours.

Games have gotten a lot shorter, and when something hits the 20 hour mark it's a surprise. Generally, beyond RPGs and sports games, you don't find that much content.

[Qenan]

Strategy games often last much longer than 20 hours. Don't find a lot of them on consoles, though.

[malkav11]

Like you say, kinda-sorta. By episodic modules, I meant ones where there was a continuity between them. The premium modules were all stand-alone. Witch's Wake was planned as a series of several modules, but it never got past the first one, unfortunately.

EDIT: Yes, some of the non-premium NWN modules are, indeed, episodic in nature.

They may have been standalone, but Kingmaker and Shadowguard were *supposed* to be the first chapters of episodic series and then the premium module program got canned. And we never saw the third of the Paladin trilogy either for the same reason. Bah.

[krokodile]

Never played any of the Half Life expansions, huh?

Not a one. I plan on getting The Orange Box for Christmas though.

I have played through Half Life 2 though. Am I missing something humungous?

[ZekeDMS]

That's too bad, I really loved Opposing Force and hope Shephard makes a return.

[Shadari]

They may have been standalone, but Kingmaker and Shadowguard were *supposed* to be the first chapters of episodic series and then the premium module program got canned. And we never saw the third of the Paladin trilogy either for the same reason. Bah.
Yeah, I stand corrected.

[Rock8man]

Not a one. I plan on getting The Orange Box for Christmas though.

I have played through Half Life 2 though. Am I missing something humungous?

No you didn't. Opposing force was a steaming pile of shit. They took a great game, and made a really mediocre expansion for it. Where as Valve did such a great job with their action sequences that unfold around you, Opposing Force made several action sequences that were so perfectible that I wasn't watching because of the sequence, I was watching and thinking, "Yes, yes, you've put me in a room full of acid and the acid level is rising. Now I'm guessing there'll be some kind of platform that'll allow me to save myself at the last second. Oh look, that platform just fell and formed a plank. What a surprise".

And don't even get me started on the box. They have this stupid box that you have to keep using in one level to get into vents and then open a door on the other side so that you can then drag the box through the door and use it to get to another ledge so that you can then open another door in order to drag the box to a new area. Ugh. I hated that box so much, and Gearbox's level design skills.

Plus they took the best part about Half Life: the Marine AI, and completely ruined it for me. See, this time you get to fight WITH the marines, and they're fine when you're fighting alongside you, but most of the time they're crowding around you repeating the same four phrases over and over and over and over again. Phrases that are repeated out of context and lose all meaning. And then you just want these mindless automatons to just shut the hell up and get away from you.

[Gordon Cameron]

OpFor was uneven but I enjoyed the new alien enemies and I thought the "Black Ops" soldiers were great. There was one extremely tough firefight toward the end, in a warehouse of some kind, that I found more challenging than any fight in the original Half Life.

[Greatatlantic]

I'd say parts of the industry decided to try for "episodic" gaming, and what we actually got were stand alone expansion packs (with or with out an original game to "expand"). In Valve's case, they recently decided to skip right to the inevitable compilation pack. Regardless, the process can hardly be called "episodic". That would imply greater regularity of "episodes", which somehow form "season". Not necessarily a season, but certainly sometype of greater compilation of which each episode is merely a part.

Obviously, Sam and Max fulfill these criteria. I suspect we'll start seeing more "episodic" content in games. Not as retail releases, but as part of subscription based gaming. Pay your monthly fee, get a "new game" once a week. Obviously there are technical hurdles, but with the right model its doable.

[Alistair]

I'd like to see episodic redefined to mean 'We took the best four levels of the game and bolted them together and made them available as some nice mini-package'. I'll pay you a tenner for the best few levels of any of the shooters about to come out for example, but in practice I'll buy one (because that's what I've got time for) or none, because really, most of your levels are pretty samey...

Edit: And you should do that for older games too. I'm never going to buy Mafia, or Max Payne 2 or Company of Heroes, or the Tomb Raider Anniversary, let alone Gun or Beyond Good & Evil, but I would sure as hell buy something that picked out the best 2 hours from each of them... You could pretty much name your price actually...

[Talorc]

What about Gametap? You pay your subscription fee and you get new episodes / games / shows/ content every month right?

Seems to me to be a successful 'episodic' model of gaming. Obviously the 'episodes' are different games, so it might not fit some people's definitions put forward. (eg contiuity between episodes)

[RichardC]

Gametap looks cool, if you're in the US. The equivalents over here (pretty much just Metaboli, for which you're talking the equivalent of $25 a month for the full collection) aren't that great.

Although amusingly, their 'Essential Collection' now has Bad Game L.A. in there. Christ only knows what their non-essentials are...

[Mark Asher]

Episodic content needs to be delivered more quickly and at a reasonable price if it's short.

Max Payne would be a good example of a game that would support it. I could see the character getting a new mystery to solve that might play out in three episodes, each episode clocking in at 2-4 hours and maybe costing $10. Give me one new episode each month. I'd be happy with that.

Unfortunately, I think what we would get would be 2-4 hour episodes that appear once a year and cost $20.

[HCode]

Aren't there very large obstacles to implement something in episodic form for anything but technically trivial genres like adventures? No offense, but creating a Sam & Max is not a technical challenge but just a question of content quality, i.e. to make it funny. Looks don't matter.

But genres that define itself mostly by their graphics (action, RTS, RPG) are usually finished when the technical engine part is "good enough" with content usually being an after-thought. If the non-episodic competition battles over next-generation graphics, how can an episodic game find a market with last-generation graphics? Isn't the playing field of content expansions for action and RTS games already filled by the modding communities?

[Brendan]

What I don't understand is how developers get episodic content wrong (Besides the Sam and Max crew.)

The idea is that the first thing you do is craft a storyline divided into the episodes. You lay out a large amount of time and money developing the engine and assets for the first episode. Once that is up and running all that is left is the level design, a very small amount of new art assets to mix it up and possibly some cutscenes. There you go.

You can lay off most of your developers and artists after the first episode and have a skeleton staff of level designers and outsource to an animation house for some cutscenes and you are waxed. Your skeleton staff of developers can make small improvements to the engine to keep it relevant, but honestly, by the time the engine starts looking a bit aged (Two years or so.) you should have wrapped the series up in eight released episodes and you should start with your new franchise.

Of course you aren't going to recoup the money spent on the first episode within the first two or three episodes, but with your costs cut for subsequent episodes, you can make a nice profit.

Edit: Also, when it comes to episodic gaming, the story is the most important element. You need to hook people in with the story and make them want to find out what happens next.

[RichardC]

In other words, you completely front-load your first episode?

No. What you need to do is exactly what the S&M team did - have your team set up to roll between episodes, with members working on the next while the implementation guys are building the previous one and the sales guys are selling the one before that. That, and keep your ambitions reasonable. You can't finish Episode 1, take a crunch break, and then start working on your second episode. That's the exact model that most episodic attempts have tried, and it fails because it just plain doesn't work.

The engine is absolutely irrelevant within an individual series, so long as it's good enough. You're likely to lose customers over time more than you gain them anyway. Your series breaks are the time to get people on board, coupled with compilations and special deals. In any event, it's the content that's going to keep people coming back, not HDR or particle engines or whatever.

And any plan that involves the phrase 'lay off most of the team' is just dead in the water.

[HCode]

The engine is absolutely irrelevant within an individual series, so long as it's good enough. You're likely to lose customers over time more than you gain them anyway. Your series breaks are the time to get people on board, coupled with compilations and special deals. In any event, it's the content that's going to keep people coming back, not HDR or particle engines or whatever.

I don't agree on this - to me it seems that engine features traditionally really are major selling points for any PC FPS and the amount of content is not of much concern to paying customers. New content for major FPS titles (i.e. from simple maps to total conversions) is delivered by the modding communities almost as fast as professional developers could produce it.

To really have a viable success perspective commercial addon products seem to be forced to deliver engine enhancements as well (as seen in the HL2 episodes, BfME + C&C addons) and content-only expansions don't sell that well, especially in the presence of free mods.

[Quitch]

This is definitely not true. Sin episode 1 did not sell very well.

Not only is it true, it has been covered in relative depth on this very forum. It repaid its costs and more, indeed, that is why it initially seemed so odd because the model seemed to be working for them.

[RichardC]

I don't agree on this - to me it seems that engine features traditionally really are major selling points for any PC FPS and the amount of content is not of much concern to paying customers.

If you're trying to get someone to come back month on month for additional episodes, it's pretty darn important. Not to mention, I didn't say anything about FPS games. We've seen some big releases, but I'd say they're one of the least appropriate genres for doing the episodic thing on.

As for the technology, it's only the hardcore fans who traditionally obsess over shaders and antialiasing and the like - for the average gamer, all that matters is that it looks good. And generally that's a matter of art direction more than the core engine technology. You'd be far better off hiring artists who can render wonderful screenshots to sell with, than on extra programmers to constantly bolt on new features that only a handful of the players will even notice.

To really have a viable success perspective commercial addon products seem to be forced to deliver engine enhancements as well (as seen in the HL2 episodes, BfME + C&C addons) and content-only expansions don't sell that well, especially in the presence of free mods.

It's not engine enhancements though. It's different spins on the game, additional modes, additional features and the like. That's a far cry (no pun intended) from core technology upgrades. Only a very small proportion of people gives a shit if the engine changes, so long as it feels different.

And in an episodic environment, that wouldn't be the focus anyway, because you're not trying to sell them an extra chunk of a game they already paid £30 for, but trying to get them to return month on month for a game they're still playing.

[Rock8man]

My favorite part about Wing Commander: Secret Ops (the episodic Web-only game released by EA using the Wing Commander: Prophecy engine) was that since the story was being doled out 4 missions at a time, the whole Wing Commander community that I was part of at the time (www.wcnews.com) was speculating together at the end of each episode where the story was leading and what was going to happen next.

Now, as it turned out, the actual story and campaign in Secret Ops wasn't all that great. But some of the speculations by me and other fans regarding where the story was going was a lot more exciting than the game itself.

You know how a lot of people on this board say that anticipating a game is often more fulfilling than when you actually get your hands on the game? Well, Secret Ops was that same principle applied every single week as we all anticipated the next episode. Each episode itself was a bit of a disappointment, but the waiting, the speculation, the anticipation, the shared sense of community we had at the time, all made the experience way superior to what happens when a game is released all at once.

If Secret Ops had been released in one go, this is what would have happened: Some people would have finished it in one day and been disappointed by it, and went online to discuss it. Others would take their time, but eventually trickle in and express their disappointment. It would have been a non-event.

Now granted, this is the dead corpse of Wing Commander I'm talking about, and it was a non-event even as an episodic game, but it was still much more fulfilling and exciting for those of us who took part every week than it would have been otherwise.

So I think its just a good delivery medium.

Bioshock, for example, would have made a good episodic game. If the episodes had been released weekly, it would have made for a lot of anticipation and speculation and discussions here at QuarterToThree as most people would have been at the same point in the story throughout the release of the episodes. We'd discuss what we thought about the game after the Neptune's Bounty episode, etc.

Ok, maybe Bioshock isn't such a great example of a good candidate after all now that I think about it, but its not a bad candidate either.

[Quitch]

I agree on that, the fact that you're dealing with a small amount of content, if coming regularly, makes for a far more exciting discussion.

[Kool Moe Dee]

Not only is it true, it has been covered in relative depth on this very forum. It repaid its costs and more, indeed, that is why it initially seemed so odd because the model seemed to be working for them.

Well, my source was one of the programmers who formerly worked at Ritual. Unprompted during a job interview, he specifically called out the fact that Sin Episodes was a money-loser, that it had placed the company in a precarious financial position, and that they had stopped working on episodic content as a result.

I don't understand why it's so hard for you to believe that the Sin Episodes lost money. They were hardly a blip on the gaming radar.

[Quitch]

Well, my source was one of the programmers who formerly worked at Ritual. Unprompted during a job interview, he specifically called out the fact that Sin Episodes was a money-loser, that it had placed the company in a precarious financial position, and that they had stopped working on episodic content as a result.

I don't understand why it's so hard for you to believe that the Sin Episodes lost money. They were hardly a blip on the gaming radar.

Because everything published about it says it wasn't.

And why would a programmer have a great insight into the financial workings of the company? It'd be like me listening to some guy in sales telling me that my company had made a mistake aquirring Y, and he must be right because he works in the company... except most people in a company don't know dick about what's going on, especially financially and most "fact" is little more than rumour mongering.

Blip on the radar by what measure? The only measure that matters is profit. What are you judging it on?

[Kool Moe Dee]

Because everything published about it says it wasn't.

And why would a programmer have a great insight into the financial workings of the company? It'd be like me listening to some guy in sales telling me that my company had made a mistake aquirring Y, and he must be right because he works in the company... except most people in a company don't know dick about what's going on, especially financially and most "fact" is little more than rumour mongering.

Blip on the radar by what measure? The only measure that matters is profit. What are you judging it on?

It is not unusual for employees at small companies to be more familiar with details like product sales numbers and general financial health, than at much larger companies. This was not a person who had only worked with them for a short period of time -- this individual had a long history with the company.

And as far as "buzz" goes, in the gaming sector it usually correlates well with financial success.