"Director's Cuts" for Games?

[bloo]

Saw this story today saying that the Bioshock endings weren't Mr. Levine's idea:
http://kotaku.com/gaming/giant-ken-levine-face-says/crummy-bioshock-endings-werent-my-idea-307387.php

From the quoted portions, I'm confused over whether one ending or LOTs of endings was desired.

It makes me curious about what other game designer's ideas on multiple endings are, and if we might eventually see a 'director's cut' approach to some games eventually, particularly 'story shooters'. Perhaps a post-release patch that includes scenes, levels or encounters that were cut?

[Stroker Ace]

Seems like a lot more trouble to reintegrate that sort of stuff into a game than it is to splice scenes back into a movie.

[Linoleum]

The problem is stuff that gets cut usually hasn't gone through serious QA testing and bugfixing rounds. On top of that, depending on the structure, if you add in new stuff, you really have to go and regression test the rest of the game anyway, which is yet more QA time.

[Tom Ohle]

You'd think stuff like this might be possible with the episodic model. The devs keep working on the content once the game has shipped and then they offer a director's-cut download at a modest price a month or two later. Whether it would be financially feasible is another matter, though.

[malkav11]

Saw this story today saying that the Bioshock endings weren't Mr. Levine's idea:
http://kotaku.com/gaming/giant-ken-levine-face-says/crummy-bioshock-endings-werent-my-idea-307387.php

From the quoted portions, I'm confused over whether one ending or LOTs of endings was desired.


Well, I'm sure Ken can illuminate us further if he cares to, but from the full interview it certainly sounded like he wanted a multi-part ending along the lines of those you get in the Fallout series. Where your actions in multiple circumstances separately affect the ending.

[Chuck Jordan]

You'd think stuff like this might be possible with the episodic model. The devs keep working on the content once the game has shipped and then they offer a director's-cut download at a modest price a month or two later. Whether it would be financially feasible is another matter, though.
From my still-limited-but-growing-exponentially experience with episodic development, I'm inclined to say it's less feasible. With an episodic schedule, there's just not much room for tweaking at all, much less extra material. By the time that director's cut download is available "a month or two later," you've probably put in as much effort as you would have for a full episode.

It's kind of the same reason you seldom see deleted scenes from animated shows or movies -- there's just not much room for "extra."