Episodic Gaming

[Catch 52]

Looking at telltale games' the walking dead and can't help but wonder if there are any games that I feel could have been better off if they had come in instalments. Some games that tend to go from mission to mission via loading bar could be cut up into a series such as the walking dead. This way you don't have to pay for a full game if you know that you only want to play a little bit.

I didn't buy Sniper Elite V2 because I knew I wouldn't want to play the entire game but I would have been happy to download a few of the missions and the creators would have at least got some money from me.

Are there any games you wished were episodic so that you could have played some of the game without having to have paid full price?

 

[Zhukov]

Not really, no.

I loved The Walking Dead game, but I don't think the episodic format either improved or detracted from its quality.

The closest thing I can think of is that I wish shooters would split up their single-player and multiplayer portions and sell them separately for half price each. I don't give a single fuck for the crappy campaign of Battlefield games, nor will I ever touch the multiplayer in Spec Ops.

 

[tippy2k2]

I really really really don't like episodic gaming

You always run the risk of not getting the rest of your game (see Half Life).

Also, I'm a very impatient person and purchase TV Shows on Blu-Ray just so I don't have to wait a week in-between episodes. Same with gaming; I bought The Walking Dead when it came out on disc form so that I wouldn't have to play and wait. As giddy with excitement as I am with TellTale working on Season 2, I will still wait for them all to come out before I jump in.

As to your specific example (Sniper Elite), I wouldn't buy episodes even if I thought I would only want to play a little bit. I would end up waiting for the game to drop to a price where I thought it was worth it.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

It's the same thing they're doing with movies nowadays, isn't it? When a production studio is about to run out of a killer franchise they decide to fragment their very last installment to multiply revenue. Like how they split the last book in both the Harry Potter and Twilight series into two movies each. Or the way Warner is slicing The Hobbit (a 200+ page book) into three parts, because once they're done with that there's nowhere else to go (adapting The Silmarillion? Nigh impossible).

It's clearly just a ploy to spread thin your revenue. Not very different from the Mass Effect or Kingdom Hearts spin-offs you get before landing the real, final deal. Except in this case they're mostly filler. With Half-Life, Monkey Island and Walking Dead at least you get a decent arc for every episode. Still, I don't see any use for it except doubling or tripling the studio's earn. I mean, that's why they do it.

 

[OldDirtyCrusty]

Are there any games you wished were episodic so that you could have played some of the game without having to have paid full price?

Nope, that`s the reason i rent games, try out the demo, watch youtube vids and gather information about it if i`m not sure about buying. If i like a game there`s usually no reason for me not to get it (sooner or later, sometimes it`s just the lack of money and/or time).

 

[DustyDrB]

Mass Effect 2 was rather episodic, really. It was like Lost, with each "episode" focusing on a different character (usually with daddy issues). Maybe that's part of the reason I love it so much.

But as for actually breaking up the parts for different release dates? No, I don't want that. I'm too impatient. I like the episodic format, because I think it allows for a tighter, self-contained story that can exist within the larger overarching story. But I still typically even wait for TV shows to be released on Netflix so I can marathon each season.

 

[Korzack]

Hmm, Episodic gaming these days is Kind of a lie - when it started up, the idea was sort of "Less content, but more regularly, and you only had to pay for what you wanted", and outside of Telltale clinging desperately on, there was only Half-life 2 and SIN episodes which tried it to the best of my knowledge - SIN only lasted one episode before the dev team ran out of cash, and we all know about HL2. It's only really been Telltale that've made it work, and one suspects that's been more to do with the licence to begin with, and even then, they've changed the model so it's more Pre-order than anything else which just makes me nervous. Could it work? Definitely, it's just been an idea that got swept under the rug once I think publishers realised "Hey, if we shove that out full-price anyway + do DLC further down the line, that makes us more"