Episode Based Content 2007

[NothingLikeit]

Hello All,

I started a post about Episodic Content about 2 years ago. Alot of people were skeptical about the concept here. I've still been plugging along doing research into downloadable content and the reception that gamers have had to the concept. I've seen some consternation to the concept from both developers and the gaming public at large.

So my question is what's it going to take to get people to accept Episodic Gaming.

IMHO so far I've come up with the benefits of cutting down on playing time for busy adults, easier to complete, and reliable updates.

[tolworthy]

Isn't that what Sam and Max is (are?) about?

[electronicStar]

It's impossible to know if it will be a success or a failure until someone tries for real:o

I think also that what matters isn't if the content is episodic, hat matters is the quality of the content. If you produce episodic crap it will always fail. If you produce episodes with a very good game it has good chances of succeeding.

Also : if I were to do something like that, I'd make sure that someone could take the game in the middle without being lost (make each episode playable in standalone, yes like bad TV series) but make sure that the continuity gives him the incentive to have the prequels or sequels.

[JoKa]

People may reject from buying something that states it's "incomplete" or fear that future add-ons aren't sure to come. Could be better to release a nice game the traditional way and offer additional episodes later.

[KNau]

The Exchange Student is an episodic game that was at least successful enough to create a second episode:
http://www.theexchangestudent.com/

[Polycount Productions]

Hello All,

I started a post about Episodic Content about 2 years ago. Alot of people were skeptical about the concept here. I've still been plugging along doing research into downloadable content and the reception that gamers have had to the concept. I've seen some consternation to the concept from both developers and the gaming public at large.

So my question is what's it going to take to get people to accept Episodic Gaming.

IMHO so far I've come up with the benefits of cutting down on playing time for busy adults, easier to complete, and reliable updates.

I'm seriously considering Episodic Content, since it would help reduce the release timeline. Since people like to buy Diner Dash, Diner Dash Extreme, Diner Dash Gold, Diner Dash Strikes Back, Diner Dash Match-3, Diner Boulder-Dash (and the expansions aren't always that different, even if they are sequels) I see no reason why it couldn't work if done properly.

[Pyabo]

So my question is what's it going to take to get people to accept Episodic Gaming.


Someone doing it right? Releasing once/year is NOT episodic in the slightest (Valve). Releasing one "episode" and then folding is NOT episodic content (Ritual, numerous others).

Perhaps a better question is why some people seem to think it's a good idea to begin with?

[PoV]

Oh, didn't you hear? Episodic gaming is just expansion packs re-branded for story based games. Shhh... don't tell the general public.

Seriously, playing Half Life 2: Episode 1 without playing playing Half Life 2 is plain silly. Episodic TV as a standalone doesn't even work as well as people think. Jumping in to "24" in the middle of a season is such a waste.

[electronicStar]

The bigwigs have been considering episodic contnt for videogames as a way to have customers come back and maybe they thought it would mean less devellopment costs.
The problem is that in the domain of videogames, each episode would require as much time and efforts to devellop as a full game (unlike in "linear" products like TV for example where a 30 minutes episode requires much less to shoot than a 90 minutes movie)

[soniCron]

Episodic TV as a standalone doesn't even work as well as people think. Jumping in to "24" in the middle of a season is such a waste. I dunno. I can pick up The Simpsons any time, same with any light-content program. To be honest, that really shouldn't be a problem in downloadable games either because they're not broadcast. On-demand content is ripe for episodic continuity. Do you disagree?

[Coyote]

I think the key is to make it truly episodic - not serial - and priced accordingly. So far, nobody's done it right that I have seen. Instead, all I've seen people do is break a game into pieces, and sell off the pieces for more than the price of the whole game.

[NothingLikeit]

POV: Your frustration with what has been released under the term episodic game. Is understandable. I think that customer education is going to be a big part of it. But alot of people hit the nail on the head. It has to be done right. I'm not sure what "Done right means yet" I do know that it means not creating a full game and syphoning it in bits and pieces.

You also make a good point about how tough it is to join a season of 24 in mid season. But Sonicron makes a good point about how you can watch an episode of The Simspons at any point. I think that the answer is to create modular episode arcs, similar to some non sequential shows such as house. Although we "could ditch the whole concept of television episodes" and call them micro games or something.

Cost is the main issue, and we have found the benefit episodic games (micro games, mini games) could have for developers. Now we have to find the benefit for the gamer.

[Bad Sector]

I haven't played it, but i heard that the new Sam & Max episodes are self-contained small games instead of a big one cutted in many parts. I suppose that this is the "right" way to do episodic gaming.

[Rainer Deyke]

Let's say you cut up a $60/60 hour game into six $10/10 hour episodes. Who really benefits from this scenario?
The developer can, in theory, release the first episode earlier. In practice, the first episode is going to require the bulk of the work.
Packaging, distributing, and installing all of those individual episodes is going to be a lot of work, for the developer, for the player, and for any middle man.
A lot of people who don't have the money or the time to play the whole game are just going to buy a couple of episodes. Possibly just one episode in the many of cases. These are customers who otherwise would either have either bought the whole game or not have bought the game at all. However, the overall amount of money and time that these people are willing to spend on games is probably constant.
In summary, more people will buy the first episode, fewer people will buy the whole game, and the total amount of money that people spend remains more or less constant.

There are only two ways in which this model may become more profitable than the old model, both of them fairly unlikely:
The format itself may attract more buyers. These buyers would be primarily those who don't have the time or money for the full game. If this episode thing takes off, it is possible that these people will spend their $60 on six different first episodes from different series and stop buying $60 games altogether.
If the game is compelling enough, then people who only wanted the first episode may end up buying all episodes. In order for this to work, the game would have to be significantly better than the buyer initially expected it to be. This can only happen with a small minority of games before the buyers' expectations rise.

[Anthony Flack]

The other main point is that you could distribute, say, 10 20Mb episodes of a content-heavy story-driven game, rather than one off-putting 200Mb download.

[soniCron]

To be honest, I think the only financial model that could (perpetually) support episodic gaming would be advertising.

Why?

The games need to create a critical mass of attention by achieving more frequent releases. The only way to do this is to cut down the (usually 6+ hours) gameplay to self-sustaining bite-sized chunks. Staggering the releases over a period of weeks, rather than months or years, would develop an exponentially greater momentum and potentially snowball into something sustainable. Unfortunately, folks aren't keen on shelling out a few bucks to watch their favorite show every week, as I suspect they'll likely respond similarly with episodic gaming released on such a frequent occasion. Under such circumstances, the only reasonable financial model would be advertising.

That said, I think it all lies in the laps of the developers. Episodic gaming won't catch on until developers accept a few things:
Reinventing the wheel every time around is inefficient and cannot sustain episodic gaming. Reuse, reuse, reuse.
Limit the gameplay to some very simple and basic components and reuse them in a dynamic manner to create emergent gameplay.
If there's an easier way, do it. Digital puppeteering and character reuse are highly efficient.
Cut out the dead-time. There should be no more than a minute or two of "nothing." If there isn't an interesting plot-advancing moment for over 5 minutes, you've lost my attention.
If you want to see true mainstream success, ditch the sci-fi and fantasy. Not only is it cheaper to use real-world items, events, and storytelling, it's also a lot more appealing to the general public.


It all comes down to consolidation and efficiency, two things game developers are notoriously poor at.

[Agent 4125]

I think instead of Episodic Content, the next cool thing should be Original Content.

[PoV]

The problem is that in the domain of videogames, each episode would require as much time and efforts to devellop as a full game (unlike in "linear" products like TV for example where a 30 minutes episode requires much less to shoot than a 90 minutes movie)
Yeah. Middleware can help, when it becomes more available. But if you're doing something not based on Unreal 3, Valve's Source, or one of those Adventure game makers, then you're making your own story game Middleware. You could base it off a flexible engine like Torque or Ogre, but there's still much work ahead to turn it in to a storytelling platform. And you'll need it, if you expect to pump out episodes at any respectable rate.

Your first game is your pilot episode, and you need to figure out the structure to establish it right. It's no different then NOT producing an episodic game at this point. It just means cheaper sequels.

POV: Your frustration with what has been released under the term episodic game. Is understandable.
Valve's model of episodic games right now given the schedule, is more like Direct to DVD movies than an episodic TV series. ;)

And a concept of "seasons" is almost silly, unless you have a reasonable release schedule, or some significant game engine or technology change.

I dunno. I can pick up The Simpsons any time, same with any light-content program.
Ah, but games tend not to be developed like comedies or kid shows. Not to mention, while these shows do have episodes, the episode numbers don't play a big part in them, unlike a serial TV series. They're used for cataloging, but that's it.

Introduce serialization in a story, and you lose something by not seeing/reading/playing them all.

Even the Telltale stuff I've played (Bone #2) leaves the player a bit unfamiliar, since there is a serial back story. However, I suppose the solution to that would be to include some sort of "Previously, on this game" or an optional introduction (so not to spoil the 1st game's plot) for new players.

On-demand content is ripe for episodic continuity. Do you disagree?
I absolutely agree. But an MMO world that grows monthly or bi-monthly strikes me as a smoother "TV like" experience, then anything we've seen so far. But we're all busy exploiting players in MMO land with "access" subscription fees. Not that I have any interest in going MMO, I just think the experience of an updating subscription model is smoother. Perhaps a "Steam like" or "podcast catching" clients that pull down your new episodes as they become available. Though, the spyware stigmata, or more fat clients slowing down a PC's startup certainly makes it a tougher sell.

It's easy to forget, as a society, we're not used to paying for individual episodes of a TV series. Thanks to iTunes and some on demand services, that's changing, but the general public is more used to the TV subscription model. Really, episodic gaming is in the same boat looking for acceptance as new media looking to capitalize via distribution over the internet.

To be honest, I think the only financial model that could (perpetually) support episodic gaming would be advertising.
Episodic as a means to require less total content, I agree. Giving someone a linear 1-2 hour story game for $20 is harder to justify than 4-8 hour story... which is funny, given DVD movies clock in at about 2 hours, and many games feature 1 hour free trials. ;)

I think the key is to make it truly episodic - not serial - and priced accordingly.
If that's the case, then all you're doing is making smaller games. And in that case, a "Episode 1" subtext is merely a cataloging of your games, since it's irrelevant to any game playing structure. It may as well be omitted, and replaced with a story title. Or slap a # on the game, ala Final Fantasy 35, for classic continuity.

There's marketing advantages to not releasing the 3 parts of your game all at once. And not to mention, marketing advantages for being able to push and old product and a new product in each marketing campaign. But if your games plots are unrelated, and not in any way part of a serial story, emphasis on it being an episode is almost deceptive, given how used we are to sequeling in games as our distinct breakups. As I see it, you're better off giving it a subtitle, "Joe's Adventure: Wrath of Stapplor", and not "Joe's Adventure: Episode 2" or "Joe's Adventure: Part 2", unless your game IS serial.

Episodes and other partitioning in game titles are an unfamiliar continuity. As I see it, they imply serialization.

It all comes down to consolidation and efficiency, two things game developers are notoriously poor at.
Yup.

[NothingLikeit]

wow I really appreciate the comments, questions, and statements that have been laid out thus far. This particular thread has already outlived it's predecesor by 3 pages. :D .

But seriously I love the thoughts said by Sonicron and POV among others. What you guys said is sort of in line with what I'm already thinking and planning to implement. I've kind of had an idea for a smaller game that wasn't a puzzler. No offense to the makers of them, but I just want to play something else sometime. But working 2 jobs, and sometimes going to school doesn't leave much time for that. When I do find time to boot up my PS2 or PC. I have to sit through the loading screens, the story movies (some of which still can't be skipped which is a crime in today's busy world) and then I get greeted with a briefing screen, a set up menu in some cases and only then I might be able to shoot something. So at most I've spent an hour to play maybe 20 minutes of an actual game. I've been brought up on marathon gaming sessions so I used to be fine with this, but unfortunately I don't have time to go through a long winded set up just for some action. Granted I don't even have a family of my own yet. I can only imagine how many ex-gamers we've lost because thier real world demands trump their leisure playtime.

Also I have don't always have the most up to date equipment. My old computer could only play games from 2003 or earlier. And even some of those were slow. It simply couldn't handle Doom 3 or Quake 4. Nor did I have the money to upgrade. Well I put all these ideas away and thought to myself "I'm probably the only former hardcore gamer going through this right now. every gamer is upgrading and this tech race isn't effecting them. But that changed recently when Alex Seropian was speaking during a local IGDA event. He basically voiced the same concerns about having time, energy, and money to play and complete a 40 hour next gen game. His basic solution to the episodic game problem was the same one that we said and that I've been thinking: It has to be compelling.

Whether it is serial or otherwise.

So What's My point? Episodic games could be done right. I love the idea of making something bite sized, and priced as such. It's almost like a game snack. The young busy person in question can download the latest adventure, play through multiple levels (and not just one) and finish the game. Like I said in the start, this is preliminary stuff. It's going to take some implementation. I am using both the torque and 3d gamestudio engines. (not at the same time of course) It looks like 3d studio offers a bit more stuff being done upfront. If should happen to fall on my face with this at least we'll know it doesn't work huh?

[Nutter2000]

Heh, NothingLikeit, I feel your pain!

I tried pitching the concept of iComics to people in the industry back in 2000 (and since). This was an episodic story-based idea similar to the way comic books are done, that is the main characters and background story remain the same but the story is different each time.

The idea was that each complete story is divided into "books", each book consists of 4-6 large levels or episodes which can be played seperately and in any order, although preferably sequentially else you'd probably lose the plot.

The game style would work best as both an RPG or FPS with story (ie Half-Life).

Initially you would complete and offer the whole book as a single download, or a seperate downloads. This would let you get plenty of assets in place as well as a fully working engine. After that releasing future books and episodes would require a lot smaller development team, even as little as a writer, programmer, and artist and a tester. Future books could be released on an episodic basis so long as the story is kept fresh, the requirement of a proper writer who can handle both story and the whole differences with writing for games.

The best way to get this to work would be to use existing IP, comic books being ideal as they're already written that way hence iComics.

The general response to my pitch was that although it was a good idea but it hadn't been done before so why should they put money into it!

Plus it was 2000 the year of the Great Purge of Game Developers so funding in general was extremely hard to come by anyway.

I agree that episodic gaming can work and work well and I still want to do it myself at some point!
It'll basically take someone to do it successfully before people will take notice, will have to see if Valve can make it work, they're in the best position to do it afterall.

[NothingLikeit]

Thanks Nutter.... It stinks to say but inovation is only accepted unless 1) You do it on your own at no cost to your finacier (thus no risk to them) or 2) Somebody else has already done in some respect.

Luckily I have both of those things going for me. I kinda had the same idea of having a smaller team backing me as opposed to a massive uber team. I'm thinking something in line with what you're saying (Me: A scripter/level designer/producer, two game artists, and a musician) could do the trick. I'm actually excited about testing this concept. Not to say I can do it better than Valve but I've got less to lose, so we shall see! Keep checking the blog for updates on how i'm doing.

[Popcorn Boy]

Here's a Q&A with Rick Sanchez of Gametap on the subject of episodic gaming:

Q&A: GameTap's Rick Sanchez Responds to Your Letters (http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=12856)

And his earlier editorial that spurred the questions:

Why Bother with Episodic Games? (http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20070103/sanchez_01.shtml)

[Gary the Llama]

I haven't read the entire thread yet so forgive me if this has already been mentioned... I love the idea of episodic gaming but few companies are doing it right. I'd say the team behind Sam & Max are doing a fantastic job because they're releasing the episodes on a consistent basis:

The first of the six-episode series—referred to collectively as Season One—was released on October 17, 2006. The second episode was released through GameTap on December 21, 2006 and to the public on January 5, 2007. Subsequent episodes are expected to follow on a monthly basis.

I believe Sin: Episodes and Half-Life 2 were supposed to follow a similiar model but they've failed to do so thus far.

Most television viewers won't put up with long breaks between episodes (between seasons, sure) so why should gamers put up with long breaks between releases? Now you have to take into account that a first person shooter probably takes a lot longer to produce than an adventure game like Sam & Max but still...

Anyway, in my opinion, it looks like the model works great for casual games - especially story-driven games. (Isn't that the whole point though?)

Okay, I'm rambling. I just wanted to point out that the Sam & Max team is doing it right and we should all take notice. (I have no idea if they're any good though, I haven't played them yet.)

[GameGlyph]

I kinda like the example given of House. I watch House MD because I like the character, not because I really care about the patients or the side characters. I watch the show because I like to see what House will do in a given situation.

House is a character that can adapt to situations in a usually entertaining manner. Perhaps if a game was made with a character, or gameplay aspect, that was made that could interact with other characters or gameplay aspects was made, we would have the same result?

[Nexic]

1. Play Episode 1, love game. Want to get Ep 2.
2. Wait a couple of weeks, get bored of the idea.
3. Find several new games to get into instead.
4. Episode 2 comes out but you're no longer excited about it since you've been distracted away from your original enthusiasm by another game.

Get them excited, make them pay for the whole thing. They have the satisfaction of knowing that they can play and complete the entire thing whenever they want if they so choose, without having to wait inbetween. With Episodes the game may never even be finished, and even if it is you've got to go to the hassle of buying it again. And the developer has to pay payment processing fees all over again (though if you're careful with your pricing you can avoid losing out here)

I would never buy Episode 1 of a game unless each part could be considered almost a full game in itself that will still leave me mostly satisfied by the end. Not some short thing that ends on a 'to be continued'.

[MrQ]

Episodic content has a problem for me. If you relate it to TV shows, people don't usually pay to watch each episode. In fact, I dont have cable so I don't pay for any tv at all, let alone per episode. Relating it to a dvd movie makes more sense but I just get the feeling the system is a little too disjointed for most people to pick up.

Personally I don't like the idea of paying $10 or so for each segment of game. I don't really see the benefit except that the initial installment is quite cheap. But then again thats what free demos are for.

[JoshuaSmyth]

Her Interactive's Nancy Drew series is doing really well and although I haven't heard the term 'episodic' applyed to them, more or less they are episodes. I think the main going point is that they can be played independantly from each other, but certain characters and plot arcs do intersect. Also (and I think this is important) they don't emphasis the episode number in the title of the game.

Episodic gaming surely is possible, but its not the same as splitting up a big game into small parts. Its about making smaller games, that are complete in themselves.

[Artinum]

Games are ideally sold as complete entities. There's nothing stopping you producing several games with the same characters or settings, after all. The concept of episodes causes problems with most television programmes too - things like soap operas can be dipped into and out of because nothing ever really develops. There's a big drama, it stretches out for a while and then gets resolved, and another one appears next week.

Programmes with complicated plots do less well - I could never understand Babylon 5 as there's a show you need to see all of, from the beginning. Not friendly to casual viewing. I mourn the loss of Twin Peaks, one of the most bizarre and entertaining things ever shown on television, which could be considered the same way - either you watch it from the start, or you have no idea what's going on. Though sometimes you have no idea what's going on in that show anyway - the writers cheerfully admit they were making it up as they went along.

Games suffer a bigger problem - the gap between episodes of a TV series is normally about a week. Games can be up to a year. People just don't wait that long. If Supergame 1 does very well then those players will be more receptive to Supergame 2 but not all of them will be interested. If your episodes are sequential, then any gamer that misses Supergame 2 will be uninterested in Supergame 3. They won't know what's happening.

One of the best "episodic" games I've seen (via Bytten) was Gumshoe Online (http://www.gumshoe-online.com/). There you buy individual cases, can play them in any order and as often as you like. There's no crossover between the cases, though you may see the same characters and locations in more than one. This is much more player friendly.

[GolfHacker]

Dirk Dashing was originally designed as an "episodic comic book". If you've seen the game, you can actually see this in the level map, which looks like a comic book page. Each page says "Part n: episode title" and contains 5-6 levels that look like comic book frames.

In my original design, players would download the executable and the initial episode (essentially the trial version), and then they could purchase additional episodes, which would consist of new game content (levels, graphics, audio, etc). New episodes would be released on a monthly basis.

Here are the problems I ran into with this approach, which caused me to reconsider the episodic model.

1) Each new episode introduced new characters, items, and situations that required new behaviors (which meant I needed new code to implement it). No matter how much I planned ahead with reusable behaviors and scripting, I still never had everything I needed - I always needed some other behavior that was unique to a particular new character (otherwise, each character would be generic, acting and reacting just like every other character that came before it). Implementing new behaviors for new characters meant that players would have to download a new executable with each new episode - they couldn't just download new content.

2) Building unique and interesting levels took a lot longer than I expected. My plan was for each episode to contain 5 normal levels and 1 secret level, but as a part-time developer, it sometimes took me a month to develop a single level. That meant I couldn't release a new episode each month, nor could I release new episodes fast enough or even on a regular basis.

3) Although I had laid out the overall storyline at the very beginning, I found that development of later levels sometimes required tweaks to the earlier levels in order to prevent story gaps or inconsistencies. Releasing in episodic form means you can't go back and change earlier content without cries of "foul!" from fans (especially those who track every minute detail).

I had gotten into development for episode 3 when I finally realized the episodic model wasn't going to work for me. Thankfully, I had planned to build five complete episodes before releasing the game, so I had an opportunity to repackage it into a single game.

[JenaRey]

Just thought I'd toss my .02 in here from the point of view of a game journalist with development aspirations.

I've played all four of the Sam and Max games which are really, imho, the type of games episodic should be, so I'm gonna focus on them as an example of things I've seen that are worth thinking on.

Things they've done:

1 - Set a limit for the 'season'. Telltale has promised to make at least one season of games, so you don't run so much into the like the first game but will never see it again problem. There are six games in this season which can be bought one at a time about once a month, or all at once at the end of the season. They run about 9 bucks a game or around 40 for all six if you wait. So there are limits there for Telltale to deliver what they promised, but if the season really sucks they can cancel at the end and that's that without a midseason death. The stories are kept encapsulated in each episode, but there's definately an over arcing plot and returning characters that keep you wondering and coming back for more.

2 - Paying attention to the user community. They read the reviews and have been changing the game slightly as the episodes have gone on to reflect the things that people love or hate. For example, lots of folks had problems with the length of gameplay dropping in Episode 3, so the content was bumped up in 4. The idea of a musical number in Ep 3, which was hysterical, was good enough that one showed up in Ep 4. This is a benefit of the episodic content in that with each episode the content and gameplay can be tightened and response to user input is much faster than some game that may come out in a year or two.

3 - Revisiting some of the same ground. Many reviewers actually have gotten on TellTales' case for this - me included, but I was thinking about it and by having the player return to the familiar stomping grounds of the office and street near by with each game it gives the games a continuity and allows for the episodes to be picked up in any order and be played. It makes better sense played in order, but it's not impossible to pull one episode or the other completely separate of the rest and still have a good game.

4 - Genre choice. I think that there are some genres that give themselves over to episodic content more easily. Adventure is a good choice for this, particularly a light hearted type of adventure like Sam and Max. The episodes keep you giggling and they've done a good job of getting great writers such as Chuck Jordan, known for Curse of Monkey Island, to contribute to storyline and dialogue. The genre and humor does a lot towards making shorter games easily sustainable from both a technical and sales standpoint.

I'm sure there are other things for the negative or the positive, but there's some observations to chew on. :)

~Jena

[NothingLikeit]

Jenna, I've also checked out what Sam and Max/Telltale games are doing. (do they still post here? It'd be awesome if they had something to add to the conversation.)

I really like the encapsulation aspect of it. I feel that helps stave off player fear that "oh i didn't play the first one so I will be lost in the second.") Also I think having a predefined end let's the player know that this chapter of the game is done. That to be continued stuff really won't fly well. I don't intend to do it either. I've started on my first title that I'll release as a Short Form Game. The main Idea of Hero: Defenders of Russia is that not won person won World War II. So each episode features the player interacting with the story of a different character. I think that by having a smaller story within a bigger story Ala Pulp Fiction will help the episodic content work in FPS world.

A few things I've discovered in the first work is that somehow someway I've got to streamline the art creation process as much as possible. I think tom mentioned that. The other thing is that the main idea of the game has to be simple enough to create quickly, but compelling enough to make the player sit through it. In my case each character plays totally different. The soldier character plays different from the squad leader who plays differently from the Tank Commander and the pilot.

At first I was going to release it as one game, but I think that will honestly confuse the player. Some players may not be crazy about the tank sequence but want to fly a plane instead. Everyone gets the game they want, but the entire game takes place in the bigger complex of World War II.

Tom: I'm curious? Did you sell your Dirk Dashing Episodes separately first, or did you come to the conclusion you mentioned before you started selling the game?

[GolfHacker]

Tom: I'm curious? Did you sell your Dirk Dashing Episodes separately first, or did you come to the conclusion you mentioned before you started selling the game?

That's Troy, actually, not Tom.

As to the question, I realized episodic content wasn't going to work for me before I started selling the game - fortunately.

I still think episodic games are a cool idea, and I would like to do an episodic game, but it will have to wait until I can do game development full time.

[NothingLikeit]

yes, streamlining the content pipeline is a huge issue for me as well. I will figure out a way to do it without levels looking recycled.

[ErikH2000]

My company released four "episodic" offerings in the DROD series, apart from the two full games. We've recently made changes so that the future episodic content will be more like full games. The episodic stuff wasn't making nearly as much money, and press releases for indie game "episodes" or "expansion packs" get much less response from press than full games.

Not to make it sound like a failure. I think the main issue is that it was possible to get the episodes for something like $4 apiece when you subscribed to our online service. The online service has been very popular, with 1 in 3 customers signing up for it, but our bundling episodes with it made it difficult to see how popular the episodes are. Now that the episodes are only going to be sold separately, we'll be able to figure it out.

The episodes cost much less to make than full games because we don't have to supply extra programming, art, and music. We just have to come up with levels, story writing, and voiceover acting. If we could make 1/8th of what we do on the full products, it would be worth it.

-Erik