posted 10-28-2000 02:49 AM               

There’s been much talk about the notion of releasing a game as a series of small episodes, rather than one huge, complete product. At the Game Developer’s Conference 2000, VP of Sony, Phil Harrison urged us to create such games, yet developers remain skeptical. Why is that?

Before we even address the merits of the idea, it’s important to realize that a lot of the resistance comes from the fear of change. Game developers know the scope of a stand-alone game that retails for $50. They know how long it should take to play. Game publishers are also familiar with the concept, and their accounting procedures are well adapted to handle (re: fund) the stand-alone $50 game. Finally, consumers are used to the old way, too. But would consumers accept a new kind of game that demands a different play pattern? A game in a series of, say, 1 hour episodes released every week or two? To me, the obvious answer is ‘yes,’ but for that to happen, developers and publishers will have sail into uncharted territory…and take risks…which is not something the game industry is big on right now.

The Objections

One objection I’ve heard from developers about episodic games is so funny that I just have to bring it up. “We can sell the whole $50 game to a lot of people who would just buy the first episode and never buy the rest.” Oh my. This developer is apparently interested in tricking consumers into buying his product. If they actually knew what they were buying, they’d never pay for it. This is not the best way to do business. It also neglects the large group of consumers who weren’t willing to buy the whole game, but who would be happy to try out the first couple episodes…and maybe even the whole series if they like it. Some would say the game’s demo would serve that purpose, which it does to some extent, but not to the level that episodes would.

Basically, an episodic game is “efficient” in an economic sense. It allows a consumer to buy as much or as little as he or she demands. This terrifies most game developers, but interestingly, developers of coin-operated arcade games are probably not even phased. Coin-op game developers have always had to make their money “the hard way.” 25 cents for 90 seconds has been their formula for quite some time. They can’t fool players into forking over 50 bucks. After 90 seconds of play, the game has to be so compelling that the player is willing to pay again to keep playing. A bad PC game can use marketing to achieve at least some level of sales by “tricking” consumers, but a bad episodic game (or a coin-op game) will immediately fail in the marketplace. Being forced to create games that actually are good is daunting thought, but I’m sure there are plenty of developers up to the task.

Another common complain I’ve heard about episodic games is the question of whether players will really be willing to pay for an episode. Will they really be willing to “pay-to-play”? Arcade game players obviously are, but internet users have proven themselves unwilling to pay for much of anything. My first answer is that it depends on what these episodes actually are, and my second answer is that episodic games don’t necessarily imply a pay-per-play model at all. To understand both of these answers, we’ll have to first look more closely at episodic games.

Examples of Episodic Games

What is an episodic game like? The first type of episodic game that comes to my mind is one that’s heavily story based. This is a natural, obvious candidate. Rather than buying the mammoth Curse of Monkey Island all in one shot, I can easily imagine playing it weekly installments. This mirrors the model of the weekly television show, which consumers are familiar and comfortable with. My article on Rethinking Story Games even proposes how to make a story based game that is designed to last a predetermined amount of time (say, an hour) and that appeals to a much wider audience than just gamers.

Another type of episodic game is the mission based game. It’s easy to picture missions being released over time, rather than all at once, but I have to emphasize—these better be damn good missions. It would not be appropriate, for example, to try to make Starcraft and episodic game. The single player missions, while interesting, are not the focus of that game. Starcraft is designed primarily as a competitive multiplayer game. Also, there are plenty of great user-created missions floating around the internet for Starcraft. For a mission based game to really succeed in the market, it probably has to 1) be primarily focused on missions in the first place, 2) have extremely well designed missions, far beyond those created by the game’s player community, and 3) have some over-arching factor tying all the missions together, such as a story or larger puzzle.

No article on episodic games can overlook You Don’t Know Jack, the exceptionally well done quiz game. While there are stand-alone full versions of YDKJ, there’s also the weekly Jack Net Show online. Each week there’s a new set of questions, which are always funny and well written and themed around something (Halloween, tv shows, whatever). Furthermore, a game takes a relatively set amount of time to play (you can choose a 7 or 21 question game), and requires no hardcore gamer skills. It’s basically the ultimate mass market episodic game.

The question still stands: will people be willing to pay to play an episode? For You Don’t Know Jack, probably not. It’s advertising supported now. For a new set of missions as part of a larger framework in an action game? Maybe they would. For the weekly installment of their favorite story game? Sure they would. It depends on the game. Perhaps people would be willing to pay a subscription fee to have access to a group of episodic games, much the same way people pay for premium channels like HBO and Showtime. And to take another lesson from television, perhaps if episodic games can become a more mainstream entertainment medium than normal games, then they could be advertising supported and possibly even free to the end user. The point I’m trying to make is that I think the mass market is actually much more willing to accept a weekly dose of fun than a huge $50, 80 hour gulp of it, even if game publishers and developers haven’t figured that out yet.

Cross Pollination

Episodic games have another benefit that’s potentially far more significant than anything else I’ve said so far. They can “cross pollinate” other products. Imagine that you are Berkeley Systems, makers of You Don’t Know Jack. You have an offering of several online games that don’t require new content. You have, for example, Acrophobia, a game in which players compete to think of clever acronyms for randomly generated strings of letters. You like games that don’t require new content because they’re cheaper to maintain. But your one game that does have new content (YDKJ), is the primary force that brings players back every week. A new episode is a compelling reason for a player to return to you, and while you have him, you can make him aware of your other games. After he finishes the episode of YDKJ, you can make sure that your other games are just a click away.

Even companies who go for “real gamers” could benefit from this same concept. Imagine if Blizzard offered an episodic Diablo 2. Actually, picture it as a separate game, a “side story” set in the Diablo universe. Each week, a new mission is released as part of a larger structure. After a player finishes the weekly episode, he’s already on battle.net, so he might as well play more of the regular Diablo 2. Heck, he might even play Starcraft while he’s there, since his friends happen to be on battle.net also. They originally came for the new episode. It’s even conceivable that the Diablo 2 side story game would be free and funded by advertising, and that its contribution to the overall increased popularity of battle.net and other Blizzard games would justify its existence. At some later time, the episodes could even be sold at retail as a collector’s edition!

The message here is that despite the resistance of the game industry to gamble on new things, episodic games just might be the exactly what the industry needs: a way to broaden the market. The mass market likes small doses of fun, and that’s what episodes offer. The details of pricing are still undecided, sure, but the underlying need is there. Finally, the ability of episodes to bring players back and to potentially play other games from the same company is not to be overlooked.