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Episodic
Games
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.
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| No
one would buy episode 2 of Total Annihilation: Kingdoms.
Tricking people into buying the whole thing was the best bet
for this game. |
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.
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| You
Don't Know Jack, the ultimate episodic, mass market 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.
Talk
back! Discuss this article in the forums.
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| "Give
me a weekly game. I guarantee people would buy it every week!" |
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| "If
I had an episodic game, Nintendo could suck people into Mario
World afterwards. He could use my help to become popular." |
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