Well if you want to do it like tv then you also have to settle for lesser production values like tv does.



Valve tried to do episodes. But I think development cycles for AAA games are too long.



And the other problem is games also have to satisfy with gameplay not just story arc so you have to successfully satisfy 2 distinct beasts all the time. If you don't have the gameplay then why make a game?



Remember CoD is highly successful because of multiplayer which has no story.



It might make more sense to leverage the world and assets and create separately packaged narrative content.

Much like novels are created around these worlds and sold to fans.



Last the mentality to treat games as movies or tv seems well intentioned but misguided.

Episodic content is a perfectly viable model, especially considering the declining free time of some of us aging gamers. Just because we sometimes can't fully visualize a proposed idea doesn't mean it isn't a good one. And the more naysayers you have beating said idea down the more powerful the impact when someone finally implements it successfully!

I would tell him welcome to the club! I've been saying this for years, makes perferct for iOS games too!

So rather than a complete batman i'd start the game go to jail and escape then insert coin to play further no thanks i already have enough trouble just playing dual analog games with my own custom scheme and wonder if digital content i bought/full digital games will disappear upon 720 and ps4's release to ever want this to happen.



Now if someone paid $10-30 and the rest was dlc fine for them but keep the standard full game avaible for $59 i never want to see standard games going for $79++ up to $149



I can see if there were 2 sku's at retail mass confusion and people who couldn't or wouldn't download that much content get the $30 game.



I'd rather see a netflix or hulu plus streaming option to play games but the internet must be blazingly fast,everyone must have it and it must be super cheap before purely digital game streams are reality.

Take quest for booty and pit it against a real ratchet disc and things get crunched so if we're talking sonic 4 ep 1,2 and onthen release the whole thing on a disc that could work but like i said insert coin to play after a short time starting with a disc would confuse many and leave a bad taste in return.

Just to emphasize Bob's point: CALL OF DUTY MP HAS NO STORY, and the MP is what 99% people buy the game for.



Story based games usually have a bad story and bad gameplay, and they lack replay value. I wish him luck in trying to create episodic game content that will be compelling enough to bring people back.

I don't like the idea of imposing "compulsion loops" into your stories just to make money. That's kind of crappy approach.

i think most gamers would be happy with shorter, cheaper games with AAA production values. in my dream world thats what the next gen would be. episodic content could be one way to do it. 100 hour slogs will always have an audience, but most gamers dont have time for that anymore, especially as they get older.

I don't think TV is truly episodic... I'm beginning to think the default unit for television is a single season, episodes being a fraction thereof. That's how they are sold, after all. Could be interesting, done that way.

I don't see it working all too well, but it'd be interesting to watch how publishers and studios try to pull it off.



I already game in an episodic manner anyway, each night or so is another chunk of a whole story; like watching a movie on TV or watching the DVD boxset of a series one episode per night. The difference being that I choose where to end each gaming session, I can choose to play through like a complete movie, and the learning curve for the gameplay mechanics is all taken care of in the first episode. Which, if one were to truly copy the format of TV (or comic books for that matter), means that without a simple enough control scheme or reward system players would have to start at episode 1 to really enjoy a series; which would cause problems for long running series.



One would really have to rework how a game's narrative and controls are conveyed to a player to have episodic games work in this model.

I agree that the episodic format is great, and it's definitely nice to have new content released regularly that isn't just buying a new weapon, or new skin for your characters. Episodic games have already been around for a while though no?



In fact, doesn't EA already have a few of it's own successful episodic games such as Surviving High School and Cause of Death? Those have both been out for a while and are doing pretty well with that format I imagine.

the problem is if the game is episodic but the first installment is not successful we will never see even the crest of the story arc. there have been many games that were designed to continue even past the standard trilogy but they never got past the first episode due to "poor sales."



the tv analogy is okay if the following game episodes come in a similar timely fashion. hard to keep a story flowing when the chapters come 12 months apart.



i would love to see this applied to adventure gaming, a genre i see this best suited for and one that i hope makes a dent in the fps dominant market.

Isn't this about 10 years behind the times? Valve proved it doesn't work. For high-quality interactive single-player games, making an "episode" takes as long as making a game.

I suspect that TJ Galda is right, and episodic content is the future... at least from EA.



All the points that Galda makes are good ones. But the success and difficulties of this model will be driven by things that he doesn't mention.



First is that episodic storytelling is strongly character-driven. It's nice to have an amazing world (Skyrim), but the world of an episodic story is only there to support putting characters into difficult situations from which story emerges. In TV, that means hiring actors that people like to watch. Games can do that to some extent, with some voice actors becoming fairly well-known: Ellen McLain, Jennifer Hale, Nolan North. But actors in hit TV shows can command millions of dollars -- are the funders of games ready to shell out that kind of cash?



Which brings me to my second point, which is that an EA guy is talking about this model not just because some gamers might like it, but because it's good for EA. EA knows that gamers only have so much money -- if they can get you hooked on playing episodes of one of their games, that's a stable revenue source almost as good as subscriptions to a MMORPG. Making content episodic is essentially a customer-control tactic. (That sounds bad, but it's basically what every large publisher wants. One-shot hits are too rare and infrequent; long-term success comes from repeat business.)



Furthermore, EA has BioWare and its track record of making character-driven content, and other publishers don't. So making game content episodic leverages one of EA's strategic assets.



If I were EA, I'd be going this route, too. Whether it works or not will be up to gamers, but as a strategic move, it's a reasonable gamble.

All games that cant be completed in one session are essentially episodic.



Also:



Professional preliterate storytellers had a certain amount of plasticity in their art. They could tell the same story in 5 min or 3 days.

Consumers lose interest when they have to wait x amount of time and spend x amount of money for the next episode. It's a simple formula with no success as of yet in video games. I can only think of one company that came close. Tell Tale.