What Happened To Episodic Games?

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The folks at Shacknews want to know what happened to episodic games.

Since episodes were so front-loaded, it meant the first episode had to cover both the upfront rendering costs and help fund the development of future episodes. If the first episode failed to bring in enough to cover both of those aspects, the game could fizzle altogether. Sin Episodes notably suffered this fate, leaving customers who were invested in the early episodes out in the cold.
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ADD of the developing staff combined with the idea that once the first episode came out they could skeleton staff further episodes from 2nd string staff and still deliver decent content on time.
 
Telltale likes them.

The Walking Dead Season 1 & 2
A Wolf Among Us
Back to the Future

Personally I hate waiting for the next episode so I wait till they are all out.
 
:mad: thanks for reminding me there won't be a sin episode 2 ... jerks!
:p all kidding aside ... sin eps 1 wasn't bad. if they can't handle churning out fast content and added cost of marketing multiple releases in short intervals than developers should forget bout episodic gaming.
 
Yeah, like this is a hard one to figure out. Game producers know they make more money off of the DLC model. Basically the same reason so many are going with "free to play".
 
Cajunheat said:
Basically the same reason so many are going with "free to play".
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Which ends up becoming "game is crap". Valve started a lot of this crap too. Somewhere, someday, someone is going to find Gabe Newell buried under two tons of hats with a sign left by some rabid gamer reading "Ep3 is a lie!".
 
maboblivion said:
:mad: thanks for reminding me there won't be a sin episode 2 ... jerks!
:p all kidding aside ... sin eps 1 wasn't bad. if they can't handle churning out fast content and added cost of marketing multiple releases in short intervals than developers should forget bout episodic gaming.
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Yeah, I actually liked the first episode. Never got into the original game that much though. I was too into Unreal, Quake II, then System Shock 2 to notice it much, but the first of the episodes was pretty fun. Wish they had made another or two.
 
wow, been so long since I visited ShackNews. That buyout and stupid redesign didn't do them much good.

On topic: I am ok with Episodic games, but not episodic AAA games. It just doesn't work.
 
Telltale is the only one that seems to understand when making episodic games you have to get them out at least within the same YEAR.

Making an "episodic" game and taking 1-2 or even more years (I'm looking at you HL3) just does not work at all.

Telltale releases their episodes usually within 1-3 months after each other.
 
Kinsaras said:
Telltale likes them.

The Walking Dead Season 1 & 2
A Wolf Among Us
Back to the Future

Personally I hate waiting for the next episode so I wait till they are all out.
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The second season of The Walking Dead, has been a major disappointment to me, because of how short they made the episodes. So incredibly shorter than the episodes of the first season, I feel like a victim of a bait and switch. I can only imagine they've spread themselves too thin with the other games.
 
viscountalpha said:
Half life 3. The next duke nukem forever.
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Except nobody's announced HL3. It can't be considered vaporware unless someone confirms that it's in development.

Now Episode 3, on the other hand... that could be considered vaporware since it was presumed to be in development after Ep 2.
 
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