Is episodic gaming a joke?

[kelbear]

Another valve half arsed attempt it seems, look at games like quake4 which support dual core, it has massive improvements over single core.

I think valve are going for a sort of 1 core being a control core which designates work to all the other cores, so with dual core it's not going to show any real improvement.

Kind of stupid if you ask me, I'd be prepared to put up with the extended development times of Ep2/TF2/portal if the multi core support was going to be worth it, but that doesn't seem true anymore.

With games like Quake4 and COD supporting dual core in mere patches and the source engine being heavily re-written you'd expect better performance from the source engine, that doesn't sound like it's true.

I remember them commenting that this technology was intended for all future Valve-produced engines, and was being incoporated into HL2 sort of like a test-run(Sort of like how Source netcode replaced HL1 netcode). Since they expect multi-core programming to be a long-term problem, they're trying to get a long-term solution in place.

Might actually turn out to be a good idea with the Intel trumpeting their race to a bajillion cores. Might turn out to be looking too far ahead, considering the slow rate of adoption among average users. Who knows.




Anyway, I'm not sure what episode 2 being pushed back says about episodic content. If Q3 07 is too long to wait to have episode 1 and 2, then the preferable solution is to wait till say, Q2 08 to play Episodes 1,2,3 together? In order to say that episode 2's deadline being pushed back shows a failure in the episodic content method, wouldn't there have to be reasoning establishing that the episodic content is the key factor causing the delay of episode all 3 episodes? Otherwise getting the full-version would just be waiting till episode 3 to buy all 3 at the same time.

It certainly isn't an outrageous theory, since they have to design 3 beginnings and 3 endings rather than just 1 of each for an expansion pack. That added dimension for content design is what might cause an overall delay in production. You still have the tradeoff time of having to retrofit previous content with newly implemented tech though, but I wouldn't think that this would take too long. (If Episode 2 features new tech, then in a full expansion pack scenario, they'd also have to go back and add it to episode 1's content as well)(Or, the Episode pack just releases without any of it).

It's still conjecture of course, but it's strange to me that episodic content is being directly blamed for delay without anyone actually talking about why it's episodic content's fault.

 

[Domingo]

I like the idea of episodic content, but so far the execution has been flawed. The episodes are short, too far apart, and expensive.
Half-Life Episode 1 is nearly 1/2 the cost of the full game (which includes the various mods)...yet it's only about 30% the length of the full game. It continues with the story nicely, BUT it ended on a cliffhanger and the next episode has been delayed to the point that it better be AMAZING to avoid letting people down.
On paper I'd like to see episodic games start at $35 for the "full game" (make it about 2/3 the length of HL2, but with no extras) and the additional episodes are canned and ready to go within 3-4 months of the full game's release at $12-15 each. Each one is about 3/4 of the length of the "full game." Extras like Counter Strike and whatnot can be the cost of an expansion if not a little more or a little less depending on their size.

 

[Malygris]

It's still conjecture of course, but it's strange to me that episodic content is being directly blamed for delay without anyone actually talking about why it's episodic content's fault.

I don't think it's the content's fault, I think it's the implementation of the episodic scheme that's currently failing, largely as a result of what I see as varying interpretations of the basic concept of episodic content. For most of us, including myself, episodic content means that every (insert reasonable span of time here), we'll see a new chapter in the ongoing saga of Gordon Freeman in Half-Life 2. Valve, on the other hand, seems to view these episodes as opportunities to implement hot new technology, making each new chapter even more gee-whiz-bang than the last. Which is fine in concept, but in practice it's just begging for trouble, because new technology means new bugs, new design considerations, new game features (which may not work out in playtesting, which means they have to be stripped out, which means further delays while the rest of the game is adjusted to accommodate the deleted bits), and ultimately, new reasons for lots of delays. All of which is totally avoidable, because the new tech is completely unnecessary.

I think most of us will agree that when we want hot-shit new technology, we'll start screaming for Half-Life 3; at this point in the game, what we're after is more Half-Life 2. The failure here is not the failure of episodic content so much as it is a failure of Valve's willingness to quit screwing around and give us the game.