Episodic Games

[Kwanzabot]

So today one in a series of new episodic games came out, Penny Arcade: On The Rain Slick Precipice of Darkness (which, by the way, I would recommend to anyone, great fun, good RPG that challenges you without the generally terrible grinding which is used in games like FF (not necessarily bad) to stretch the game out.)

I made this thread because I personally believe something like this is the future. 6 hours of gameplay (similar to something like Heavenly Sword) for £10 ($20 as it is really priced), downloadable to your computer (and this is actually on all 'mainstream' OSs including Linux) or XBox Live. No need to fuss around with disks, just a compact gaming experience that is fun. Plus, the next one is coming out in 4 months.

We've already seen this sort of thing with Sam and Max, which I sadly haven't had time to get into yet, but will do during the summer. A few hours of gameplay for a small fee, followed by more gameplay in a couple of months for another small fee. I personally see this as the future due to the small price, the shorter development time and the fact that anybody has enough time over a week to play this game, and not get caught up in a huge backlog. Does anyone else see this sort of thing as the future?

[Kaney]

I'm not particularly against it, it obviously works well with certain types of games, but to be honest I don't think, nor want, it to ever take off as the preffered format for games. I'd rather pay in one go and get to play as much of the game as quickly or as slowly as I like, than have a game dripfed to me at additional cost. As extra content built onto a standalone game, it's a great idea and helps build longevity but something like getting a level or map at a time? Meh. Obviously there are advantages for casual gamers, or such as giving developers more time to finetune as they go along, but I don't see it becoming the 'future' of gaming.

[Cactus Drags]

Casual gamers, good, but for the epic type stuff, like your Halos, Mass Effects, Duke Nukem Forever (>_>), there's just not enough time for decent development. If all games went that way, we'd end up with a shitton of buggy as hell games that need almost as much time to create patches and the like as they do to create the next episode. Look at EA Sports and the trouble they have making anything more than a glorified roster update, and that's with a year to play with (it's also why patches and roster updates take so long, literally as soon as the present title's out, if not a little before, the next version takes priority, because they need as much time as possible).

So yeah, for XBLA-type games and casual gamers it's not a bad model, but I can't see it catching on as the norm.