Well, I agree in many ways that episodic content can be a great way not only to deliver games but also to help evolve and finally fund future episodes.
Look at Guildwars it's actually sort of a double episodic type game. They made 3 episodes (Campaigns) (fourth and last will be Eye of the North, coming later this year) and you will find that most people have got all the campaigns/episodes. Also on top of that, guildwars is updated weekly if not more often. Most of the updates are bug-fixes but every now and then skills are balanced to make the game more fair, difficult, easy ect.
So what you end up with is a game that has big episodes released every ~6 months and is constantly monitored and updated to reflect current game play.
The reason this works for guildwars whereas people are starting to pull hair out over the HL episodes is probably also due to the amount of time that you can spend playing GW is much much longer than HL
I guess they also kind of did this for WoW, the Burning crusade is kind of an episode, it unlocks more stuff, more play time
However, the burning crusade is £15, for 1 island, and 2 more classes (and some other stuff OK) but seriously, it should be part of the monthly updates, you shouldn't have to pay for it
But as with all episodic content, the price is wrong
before the latest price reductions, HL2 was $30 and EP1 was $20 (i don't know if those price reductions are permanent)
But HL2:E1 is supposed to be an episode, why the hell is it 2/3 the price of the original HL2
It takes the piss, this isn't right, Episodes shouldn't take too long to develop, valve already made the source engine, so an episode is really just a map pack
But its not just valve and blizzard, EA are probably the worst at it, i mean look at the BF2 expansions, you had euro forces, which was just a map pack charged at an upgrade price, and BF2142 which was just a BF2 mod, charged at full price
I think "episodic content" is just the latest buzzword for an addon pack/upgrade to a game, and as history has shown so far, they just aren't that fantastic, but at least when addon's were first being made they actually added nicely to the game, at a reasonable (ish) price
some addons have been made well in the past, i have a shelf of old games, some with upgrades that were actually good fun, but developers are getting greedy these days
p.s. while I'm ranting away
@ blizzard, you charge what, £2 a week (per person) to play WoW, then you want £15 for your first expansion, plus your £2 a week, and now they are apparently planning another expansion, probably for another £15
So now you payed £30 for the original, £30 in expansions, not even including the £xxx you had to spend on subscriptions to just play the game
the only game i thought this worked well for was asheron's call 2 (while owned by MS) where you payed £2 a week (or whatever) but all the updates were free, there were weekly content additions, so there was always something new and fun to do
Just to close a topic of conversation: Resident Evil amd similarly genred games are action-adventure games, a hybrid between an action game and an adventure game, not a pure adventure game by anymeans.
On topic though: Epsidic content could work well, it works fine with television and written word, why not games? But, with television episodes, they are usually finished before the first one even aires, so there's no delay in getting them out. With gaming episodes, developers appear to be making one, releasing it, then making another, and given the time span of modern AAA title development, that's going to be bloody ages. The best analogy I think is with Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings. Can you imagine if they'd made Fellowship of the Ring, released it, seen it was succesful, and then gone "right. We should probably think about making the second". It would have taken absolutely ages, and by the time it came out everyone would have been annoyed and critical, ala Half-Life Epsiode 2. Any game with a long development time just can't be done like that. I suppose if you've completed the first half, but the second half is only 90% done, you could release two episodes, but even that is rather risky. I think epsiodic content will only ever work for games that have a small development time, such as an adventure game as Joe points out, that requires no technological improvements between episodes, just more dialogue.
I certainly don't think we've seen what episodic content has to offer in the long run, but whether it actually becomes a viable solution for the developer and the consumer remains to be seen.
Originally Posted by Bauul I think epsiodic content will only ever work for games that have a small development time, such as an adventure game as Joe points out, that requires no technological improvements between episodes, just more dialogue.
Half life 2 doesn't need technological improvements between episodes, or at least not anything major
what was the biggest improvement in Episode 1, probably the core, maybe HDR (but it didn't require that for a release), but if that delayed the game by months, its pretty disappointing
What i would hope they do is have 1 team working on the episodes, hopefully able to churn them out pretty fast, and another team updating and fixing the source engine, that should be possible, they may be able to get some things done in the next version of the engine for the next episode, but ATM i don't understand what takes them so long
But i think your right, they should have the series ready (ish) before releasing it, like on TV, or at least they could write the whole story first, so they only need to make the games before releasing them
Plus if they had all the story done, if they are held up, they can start work on another part of another episode until they can continue with the current episode
From what I've seen, the problem with the HL2 series is that they keep monkying around with the engine. It seems to me that the engine team and the game teams should be independent of eachother. The engine should remain static between major releases (IE, no changes before HL3). It seems like the designers are stuck waiting for the engine guys to finish before they can finalize the episode and the engine crew is being pressured to get it out the door before it's rerally ready. We don't expect a massive leap in graphics in each episode, just more gameplay on a regular basis.
Originally Posted by completemadness Half life 2 doesn't need technological improvements between episodes, or at least not anything major
what was the biggest improvement in Episode 1, probably the core, maybe HDR (but it didn't require that for a release), but if that delayed the game by months, its pretty disappointing
What i would hope they do is have 1 team working on the episodes, hopefully able to churn them out pretty fast, and another team updating and fixing the source engine, that should be possible, they may be able to get some things done in the next version of the engine for the next episode, but ATM i don't understand what takes them so long
But i think your right, they should have the series ready (ish) before releasing it, like on TV, or at least they could write the whole story first, so they only need to make the games before releasing them
Plus if they had all the story done, if they are held up, they can start work on another part of another episode until they can continue with the current episode
The episodes do undergo massive technological changes, it's something they've deliberately done; giving each ne episode a new focus technologically, and it's been their downfall. In Ep 1 we had HDR, NPC interactions and followings and facial animation showcased by Alyx's continued prescene. In Ep 2 we'll see wide-open spaces and cinematic physics.
There were advances in HL2 EP2? I didn't really spot anything major. Alyx's facial expressions looked a bit more realistic but other than that it didn't feel like much had been done to the engine. The car handling physics were still pants and the guns were all the same.
It was all about the cinematic physics (watch the builds explode near the end) and the wide open spaces. Previously Source could never handle levels of that size and with that many enemies.
Originally Posted by CardJoe It was all about the cinematic physics (watch the builds explode near the end) and the wide open spaces. Previously Source could never handle levels of that size and with that many enemies.
exactly
If you explore the final map, its absolutely massive, and you don't have to reload once during it, and did i mention its massive?
Well no - it's not what i'd call massive. It's still pretty fenced in and with plenty of obsructions and rocks to hide the pop-up, but it is much bigger than previously possible with Source. Morrowind, Oblivion, QW:ET - those are games with massive maps.
Originally Posted by CardJoe Well no - it's not what i'd call massive. It's still pretty fenced in and with plenty of obsructions and rocks to hide the pop-up, but it is much bigger than previously possible with Source. Morrowind, Oblivion, QW:ET - those are games with massive maps.
In terms of any source map, its massive
Its like bigger city 17 (well .... hard to compare as c17 has height too)
Yeah it does have rocks and stuff so it doesn't have to render the whole map, but the map is still very big
Oblivion has draw distance and stuff, whereas source renders everything
City 17 didn't have much height - it had an enlarged skybox with a touch of trickery. Source has a limited draw distance too and pop-up is noticeable in some ares. Just before you fight the fight the antlion guardian you can see some draw distance limitations, which is why the game uses rocks and fog to disguise them. It's not a bad thing at all and its great Valve are expanding the engine like this (though I wish these changes would become backwards compatible with other steam games), but it is there as a limitation to be understood.
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Look at Guildwars it's actually sort of a double episodic type game. They made 3 episodes (Campaigns) (fourth and last will be Eye of the North, coming later this year) and you will find that most people have got all the campaigns/episodes. Also on top of that, guildwars is updated weekly if not more often. Most of the updates are bug-fixes but every now and then skills are balanced to make the game more fair, difficult, easy ect.
So what you end up with is a game that has big episodes released every ~6 months and is constantly monitored and updated to reflect current game play.
The reason this works for guildwars whereas people are starting to pull hair out over the HL episodes is probably also due to the amount of time that you can spend playing GW is much much longer than HL
However, the burning crusade is £15, for 1 island, and 2 more classes (and some other stuff OK) but seriously, it should be part of the monthly updates, you shouldn't have to pay for it
But as with all episodic content, the price is wrong
before the latest price reductions, HL2 was $30 and EP1 was $20 (i don't know if those price reductions are permanent)
But HL2:E1 is supposed to be an episode, why the hell is it 2/3 the price of the original HL2
It takes the piss, this isn't right, Episodes shouldn't take too long to develop, valve already made the source engine, so an episode is really just a map pack
But its not just valve and blizzard, EA are probably the worst at it, i mean look at the BF2 expansions, you had euro forces, which was just a map pack charged at an upgrade price, and BF2142 which was just a BF2 mod, charged at full price
I think "episodic content" is just the latest buzzword for an addon pack/upgrade to a game, and as history has shown so far, they just aren't that fantastic, but at least when addon's were first being made they actually added nicely to the game, at a reasonable (ish) price
some addons have been made well in the past, i have a shelf of old games, some with upgrades that were actually good fun, but developers are getting greedy these days
p.s. while I'm ranting away
@ blizzard, you charge what, £2 a week (per person) to play WoW, then you want £15 for your first expansion, plus your £2 a week, and now they are apparently planning another expansion, probably for another £15
So now you payed £30 for the original, £30 in expansions, not even including the £xxx you had to spend on subscriptions to just play the game
the only game i thought this worked well for was asheron's call 2 (while owned by MS) where you payed £2 a week (or whatever) but all the updates were free, there were weekly content additions, so there was always something new and fun to do
On topic though: Epsidic content could work well, it works fine with television and written word, why not games? But, with television episodes, they are usually finished before the first one even aires, so there's no delay in getting them out. With gaming episodes, developers appear to be making one, releasing it, then making another, and given the time span of modern AAA title development, that's going to be bloody ages. The best analogy I think is with Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings. Can you imagine if they'd made Fellowship of the Ring, released it, seen it was succesful, and then gone "right. We should probably think about making the second". It would have taken absolutely ages, and by the time it came out everyone would have been annoyed and critical, ala Half-Life Epsiode 2. Any game with a long development time just can't be done like that. I suppose if you've completed the first half, but the second half is only 90% done, you could release two episodes, but even that is rather risky. I think epsiodic content will only ever work for games that have a small development time, such as an adventure game as Joe points out, that requires no technological improvements between episodes, just more dialogue.
I certainly don't think we've seen what episodic content has to offer in the long run, but whether it actually becomes a viable solution for the developer and the consumer remains to be seen.
what was the biggest improvement in Episode 1, probably the core, maybe HDR (but it didn't require that for a release), but if that delayed the game by months, its pretty disappointing
What i would hope they do is have 1 team working on the episodes, hopefully able to churn them out pretty fast, and another team updating and fixing the source engine, that should be possible, they may be able to get some things done in the next version of the engine for the next episode, but ATM i don't understand what takes them so long
But i think your right, they should have the series ready (ish) before releasing it, like on TV, or at least they could write the whole story first, so they only need to make the games before releasing them
Plus if they had all the story done, if they are held up, they can start work on another part of another episode until they can continue with the current episode
The episodes do undergo massive technological changes, it's something they've deliberately done; giving each ne episode a new focus technologically, and it's been their downfall. In Ep 1 we had HDR, NPC interactions and followings and facial animation showcased by Alyx's continued prescene. In Ep 2 we'll see wide-open spaces and cinematic physics.
Joe u playing any FPS atm? It be fun to give you a game or two!
gameplay was crap
the rest was more than amazing
If you explore the final map, its absolutely massive, and you don't have to reload once during it, and did i mention its massive?
Its like bigger city 17 (well .... hard to compare as c17 has height too)
Yeah it does have rocks and stuff so it doesn't have to render the whole map, but the map is still very big
Oblivion has draw distance and stuff, whereas source renders everything