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SiN episodes already cancelled
Author: Brett ThomasPublished: 20th December 2006
The problems with Episodic content come to light - SIN has been cancelled.
It appears that developer Ritual is having some issues. Staff departures have crippled the studio's current plans, and caused it to cancel the series. The recent leaving of the Studio Director has been the final straw in a series of turnovers including SiN's project manager and QA lead. All in all, the changes have amounted to the end of the line for SiN, killing the first ever true episodic installment video game.
Now, the loss of SiN is not exactly going to throw a shroud of mourning over the entire video game industry. However, it does speak about the perils of episodic content. Those interested in pushing through the game for some level of story arc resolution are now going to be left forever wondering about the fate of the busty bad girl whom they were introduced to for the low price of $20.
Developer issues are far from unheard of, so the cancellation of SiN episodes 2-9 raises an important question: Would you buy a game that was only 11% done for 40% of the price, knowing that it would never be finished?
Tell us your thoughts on the demise of SiN and the future of episodic content in general in our forums.
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Comments (30)
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I paid into the franchise to start on these "9 Episodes" and now they shitcan it after one? That's total ********. Anybody up for petitioning for a refund on Ep 1?
Or not play the game at all.
Remember, if Sin wasn't episodic, then these same problems would have meant the cancellation of the full game, and we would have seen nothing.
The episodic model is *only* interesting if it helps get games made that otherwise wouldn't.
Obviously it still couldn't help ritual.
Aggies
Next for the chop: Half life episodes.
Good job I didn't invest in it then.
to hell with episodic content.....half-life ep 2 is taking sooo long that I would rather them just put more effort to HL3 than drag out this HL2.1
Great idea, poorly managed all around.
Its not really valve though is it. Its ritual who have given up. And hopefully hl episodes will survive long enough to set up hl3
Unfortunately, this was all-too-well written on the wall. Figure that by the time this completed, if it was $20 per ep, that's $180 on one game that I had to wait forever to get to the conclusion of. Nah, I'll buy my full game, thanks. :)
Just wait until EA really gets their heads around how to exploit episodic content...now that they see you can make money and then collapse a project before it goes into the red...
No, it's also on the shelves as well: http://shop.gameplay.co.uk/webstore/productpage.asp?productcode=RM02778&title=sin_episode_1_-_emergence_(dvd_rom)
Valve had little to do with Sin episodes, and I fail to see how this will have any bearing on the half life episodes. This could have happened to ritual regardless of how they chose to present thier game.
Fairy nuff. But still, this is oh-so-a-typical of what I imagined Episodic content to be: a nickel and diming effort that means they can give up whenever they feel like and still make some cash.
SiN has non of the above.
Don't get me wrong, I do understand your point of view. Just in this case I think you were highlighting this as a failure of the entire episodic model when IMO, it's not.
It's such a shame, because I really wanted to see what became of all the data they collected from the first episode - I thought it was a very clever idea. For example, collect data on what people tried to use, or spent a long time looking at. In theory, they could then look at that data and try to figure out why lots of players were trying to use said item, and make it do something - A cool example of a game quickly morphing to a customers demands, something that'd only be possible with the episodic model.
Funnily enough, I was just the other day listening to 3dRealms' CEO Scott Miller talking about why episodic content is doomed to fail in the long run.
Not as good as Episode 1 though.
Also, although I really liked HL2: Ep 1, it just was a bit forgettable, it was like HL2 and Ep1 had merged together and I actually forgot for a bit that they made it.
I think with episodic content, you really need to churn them out very quickly for it to work. I wouldn't have minded so much if they could've churned out a good episode after a couple of months, but if you have to wait longer than that between episodes then you should just make it into a whole game and be done with it.