BioWare Goes Episodic With New Games

The word from the site Computer and Videogames is that BioWare will be offering episodic content for all of its upcoming games. This includes Mass Effect, Dragon Age, and Jade Empire: Special Edition. CEO Ray Muzyka, in an interview with CVG, talks about this and many other elements of the coming year in PC gaming. From the article: "The videogame market is very cyclical and PC and console gaming have an uneasy alliance - as new console systems are released, early adopter fans move over to check those games out and as PC systems reach and surpass console systems at the end of a console life cycle, a good number of those early adopter fans move back over to PC gaming. Console gaming is huge of course, especially when you add in hardware sales, but it's hard to quantify the enormous impact of online gaming on the overall PC market - retail sales just don't capture the revenues from the increasingly successful PC MMOs as well as digital distribution and episodic gaming (which are both gaining strength year after year)."

Who else dislikes episodic gaming?

[RichPowers]

I have no problem waiting a few extra months, even a year, and paying more upfront for a lengthier, complete game. Besides, I don't like games that intentionally leave you hanging so you'll buy the imminent next episode. Before this episodic content craze, games would at least offer some degree of conclusion because the next installment would be a few years away.

Maybe I'm being too cynical, but why else would publishers push for episodic gaming if not for more profit? Selling less content for more money is all this is about.

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[le0p]

Well, more profit may be their motivation but if it prevents rushing incomplete games to market, I'm all for it. I'd rather wait and pay to play three complete episodes than get one hacked up incomplete game that has an ending tacked on because they ran out of time.

Me too post

[Wilson_6500]

Episodic gaming has been around since the Doom days. Back then, though, they called it "shareware." Of course, in those days gaming wasn't quite as "established" as it is today, which is why you got four "episodes" of Doom at once instead of paying for each one at a time.

I was really hoping that the failure of Sin would've quietly killed this change, but it'll probably blow over in a few years. If I wanted thirty-minute bites of entertainment interspersed with twelve-minute bouts of advertisement (a diff

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[KDR_11k]

Many games did sell their episodes individually (sometimes offering a discount if you buy a bundle of them), the difference back then was that we didn't have to wait a year between each episode as the subsequent episodes were often complete and available by the time the first one shipped on shareware disks.

Re:Who else dislikes episodic gaming?

[nEoN nOoDlE]

I'm for episodic games. It benefits indie game developers because they only have to create most of the assets once, and then just create multiple stories using the same assets instead of having to recreate the wheel every time at great cost. Another benefit is that the episodic games are more story driven, since there's no reason to release another "episode" of the same multi-player frag-fest, so episodic games are making way for the resurrection of the adventure game genre. Yet another benefit is that I don't really have time to go through a 40 or 50 hour game anymore. I'd much rather sit down for an hour or 2 of gaming, complete the game and wait for another episode instead of playing for 4 hours, not getting far because the developers felt they needed to beef up the game length with an impossibly hard section, and then give up. I've played just the beginning of so many games that I've lost count. It might make more money for the developer in the long run, but it will save me money because I sometimes spend 50 or 60 bucks on a game that I only play for 3 or 4 hours anyway. Now I can spend 20 bucks on a game and at least get the satisfaction of finishing it. 90 percent of games are crap anyway. With episodic games, if I don't like the first episode, I could give up on the series without losing too much money, so developers will have to work harder on the subsequent episodes to keep gamer interest. Come to think of it, I can't really think of anything negative about episodic games. If the games are good, I'd gladly give the developers more money to continue playing it. If not, then I'm losing less money than I would had I bought a full-length crappy game.

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[grumbel]

The problem with episodic gaming these days is simply that it is done totally wrong. Episodic gaming should offer two main advantages: frequent releases and a cheap price per episode. What many companies however do is: high price with very infrequent releases, not only are the episodes them self expensive, you also often need to buy the base game at a full price. Having lackluster cliffhanger endings contributes of course a lot to the frustration, or is anybody here that was happy with the ending of Half Li

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[KDR_11k]

you also often need to buy the base game at a full price.

I haven't heard of one episodic series doing that, what are you referring to? HL2 Ep1 has a big sign on it saying "does not require Half-Life 2".

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[grumbel]

### I haven't heard of one episodic series doing that, what are you referring to? HL2 Ep1 has a big sign on it saying "does not require Half-Life 2".

None specific, the point is simply that episodic gaming should start with an episode, not with a full price game. While you might not need Half Life 2 in a technical sense to play Episode 1, Ep1 builds on top of the full price game (story, characters, weapons, etc.) and isn't much of a self standing story by itself. Even Half Life 2 itself isn't exactly a self

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[Babbster]

I actually think that the "full" full-price game followed by subsequent episodes is probably the right way to go - maybe not for consumers, but for the industry as a whole.

The up-front investment in developing a new game is huge. Developers have to build (or build upon) a graphics engine for the game, writers and artists have to create a world and a story and, at the most fundamental level, hardware and software have to be purchased in order to do all the creation. All of those costs need to be recouped

Not me

[mobby_6kl]

Wait an extra month or two? Sure, but it'll usually be closer to your 'year' estimate. Waiting that long just won't be worth it if you can still blow through the whole game in a day. Valve screwed up, IMO, because it takes them too long to release the next episode. Sam and Max, on the other hand, managed to keep the time between the first and second episodes reasonably short, and the third one should be done even faster.

To answer your final question, the episodic format is good for the developer/publisher b

Episodic games can mean better games.

[ChaosDiscord]

The way the industry works now, almost no developer can afford to self-fund a "full-size" game. For most of those who can, it's an all-or-nothing bet; if the game tanks (And many great games regrettably do), the developer goes out of business. So for the overwhelming majority of developers, to do a full game it means getting a publisher to fund development. Publishers are understandably cautious about funding more risky (but potentially great) games. As a result you tend to see lots of knock offs, sequels, and crappy movie licenses. Innovation is stifled. Add on that most developers exist only so long as they keep getting publishers to fund them.

One way to escape this is to simply develop smaller games. That's great if you like that sort of game, but not so good if you really want to develop a sprawling RPG, a large FPS, just about any adventure game, or something similar.

Episodic content is potentially a way forward. These days the overwhelming expense in a large game is the content, not the programming. A first episode that represents, say, 20% of a game may only need 40% of the content. (Even better, episode two probably only needs 15% more content to generate the next 20% of the game, assuming you're releasing episodes quickly enough that you don't need to update your engine or art.) It's a much lower risk. More developers can afford to self-fund in this model. More risky ideas can be tried. I'm quite confident that Bone and Sam & Max [telltalegames.com] weren't going to be funded by a major publisher as full games. As the developer typically self-publishes, if the game is a success the developer can bank it to support future development, possibly even more traditional big-single-release games.

Episodic content is problematic. As a customer you're left hanging mid-story. (Did we say you'd be playing Episode Two within six months of episode one? [1up.com] Did you purchase Episode One on that basis? Hope you don't mind waiting six more. [gameinformer.com]) If the developer goes bankrupt or cancels an unprofitable line you may never see the conclusion. (Sucks to be you, Sin Episodes fans. Of course, you can suffer that even in "full" game releases. [highprogrammer.com]) While episodic content is almost exclusively sold online, reducing overhead and costs, you pay what overhead there is once per episode, driving costs up. I'm not a fan of episodic content for these reasons. But I believe at least some developers are embracing episodic content as a way to escape extremely cautious publishers.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

In other words...

[MaineCoon]

Translation:

We need to ship this game ASAP, but we don't have enough content for the game. Therefore, we are going to ship what we have now, call it "episodic" so you don't feel quite so ripped off, and if it sells well enough we'll release the content we had originally promised, for a fee we feel is reasonable, and thereby hopefully get even more money from you than we could have otherwise.

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[AbraCadaver]

Or how about companies that hype a sequel (which is extremely different from an episode), not even tell players that it's going to be episodic, leave off the second half of the game because of time constraints, and then let them realize there's going to be another "episode". Yes, as tired as it seems, I'm still bitter about Halo 2.

If you don't like this kind of crap, vote with your dollars, and don't buy the next one. I know the developers work their asses off under artificial time constraints induced by ma

Episodic Content

[HappySqurriel]

Personally, I see that there are two possible ways companies can produce episodic content; a company can build a complete game and then add expansions for it at a miminal cost or a company can charge you multiple times for the same ammount of content you'd originally get in a game.

Burning Crusade and The Sims expansions represent a "good form" of episodic content because the games came complete and the content that is added seems (mostly) worthwhile to the target audience. On the other hand charging for horse armor or a 5 minute quest is shameful ...

MMOs shouldn't have expansions

[Wilson_6500]

Burning Crusade is a bad example of an expansion pack. You pay that monthy fee partially because you expect new content to be delivered without your having to fork over _even more_ money. The whole draw of MMOs, I always thought, was that your continuing investment paid for continuing support and improvement of the game.

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[Valharick]

New content is added without having been charge more than the fee. See Battlegrounds or Zul'Gurub for instance. Yes, I'm a part-time WoW player :)

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[wuie]

There's a ton of stuff that Blizzard implemented in Vanilla WoW without requiring people to buy an expansion pack. You can see them here [worldofwarcraft.com], but what follows is a small summary of patch content:

- Maraudon (Dungeon)
- Dire Maul (Dungeon)
- Outdoor Raid Encounters
- PvP Honor System/Battlegrounds
- Blackwing Lair (40 man raid)
- Zul'Gurub (20 man raid)
- Ahn'Qiraj (20 and 40 man raids)
- Naxxramas (40 man raid)

Each of these new boosts added new armor sets, trinkets, items, etc.

Note that this isn't an e

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[aztektum]

It's always so nice to find someone else who shares my viewpoint. There is no way Burning Crusade cost more than what WoW makes a month just from the US player base (14.99 x ~2.5 million = ~37,000,000/mo). Throw in the varying fee's from around the world that makes up the rest of the 8 billion subscribers (haven't kept up with what regions pays how much) and you have a HUGE monthly cash flow coming in. The 39.99 price tag is nothing but guys in Versace suits hoping for a huge bonus so they can afford to pu

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[Bieeanda]

Expansion packs have been a part of MMOs virtually since the beginning. I'm not sure if Meridian 59 had any, but I know that Ultima Online and the original Everquest did. The thing is, MMO expansions tend to be both fucking big, and the sort of thing that doesn't really lend itself to gradual release-- Burning Crusade came on four CDs, two new races (with a couple of armloads of new quests related to each) and a continent's worth of new endgame content.

It's utterly infeasible to release that much data as

My only real complaint with episodic gaming...

[bealzabobs_youruncle]

is when a company like Valve takes so long to relase each episode. I would have been perfecly happy with the Source engine as is if that meant I could be playing EP2 now instead of June.

Huzzah

[Itchyeyes]

Sounds good to me. Bioware makes excellent games, but they're often few and far between and very long when they do come. If ever there was a company who's games were ripe for an episodic model, I would say it's Bioware.

I don't want to pay for it

[damien_kane]

If you're going try to 'sell' me 1/3 the game (or less), knowing fully that you're not providing a complete game, then I'm going to try to 'ignore' you.

Honestly, though, it would be nice if they'd go back to the distribution model used back in the days of disks, i.e. I can download (or buy for the cost of the media+distribution/shipping) episode 1 of the game, and later episodes are what will cost me.
In that respect, episode 1 should only cost me at most $5.00, be freely available online, and be fully playable with all features (i.e. not crippleware).
Episode 2-n I'd pay for, if I liked episode 1.

You want to lessen* the amount of piracy online? Adopt the above methods.

* You'll never get rid of piracy altogether, but many pirate just to try the game out in a fully-playable way then decide if we want to buy or not

These 'Tech Demos' and 30-second trailers, while nice and all, offer none of the 'playtesting' that Wolf3d, Doom, the Commander Keen games, etc provided freely in their shareware versions.

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[kalirion]

These 'Tech Demos' and 30-second trailers, while nice and all, offer none of the 'playtesting' that Wolf3d, Doom, the Commander Keen games, etc provided freely in their shareware versions.

Ahhh, shareware, those were the days! Blood and Shadow Warrior are the last games I recall to provide full shareware versions, and Daggerfall even gave you a whole island to play with! Ah well....

Now I like the business model used with those arcade/puzzle games, like the ones from PopCap or published by Reflexive. They

Good

[Nightspirit]

How many of us have time for 60 hour plus games anymore? I sure as hell don't. I'd be perfectly happy spending $30 for a 20 hour game that I'll actually at least somewhat finish than $60 for a 60 hour game, for which I'll never explore 50-70% of the content.

The newest zelda and final fantasy are awesome, but I had to put them down because I can't invest 60 hours into a game anymore. I much prefer a game like oblivion, where you can finish the main quest in 10 hours and then the rest is pretty much optional.

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[Liselle]

How many of us have time for 60 hour plus games anymore? I sure as hell don't. I'd be perfectly happy spending $30 for a 20 hour game that I'll actually at least somewhat finish than $60 for a 60 hour game, for which I'll never explore 50-70% of the content.

Sounds like you have an attention span problem, not a time problem. One sixty-hour game should theoretically take just as long to complete as two thirty-hour games. Who cares if takes you twice as long to complete a single game? Consider it getting y

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[grumbel]

### One sixty-hour game should theoretically take just as long to complete as two thirty-hour games.

Wrong. The problem is that a game requires you to learn its rules, it button combinations, its story, its items and all that stuff, all that takes time, plenty of time. The problem however is that you will forget many of those stuff again after a while, not completly but quite a bit of it. Especially with Zelda this is a *huge* problem, since that games provides no quest log whatsoever, if you ever forget how

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[Venerable Vegetable]

I think you make a good point about the grind, but that's bad game design and not necesarily connected to game length.

However, if you forget parts of the game, I don't think you should blame the game for that. If it takes extra long because you have to do things twice because you forgot, maybe you should take some notes? Personally, I don't even like it when there are too many logs, checklists and minimaps. Lowers the immersion.

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[grumbel]

### However, if you forget parts of the game, I don't think you should blame the game for that.

Why not? There are dozens of games out there which make getting back into it very easy by providing proper hints and some other that totally fail to provide any hint at all. For example why can't I get help about an item in a Zelda game when I need it? Why do they explain me only exactly once how to use an item and never again? Wouldn't it be far more immersive when I would only get the help when I actual need it

Hey, Listen!

[KDR_11k]

These days all Zelda games give you a helper character to talk to if you forgot where you had to go. Usually the important words are even highlighted.

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[grumbel]

### These days all Zelda games give you a helper character to talk to if you forgot where you had to go. Usually the important words are even highlighted.

The helper character is pretty much worthless when you hadn't played the game for longer periods of time, since it only gives you a single hint, you can't talk to him about specific subject, you can't ask him about the location of his 'highlighted word', about how to use an item or whatever, it gives you a single hint and nothing more. More often then not

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[Supurcell]

Are you saying that you won't live long enough to invest 60 hours into a game? What's stopping you from playing it a little bit at a time? How is spending 60 hours in one game different from spending 60 hours spread out over three games? It shouldn't matter as long as you're having fun.

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[Nightspirit]

Thats great if you want to play 1-2 games per year. 3-4 great games have come just out within the past couple months (zelda, wario ware, final fantasy, neverwinter nights 2 [well, at least I would argue it is great], etc). Not only that but how many great games are coming out within the next year? At least 5 for the Wii, 5 for the 360 and 5 for the PC.

If each of these were 60 hour games (granted not all or even most are going to be this long) it would be a full time job just getting through them. Not only t

Anymore?

[Venerable Vegetable]

A lot of people probably can still spend 60 hours in a game. For example the people who are in the same situation now as you used to be when you had that time?

For me, sometimes these 60 hours are spread over three months, and sometimes I play 3 days in a row with hardly any sleep.

Helps me hold off on buying them

[kevintron]

With definite limits on my disposable income, I have to grab whatever sorting mechanisms I can find to help me avoid the temptation to buy brand new $60 games. "Episodic" games help me do exactly that. No matter how interesting the game, the episodic publishing model tells me to wait until I can buy at least a whole "season" (to extend the TV metaphor a bit more) at one time. I may not save a whole lot of money if episodic games never develop the equivalent of the $5-$10 software bargain bin, but my approac

Serialized games could be a positive thing...

[meme lies]

I think episodic content could be a good thing, particularly in a story-based RPG.

Think of it as the difference between a great television show or an epic movie. In a movie everything has to be "big." You basically have half of the first act for exposition before the main plot unfolds. And the story itself must be of epic proportions, even world-shattering (certainly character changing.) Put simply a movie is almost always about the most important thing that ever happened to this set of characters and t

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[GodInHell]

Brilliant!!

And of course there's also the gobs and gobs of cash to be made :).

-GiH

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[Rycross]

It could also be a viable way for game makers to make money without having to rely on copyright.

Put out the first episode free, and give players the option to shoot you some money. If you get enough income, make episode 2 and repeat the process.

It might be a way to create a single player GPLed game.

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[KDR_11k]

One difference here is that while a series has a longer combined running time than a movie, an episodic game does not get more time than a full game.

Cost analysis....

[posterlogo]

A nice game -- typically $50. Same game serialized into three episodes of $20 each = $60. I guess it works for them from a business point of view. Seems like a fleecing of the customer to me, though.

Evolution of NWN Premium Modules

[Mark Maughan]

I assume this is the natural extension of the NWN premium modules. With the exception of Infinite Dungeons (my god was that horrible), they were a good deal at about $5 for a quality adventure. But the problem I found was that most of them opened up a great story and never finished it. Hopefully they won't repeat that aspect.

For NWN, this was a great way to make money that funded more development on NWN (the game has gotten over 60 patches). Which was great for NWN, with it's active user-developer community that's created many good adventures and persistent worlds. But for other games that don't come with a toolset, I don't think it's as good of an investment.

What ever they do, I hope Bioware soon replicates the NWN model. At the moment, I'm not so sure that Obsidian will be able to stay on the ball with NWN2.

You've never heard of Atari then...

[antirelic]

Now that NWN2 is under the Atari/Infogrames umbrella, you can kiss the future of NWN2 good bye. I love the NWN2 Alpha version I bought for $59, hopefully the beta wont be sold as an expansion, and oh boy will I be excited when I'm done "pay testing" and can buy the real version of the game!

Wonder how long they were thinking about it

[Goldrush]

Jade Empire was a short game. Not too much of a stretch to say it's as long as HL:Episode 1. I remember reading that they intentionally avoid the 50 hours gameplay time of many in the same genre because they do not believe that modern gamers have the time to invest. With this in mind, I guess episodic contents, generally quicker to play through, are a natural direction for them.

as PC's surpass consoles?

[Scudsucker]

as PC systems reach and surpass console systems at the end of a console life cycle

PC's had surpassed the current batch of consoles long before they were released. The tendancy of console fanboys to comapre the specs of years-off vaporware to currently shipping PC hardware is quite annoying. I'm like to plop these guys down with some engineers from ATI or Nvidia who feel free to talk about what they expect PC graphics cards to be like in two years.

And as for the warm reception that episode gaming seems to

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[KDR_11k]

So far EA hasn't made episodic content while large "indie" developers like Valve and Telltale are using it to get cash infusions more regularly.

Shattered Hopes

[Cyanara]

Honestly, I don't care how they do it, as long as they give me my long-promised Shattered Steel 2.

Money

[Lord_Dweomer]

Translation:

retail sales just don't capture the revenues from the increasingly successful PC MMOs as well as digital distribution and episodic gaming (which are both gaining strength year after year).

"Our shareholders are drooling over the money that Blizzard is raking in hand over fist and episodic gaming is our way of getting you to pay the equivelant of a monthly fee. We're going to scrape content from the initial release and string it out over successive "episodes" and charge you more than we would ha