The Pros and Cons of Episodic Games

I feel that, recently, gamers have had access to a greater diversity of game price-points than ever before. There’s still the full price £50 titles, but now we are starting to see the revival of the £30 small budget game; then there’s the good old £5 – £15 indie titles, and the expansion of free to play games. It is a great time to be a gamer at any price bracket, if you are able to look past the greed fuelled scummy antics of Activision-Blizzard and EA, that is.

But the release model I’d like to briefly discuss today is that of the episodic game. These games have been around for nearly a decade, and I’d like to explore their strengths and weaknesses here.

The Positives

An episodic schedule can extend the life cycle of a game by spacing out the story over several months or even over the course of a couple of years, depending on the scope of the project. This spreading out of content releases gives the developers both more time to work on the game whilst generating money from it, a bit like an early access title. This money can be used on the current game or can be invested into the studios next project.

Breaking the game up into episodic chunks allows the developers to explore new themes and gameplay ideas in individual segments rather than committing them to a whole game. This is beneficial as the developers, from one episode to the next, can decide what worked and what did not, based on their design input or feedback from players. Also, this allows the game to remain interesting in terms of its story telling.

A great recent example of switching up themes and gameplay ideas between episodes occurred in Life is Strange: Before the Storm; where episode one was exactly what you could expect from a Life is Strange game (teenage angst, love, and loss), the second episode threw in a playable stage show where the player needs to remember their lines and even improvise. This showed that Deck Nine, whilst able to follow the formula laid down in the original by Dontnod, can flex their own creative muscles.

Deck Nine, 2017

This leads me onto my third positive about the episodic model; allowing for a new take on an existing property. We can look to Telltale Games for this. Their first game The Walking Dead broke ground for the episodic market, but whilst much of their reference material comes from comic books, their recent take on the Borderlands universe and even Minecraft: Story Mode have offered a fresh insight into these worlds in a way I don’t think many were expecting.

The Negatives

As with anything, though, there are some downsides to releasing content episodically. Firstly, a developer needs to consider pacing. A player waiting months and months for the next four hours of gameplay is going to get bored very quickly and forget about the game. However, releasing content too quickly may degrade its quality, burning out the artists and leaving large bugs in the game. It may also leave players wondering why the game wasn’t just released as one product a few months later on when everything was finished. Finding the right balance between workload and a compelling release schedule is a difficult task, and often it will limit the scope of the project.

This can have a poor effect on the story, leaving it feeling muddled, rushed, or leaving plot threads unresolved. This can happen due to the overreach issues stated above, because of budget constraints, or because of publisher meddling. A combination of the last two is why the original Life is Strange was cut down from eight episodes by Square Enix executives to five, leaving the player base wanting more but because some character arcs didn’t feel complete.

IO Interactive, 2016

Square Enix sort of fell in love with the episodic revenue model for a while, applying it to several games. Perhaps most confusingly, they applied it to 2016’s iteration of Hitman in a bid to find additional monetisation. There were fears that this would negatively impact gameplay, but to their credit each episode of Hitman that was released included lots of content, including weekend events, challenges, and high value targets that only appeared in game once. What’s more, these events took place in the previously released locations as well, ensuring the whole game was being used and enjoyed. Whilst Square Enix made good on this model, other publishers may not and may be the next money making scheme they try to exploit.

An episodic release schedule also necessitates the purchase of a season pass – a pre-order of the future content without seeing it. You can argue that this is the equivalent of buying a TV boxset of a series you haven’t seen before, but as we learnt from previous “AAA” publishers, they will find ways to exploit season passes. The Borderlands 2 season pass did not include a lot of the content that was eventually released for the game, including some really engaging end game content.

However, these cons are more to do with pacing and speculating on which con-artist publisher might do what with a similar business model. I personally feel the episodic model is a great way for a young or a small studio to get their names and products to market quickly, cheaply, and as a way guaranteeing an income for several months whilst they work on what they want to do next. There’s so much that can be done with episodic games, and I hope they stick around for a good long while.