Clive Thompson on episodic gaming (he's in love with Alyx too)

by Christopher Grant { Jun 29th 2006 at 8:35PM }

Wired's Clive Thompson does the "episodic games are cool" thing and rounds all the usual bases: 24 and Lost are the television paradigms; episodic games are great for busy adults; Alyx is worthy of your adoration of geek lust. He writes, "There's an intimacy to episodic stories, and it's all the more intensified in a game because you literally go through hell with these folks. After Half-Life 2 and Episode One, I was pretty much in love with Alyx, one of the spunkiest and best-acted virtual characters I've ever seen."

Hear hear! While Alyx played a pivotal role in HL2, she's playing alongside you in Episode One. Valve calls it "single-player co-op" and, like the paradigm of co-op multiplayer, Alyx feels like a buddy you're running through the game with. Like the lives of your favorite soap stars (or Jack Bauer, whatever) Alyx will be as important as the serialized story or the additional gameplay in convincing gamers to return for each consecutive HL2 episode. Now if they could only start getting these things out the door monthly ... weekly ... daily ...

[Via collision detection]

Tags: 24, Clive Thompson, CliveThompson, Episodic, Lost, Wired

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Pedro @ Jun 29th 2006 8:56PM

I don't see why there's so much talk about episodic gaming. Nintendo already tryed something similar with Nes and it was everything but a success...

Maybe it was not its time...

djpuddle @ Jun 29th 2006 11:41PM

I think episodic gaming is just a cleverly disguised way to milk even more money out of gamers.

C. Grant @ Jun 30th 2006 12:08AM

I agree. I think television DVDs are a really clever way to get movie DVD buyers to spend more money! JERKS!

Merus @ Jun 30th 2006 1:35AM

"I think episodic gaming is just a cleverly disguised way to milk even more money out of gamers."

That's one way to look at it.

Looking at it another way, so are most sequels - most sequels aren't really anything new, they're just a refinement of the previous game and some new levels. It's not a true sequel in any sense of the word, it's a glorified mission pack.

The thing about episodic gaming is that it's designed for this - developers play out the storyline, run out of ideas and people who care, and then can feel free to make something actually fresh as the proper sequel. It also means that fans that would pay anything to get some more are satisfied, and people who aren't can just play the first couple of chapters and be satisfied. And every release will bring attention to the previous episodes, which means that those games will finally have longetivity. Games like Psychonauts needed word-of-mouth to do well, and the concept was hardly tapped by the end of the game. If it had been episodic it probably would have done a lot better, as it would have had the time to build attention and the room to expand the concept (one of the weaknesses of Psychonauts is that it switched gears half-way - episodic stories, like 24, can get away with it a lot better than works designed to be taken as a whole).

In many ways Half-Life Episodes is not what's important - it's designed to pave the way for games that aren't s much milking extra money from gamers as getting gamers they might never have had.