Overheard@Develop: Mark Rein - "I need a stiff drink"

Episodic games aren't what's going to change the industry. Xenosaga tried it and it obviously didn't catch on.

The games industry has stagnated and the only things that can change it are new control schemes (Nintendo Wii) and revolutionary new ideas for gameplay (Spore). Everything else is just putting a shinier face on the same old game.

Gaming won't die, but it will become more and more predictable, less innovative, and (in my opinion) less fun with each new version of Madden. I'm pinning my hopes to Nintendo and Spore.

You tell 'em. I still don't know the difference between Unreal Tournament, UT 2003, and UT 2004...

I dont think you understand what episodic content is if you think xenosaga is an example.

Xenosaga may have teh words episode in them, but each episode is definitly a full game.

now Half lif 2: spisode 1, or Sin, thats episodic content.

I feel the episodic content is going to be the future, but Rein has a point. Selling me a new chapter of the same game that uses the same engine, same locales, same animations, hell change the story and keep the same old game and sell it for 20 bucks! Is that where we are headed. And I seriously doubt a new funky controller with the same old games can or will be the saviour people are thinking.

The problem with the PC gaming industry is, that as production values rise, Publishers get less and less willing to embark on original ideas. Therefore you get an abundance of MMOs and Sequels. The drop in PC Game sales can be attributed to sequelitis and World of Warcraft. There are a lot of gamers that would buy other games but are wrapped up in World of Warcraft. I have no statstically evidence, but We invaded a country without evidence so why should I need any?

I'm somewhat hesitant to accept episodic games as well, but for a different reason. In addition to creating much more linear games, I feel it encourages poor direction. With lower overhead and faster turn arounds, it seems like it would be really tempting from a developer standpoint to just milk a property continuously while it was profitable and never quite resolve any of the motivating continuity until it isn't making money any more.

I understand that the current market climate is already similar to that scenario with publishers cranking out one sequel after another but at least we get a fully realized game with each iteration.

There's a big part of me that agrees with Mark's comments on episodic gaming.

Sin doesn't appeal to me because I want to play through a game at my pace. I don't like the idea of potentially months between episodes interrupting the flow of the story. I also don't like the pricing model - I could end up paying 100's of dollars to see the story through to the end.

I bought Half Life 2 Episode 1, and it felt kind of boring. The story isn't quite gripping enough, and it felt like a retread of the same old stuff. I won't be buying Episode 2.

Given the choice between a year or two of Episodes 1 to x of Half Life 2, or Valve devoting that time and money in to developing Half Life 3 - I'd rather wait for HL3 thanks.

I do prefer the Half Life 2 release model - where we had the original full price (and fully marketed) title, which is then followed by episodes. But as I said before, give me Half Life 3 rather than episodic content.

From a business point of view it got to be a winner for developers. They can cobble together a couple of levels and throw them out while finishing the rest of the game - they generate revenue, which can only be good for the industry.

However, the downside is we end up with loads of crappy episodic content created by developers making a quick buck, and as Mark said, reusing weapons, environments etc etc from the original title.

Are developers really going to give us well scripted and concise content - or are they going to pad out stories in the hope that after hooking us with an episode or two they can continue to drag it out to the point where as gamers think 'what the hell I've spent $XXX on this title I may as well see it through to the end'.

There's a place for episodic content - but I'd rather see innovation rather than repetition.

He is absolutely right about episodic content and it "inevitably using a lot of recycled content, walking through the same environments and shooting the same enemies with the same weapons."

That's exactly what it amounts to. I think something like this is acceptable for a couple of bucks, but what they've been charging lately in terms of content for maps and stuff (that reuse a lot of the same textures and what not) is crazy.

#4

This is a gaming blog, not a poltical one.

opps sorry #5 is what i meant.

His comments about Intel were idiotic.

His comments about episodic gaming are pretty spot-on. At least from the quotes above.


HL2E1 is being called "Half Life 3" by Valve. Which is insulting as hell. It's an expansion pack, it's deja vu, and it offered absolutely NOTHING noticeably new. Sure, lots of tweaks and interesting technologies were added, but nothing major. HDR does not make a new game.


I was against episodes from the start. I think it's a huge mistake.
1) Gamers don't like to wait. We like satisfaction, and making us wait 6-9 months between episodes won't cut it. There's a reason why most episodic dramas on TV are extremely popular on DVD - people want to get it all at once. Not wait.

2) You can't make an impression in 4 hours. SiN and HL2E1 each took me two days. I know people that beat them each in 1 day. You know what happens to games you beat in a day? You forget about them.

3) If a game doesn't do well, you can't recoup investment. Say SiNE1 was based on a new engine. Say Ritual spent a lot of money laying the groundwork for this game (they have 9 episodes planned.) Say the first episode bombs. At $20 they're screwed. They just put in work to create a new game and didn't get the money back.
Let's be honest here, content can be the easier part once you get going. Doubling or tripling the game would take more time, but not much more. Making the game longer and selling it for $40 or $50 would bring in more money for bombs. It's only for hits that milking the same resources for 9 releases at $20 works. SiN will NOT keep people interested for $180 worth of gaming.

4) Yes, it's insulting to pay $180 for the same models over and over and over and over.

5) It's even worse with digital distribution. Preorder now for $18! Or just wait until the week after release and buy it in stores for $8!



I think the industry sees this as a way to make more money for less work.
Lazy jerks.
I think gamers will see through it after the novelty wears off and reject it.
Did HL2E1 leave anyone dying for more $5-an-hour HL2?
Did SiNE1 leave anyone willing to pony up $180 to see the conclusion of the plot?

Yes, all the reporting Steam does will allow them to refine gameplay between episodes, and hopefully they'll create new resources, new weapons, new technology, and a new combat system that feels modern.
But the price isn't right. And the wait is awful. And 2 sessions of gaming leave no real impression and little desire.

Making people proceed at the developers pace instead of their own and making them pay multiple times for the exact same resources will not be a trend for the future.

Episodic content would have to be released on a much faster basis for a much lower cost for me to care. I consider it much like TV. You can buy the whole season of a show for $50, just like buying a full game for $50. Or you can watch the show every week for free, which is completely different than buying a small portion of a game for $20. I'd even support in-game advertising or loading screen "commercial breaks" if it made episodic content cheaper--but I doubt they can do much about the turnaround rate on new content. So episodic games are probably broken, as Mark Rein says.

dear game companies
please keep games on disc. no subscriptions please, no drawn out purchase for a complete game.

Seems to me that Rein has a point. The business model for episodic is far from fully baked. Especially when you factor in the cost of keeping a team on a project month after month after month. So the alternative is to do all teh episodes in one push and release them in sequence -- but if you do that, why not just ship the damned game? I suppose there is somethign to be said for playing part of a game and only getting the rest if you like it, but that is sort of what demos are for.

Some folks lien this to movies vs. TV -- big blockbusteres vs smaller episodic content. Trouble is, in games, we aren't plot driven and generally could care less about the characters - and gods know we are short on humor, so most of the things that get you to put up with TV production values vs. film aren't present in games. We want new exciting experiences with awesome tech and graphics every time and a game that is structured like a TV show where all the action takes place on the same set pieces is likely to get old fast.

IMHO, episodic content has actually been around for a long time. Where? MMO's. What else could you call Everquest's expansion packs? One or two released a year, adding onto the existing engine with perhaps a few tweaks, but mainly new content. WoW does much the same thing, except in smaller chunks at more frequent intervals and you don't have to pay any more than the montly fee.

I don't think episodic gameplay will really change the face of gaming that much, either for the better or worse. It won't make a bad game any better, and it won't make a good studio release a terrible game. It's simply another choice in a way to develop a game, and eventually some studio will come along with the right release schedule, the right amount of new gameplay per episode, and the right pricepoint, and people will look and say "THAT'S how you do it."

#1 Changing a controller won't change a thing game wise. Cause they will still trot out the same type games. Once the novelty of the controller wears off it will be stuck with the same style games (shooters, fighters, mario, zelda, and racers). I just think the collective well of ideas in gaming has dried up (even though I think the DS has some great different than normal games). The gaming industry as a whole has become Hollywood lite.

is no one else worried that say a developer makes an outstanding engine. sells it for $20 with like 4 levels. That 4 levels doesnt get people entrenched in the game... They scrap future episode and developments. The engine is ruined the story never got a chance. The game shoots itself inthe foot before it even has any breathing room!

now thats scary

Umm, did anyone forget about Mark Rein's HILARIOUS comments every time he opens his HUGE mouth? He always has something to say, but unfortunately, it is almost always something stupid. Well, partially right, but partially stupid.

"Games will reach 20-30 GB this generation, so I don't know what we're going to do with DVD9" (like Gears of War, the one your company is making, right?)
"Nobody owns a gamecube" (Hellooooooo? Nobody owns an Xbox then?)
"Xbox will own PS2" (100 million anyone?)
"Episodic content will flop" (Because people like to spend 60 bucks on a game they don't know if they'll like, instead of 5 bucks for just a try?)

So all of this has some sort of truth in it, but his judgement always seems shortsighted, which makes him sound like an idiot since he is the vicepresident of Epic i.e. someone relatively important to the industry i.e. someone that should know what he is talking about.

I don't understand all this episodic content hype... it's game sequels, but shorter and more expensive.

He'll be heckled, but he won't be the one losing millions on failed attempts at episodic content.

Omigod! I just realized! All of my favorite TV series use the same sets week after week, season after season! Those bastards have been cheating us!

Seriously, if you have an ongoing storyline it is only natural that the characters are going to visit the same locations frequently. When an episode of Star Trek, any of the series, opens up on the bridge, we immediately know what we're looking at. It puts us on familiar ground to tell us a new story with the characters that are already well established. Thus a lot of ground can be covered quickly because we already know so much the moment it starts. We don't have to reintroduce the cast and locations every week. Instead we focus on those characters and locations unique to that episode.

#16 Magus, what do you suppose it's like producing a TV series? Especially a genre show like Stargate SG-1. You build sets, have costumes made, props, hire a continuity checker to make sure a recurring character has consistent costuming and accessories, etc. Then your content is put on in a lousy time slot and gets canceled after just a few episodes have aired because the network is too impatient to let an audience build.

A vast number of hyped up games have been canceled while in development. Getting canceled after a few episodes are released isn't terribly different.

Episodic game distribution isn't even at the point TV was at in 1952. That was just adapting the well established radio format for video. Episodic game distribution is more analogous to where radio content was in the early 1930s. It will be a while before it becomes a well defined production format. It will take a while before the game industry develops a corp of personnel equivalent to a show runner on a TV sitcom. THat person can make or break the production no matter how talented the writers or performers.

Mark is absolutely right and it's obvious.

They've been talking about episodic contenty for longer than digital convergence set-top boxes I think, or diminishing returns in game graphics. All three ideas are approximatly 150 years old, keep getting respouted, and never come true or succeed.

Of course, the article writer makes a snide comment about Mark's unreal games, implying Mark's views about episodic content are wrong. Of course, what will happen is the few forays into episodic content currently going (Half Life episode one?) on will quietly die, if they aren't already dead, and the writer will pretend he wasn't dead wrong as usual, and just not notice. This is pretty much 100% inevitable.

Episodic content is on it's face stupid. BECAUSE THE GRAPHICS DONT IMPROVE. I dont give a shit how good half life episode three in the future is, it's going to have the same graphics as Half Life 2 so NO ONE CARES.

I wonder how episode one sold. Here's a hint I bet, NOT WELL.

Mark Rein, smartest man in gaming. I've long said it, and this proves it. That he angers the politically correct gaming media nintendo loving biased establishment such as the writer of this story is all the more proof. Nintendo sucks and they're going to die because their graphics suck and graphics are the biggest factor in gaming. Sorry about the facts. I'm tired of the huge mainstream masses of Nintendo asskissers and politically correct establishment.

You keep telling it like it is Mark. Let the politically correct establishment Nintendo crybabies like Joystiq reporters whine all they want.

#22 Bill, do you watch any TV series or do you give up if the second episode doesn't look better than the week before?

TV is a writer's medium because the episodic format lets them develop characters and situations in far more depth than film. And frequently there is far more freedom from studio meddling.

I want more from games, especially RPGs and other adventure forms, than just shooting a series of prettier objects with a series of more wildly explosive weapons.

Bill scores a point when he writes that improved graphics justifies the price hike, not content. Remember the reluctance to make railroad tycoon III? The programmer was right, it didn't add to the game, though you could get drawn in with less abstraction.

As well as TV serials, science fiction has a healthy serial mentality. They go on till sales drop or the author gets fed up. The TV serial attraction is the high price people pay for the CDs. Personally, I believe we're in a catch-up phase and sales will drop in a few years as the collectable serials are done. That said, my wife still buys Stargate CDs though (10th season).

I don't like episodic content, sure it's sucesfull for the producer, but not for the consumer.

If we look at the most sucesfull Episodic content there is (Windows), you can see it's only small changes (i.e. no support for older products), in order to keep people buying the latest episode, but they do not fix things..
Like it's still not possible to abort a print-out of a document today and start printing another document, without having to reset the computer, even tough I have sent in error-messages on Win98, Win ME and Win XP, I do not expect it to be better on Win Vista.

I don't think episodic content will benefit us consumers in games.

I want to buy a full product.
I liked the old alternative better, a full game first, then expansion packs.
Episodic content seems to me to the same as expansion packs, only that you start on the expansion pack without the full product. :-/

And what happens the day the game-company gets bought up by another game-company, in the middle of a episode?

#23 Bill, aparently Valve, a company making a big push in episodic gaming doesn't think there is nay problem in delivering graphical upgrades over the course of a series.
http://www.gamespot.com/news/6153984.html

"Valve's Gabe Newell is now on the stage to show us an updated trailer for Half-Life 2: Episode 2. There are some new images of a strider and smaller walker-like enemies decimating a group of human fighters in the forest. Otherwise, this is pretty much the same trailer we saw at the end of Episode 1.

Newell talks about getting players out of City 17 in the next episode (duh), as well as giving them new weapons and new enemies to use them against. Looks like the Source engine will be getting a lot of upgrades in Ep 2. A "cinematic physics" system is coming from former Weta Digital employee Gray Horsfield, along with new particle systems, better foliage, and more."


#27 KongRudi, you're full of it on multiple levels. First, nobody in their right mind thinks of Windows as episodic content. It isn't episodic and it isn't content. (Nor is is it holy, roman, or an empire.) Print aborting has been around since Windows 3.11. If you cannot get it to work you've screwed up your system or have a seriously incompetent IT staff. (One of last years biggest security scares related directly to the mechanism that allows print runs to be aborted.)

Nobody is forced to buy episodic game content any more than anyone is forced to view a TV series over the course of a season. In both cases they can wait for the content to be collected into one package and purchase it that way. Ever notice those DVD box sets that have become a major portion of the home video business?

Why would acquisition of the production company affect the product? If the product was successful but the company lacked resources, a buyout can be the solution. Production companies change corporate parentage all the time without changes to the product. The logo on the paychecks may change but the job continues.

Windows 3.11 to Windows9X were the last 'real' update we had in my opinion.
After that I feel the changes has been small enough not to worth calling it a full new product, 95, 98, ME or XP Home is very similar in my opinion, if it makes me crazy, so be it.
If you are satisfied with the changes, good for you.

The pause/abort features is there, but it didn't work in several of my Windows 95, 98, ME or XP Home Edition, not even on fresh format C: /s + Win installs, nor the times a brand new computer came from the shop with windows finnished installed.
It dosn't work at my current workplace (wich runs XP Pro) either.
All places I've tried to pause and abort a printout will either result in a bunch of one-lined garble text on dozens of pages, or a reset.
I don't claim to be a IT-expert, or that anyone at work is a IT-expert or everyone else, or that i think the various computers i've bought with preinstalled windows is allways correct..
But I've never experienced it working, and it can't be that hard to get it installed correct.. :-/
It ought to have worked on atleast one of the around 15 different Win/Computer/Printer combos I've tried, it havn't.

I can't believe that no one has saw (maybe 'cause I'm a mac user myself) this but he's (the journalist) is using a white MacBook!

It's pretty easy to see it since a. You can see the dock on the left side of the screen (including the trash icon) b. the dip in the keyboard and c. the keys on the keyboard. One tip for you Comrade: using Quicksilver (google it) if you want to access your folders quickly, having them in the dock is just wrong.

Funny is that MacBooks have Intel integrated graphics and he's sitting next to Mark Rein - the man claiming that Intel is killing PC gaming because of their integrated graphics! O the irony - just don't tell Mark that your MacBook has Intel integrated graphics! If anything, he should be saying that gaming developers are killing themselves since they're not developing games for the Mac market, a market that's set to explode (if you read digg.com - you've read the story about this).

BTW, what app are you running there Comrade?

{PM}