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Joystiq

American McGee's Grimm: All episodes free for first 24 hours

by Randy Nelson on Jul 2nd 2008 1:55PM

GameTap is taking a most unusual approach with its first weekly episodic game series. Each episode of American McGee's Grimm – individual "fractured fairytales" from the designer of American McGee's Alice – will debut as a free download and remain free for a 24-hour period. After that, episodes will go into GameTap's archives and be available to download individually for a yet-to-be-determined price.

The model is likened to that of the iTunes or Xbox Live video download services. Catching a Grimm episode during the initial download-for-free window will be like watching a new episode of a show on network TV. Once it's "aired," you can download it if you missed it – for a price.

The episodes will be supported by minimal up-front advertising and the first one, "A Boy Learns What Fear Is," will debut on July 31. We had the opportunity to play the first three Grimm episodes yesterday and will post our impressions later today.

Tags: american-mcgee, american-mcgees-grimm, episodic, gametap, grimm, PC

Reader Comments (32)

Nice!

interesting...

McGee is a name I avoid, means a bad product to the consumer...

Mcgee is a name I avoid... crap

3 posts for my reply to appear?!?!

I was worried I had missed it. I'll have to mark the 31st down in my calendar. Of course, if it's only free for the first 24 hours, that probably means that I'll have all of 2 hours to play after the massive traffic churns what should be a 30 minute download into 20 hours... oh well.

How is this like iTunes or Xbox Live?

It's great for those more ardent fans of McGee's work though. Hopefully if it's good, positive word-of-mouth will raise them a bit of revenue.

I know that XBL has done this on a few occasions with certain games. You get a 24 hour window where the download would be free and than not after that.

itunes I believe does something similar almost each week with a free album or two. I can't comment precisely however as I do not have itunes...so yeah

Hope that clears it up.

Free games are always good

I'd be interested - if I used GameTap.

Im not interested and I dont use GameTap.

In fact, I dont even know why I'm commenting.

Prepare to vote down! -1

Chin ball boy!

Boy with Balls on Chin, meet Man with Foot on Head, Girl with Rapid Aging Disease, Disfigured Country Singer, and Man With No Face.

Might as well use Gametap. The free service that they offer is done pretty well. The free library isn't massive, but it has some titles are definitely worth it.

Saying that though, I wouldn't pay a monthly sub fee for it at all. Steam is setup much better.

@BWBOC - Yeah, well as long as you don't say something like that about a particular console, you're fine.

Gametap isn't avalible in my country like Itunes (The bastards) and I'm interested.

Sweet! July 23rd is my birthday, so this'll make a great present for me.

What videos are free on XBL? (Don't answer trailers, douche.)

I remember downloading an episode of Voltron for free.

What they mean is that you can catch Heroes or Lost for free on TV or pay to watch them on Xbox Live or itunes 24 hours or so later.

yeah seriously...are new shows free on xbox live during the first 24 hours? WTF...

That's a great idea, and I applaud them for it. Mainly because I only have the free client and I was looking forward to this game. But it's still pretty nice. I enjoy the free game tap, works great, even better with a 360 controller.

Did everyone lose their minds?

Does everyone forget the brain genocide that was Bad Day LA?

It took me about five hours to finish that game, five hours I could have spent actually playing a good game.

The only good game McGee's name was on was Scrapland, and fittingly he had nothing to do with the actual design of it.

i'm not so familiar with gametap so bear with me... does this mean that you can keep the episodic game forever if you download it for free that first day? or does it mean that you can download and play the game for free during that one day, but if you wanted to play again a week later you would have to pay to play even though you already downloaded it on day one (the "free" day)?

That's a good questions.

I wonder if this will be bad, or really bad.

So, any chance of "reruns" on these free game windows?

Twitter reminders... Anyone? Anyone?

What's with all the complaints. I really liked "Alice" a lot. It was nice to finally see a darker version of it...maybe even darker than the source books...as opposed to the Disneyfied crappy version we've become used to. The insane asylum school was so creepy, all the music was so cool, the giant crying Alice statute and the menacing mushrooms...wow. Granted, I haven't played anything else he's done yet, but what the heck?...these new ones are another attempt to redarken childhood stories. I'm all for it...and it's FREE! I heard he was gonna do a dark version of the Wizard of Oz but it all bogged down in licensing or something. Too bad.

I vote no for GameTap. Maybe if it comes out eventually on its own.

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American McGee's Grimm: All episodes free for first 24 hours

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