Why sit around waiting three years for your favorite game developer to publish their game when they could start releasing it to you chapter by chapter? TDrag wants to know.
It's Monday and I've lost an hour of sleep.
These are the days when I most need water-cooler talk to "ease" into the workweek. We had a morning ritual in my old office to rehash every line spoken in The Office. A group of us loved that show and even though we all sat in our own recliners pausing and rewinding according to our schedules, we knew we’d walk in Friday morning ready to re-enact our favorite Michael-Scott-painfully-funny scenes.
When was the last time you collectively chatted about a video game some morning at the office or on the forums? When was the last time you fought the Skorge or discovered the flamethrower at the same time your online comrades did triggering a replay of your experiences “together” the next morning on 2old2play? Unless you were playing a co-op or multiplayer game, it’s probably been awhile. We don’t play single player games together anymore. We just bitch about people who “spoil” them for us.
What if developers and publishers started to change how we play single player games? Instead of releasing a game like a blockbuster movie with years of development and months of hype, games could be released like TV shows. We’ve seen the console makers dabble with expanding the scope of downloadable content (DLC). We get map packs, weapons, patches and arcade games.
Why can’t we get a downloadable triple-A title like Gears of War 3 available in pieces? Give me one chapter a week to play, pay as I go. Skip that whole nonsense of taking a full retail game and delivering it solely by download. That just screws gamers out of selling their used games. I want to explore the next step – regular, downloadable, episodic content.
I started thinking about downloads when I bought the GTA IV expansion, The Lost and the Damned. I hadn’t been paying attention to the hype around LATD in the leading months. I mean, it’s the GTA formula. What’s to think about? Needless to say, I was surprised when I realized it was a whole new set of characters. I wasn’t sure I wanted to give up Niko for “Johnny.” Bubba says I should, but I still haven’t given it a try.
Point is, Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo don’t have their download strategy figured out yet. The game developers don’t have their shit straight either. We get content too late, too early or not at all. We get content that is too disparate from the original game or so “more of the same” it’s not worth playing.
So what does TDrag want? I want Thursday night Gears of War episodes. I want Tuesday night Call of Duty chapters. I want to play $3-5 for an hour of content each week. I want gamers to be empowered with their spending. If you pay $5 to download the first level of Halo 4 and decide you hate it, you’re only out $5. How many games have you paid $50 or $60 for that you played for an hour and lost interest? How many games are sitting on your shelf right now that you won’t sell back for dimes on your dollar because “one day you’ll play them?”
Episodic released games could stand to align costs with content. It’s not uncommon to pay the exact same $60 for a mediocre 10-hour game versus an epic 80-hour experience. In some cases, this could mean we pay more for games, in others less. It might be a wash, but it’s only fair to pay a price commensurate with quality rather than some standard MSRP. And it’s only fair for the developers creating top-notch content to get financially rewarded.
Smaller components of larger games might also increase how much we play. On the average night I come home, get dinner made, and then it’s already 7-8 pm. With my early bedtime, I'm often reluctant to pop in a game for only a couple hours. I prefer weekends when there’s no immediate end in sight to my gaming time. I feel more free to get lost in the story. My attitude might change if I knew I had a one-hour experience waiting in my marketplace queue. I might be more likely to play the single-serving new release instead of watching some single-serving garbage on TV for an hour before bed.
Fortunately, an episodic release model stands little chance to threaten the Saturday eight-hour sandbox session or multiplayer XP fest. Many games couldn't be delivered in pieces. You can’t break up GTA, Fallout 3, or Mercenaries. It would bust the very sandbox mindset of “do anything, anywhere, at anytime.” Only the linear story, chapter-paced games could be delivered in a sitcom-like, episodic model. Most gamers enjoy a variety of game genres. An expanded release model just adds to the variety of what’s available to gamers. Variety is good.
Game publishers and developers also stand to benefit from a new model. How many innovative and fantastic games do you suppose have been shot down by publishers because they were too risky? What if publishers could partially fund just one or two levels of a game to see if it becomes a hit?
I can’t say I’m deeply informed about game development, but in traditional software development today’s method is to deliver small components often, re-align, and deliver again. We’re no longer running waterfall projects where everything is determined up front in a lengthy planning process before a single line of code is written. Yet, from an outsider’s perspective this appears to be the process with game development. They may have internal development cycles that are more componentized, but if they’re not being released to the user (the gamer), who cares? Getting us involved earlier in the process to mold the development can only stand to improve the final product.
Encouraging risk-taking innovations and integrating the gamer into the creation of a game sounds nice, but what's in it for the publisher/developer? Money. You, the average gamer may not run out to Best Buy to impulse-buy Banjo Kazooie for $50, but you might buy a chapter from the couch for $4. And once you’ve spent $4, what’s $4 more for the next chapter a couple weeks later? The first installment of an episodic game becomes the paid demo. And those low-life Timmies who refuse to get a job can probably scrave up $5 to buy a game chapter when they might not be able to score $60. It's always easier to spend money incrementally.
Episodic games also come with costs beyond greater impulse purchases. What do you do with the data stored on your hard drive when you’re done playing the game? Nothing. You can’t sell it back to Gamestop and MS probably won’t let you loan it to a friend. NPD recently finished a study that concludes 75 percent of gamers prefer retail discs over downloadable games and I’d wager that post-play value has something to do with that figure.
The study also stated that 58 percent of gamers have never downloaded a game. That’s kind of like saying you prefer Pepsi even though you’ve never tried Coke. To get past the reluctance to download, costs would have to come down to bridge that gap in the value of disc that can be sold back. By eliminating disc and packaging manufacturing and introducing and ultra-lean, data-only supply chain – there’s a big opportunity to cut costs.
There’s also the risk to consumers not Internet-connected or those that only have 1-2 gerbils running their line. They would either be left out of the action or would have to wait until the game is fully released and dropped to disc in limited quantities. This wouldn’t be too different from the cable subscriber who doesn’t get HBO and waits for all the good shows to arrive at Blockbuster or Best Buy; it’s a cost of not being connected.
Retailers and gamers will probably continue to be wary of trying out the unknown, but all signs point towards full retail games being delivered differently going forward. Even a few Sony PSN and MS Arcade titles have dabbled as being “episodes.” (They’re just released too far apart). The question isn’t if, it’s when and how much more innovation will follow. Until then, I’ll try to find someone in the office to chat about how I prestiged in Call of Duty: World at War last night, but I doubt they'd be interested.
What do you, 2o2p community members, think of downloadable games and episodic content? Where do you see the industry going? What would you like to see (and not see)?
