Infinitap Games

In this diary, I talk about the challenges of making a game episodic.

I love the idea of episodic games, especially as I find myself more drawn to shorter games in general. But that's totally true, the only ones I've seen do it consistently are Telltale. Even with them and their whole model being episodic content, there are still inevitable delays. For instance, the second episode of season two just came out and it's been two and a half months, that's pushing it a bit for a continuous story.

Episode 2 is very good by the way, did you play it yet? If they weren't so solid I don't know if they could make the model work so well. They've really hit on something special here. The characters and story are great and it feels like every decision you make makes a huge difference (even if it really doesn't). I really like Wolf Among Us too, but I don't get the same emotional involvement I get with Walking Dead.

And yeah, Sin Episodes ultimately ended up having a whopping total of one episode. I know, because I actually bought the thing, and it's still sitting there in my Steam library... good thing there wasn't any sort of season pass I had to buy!

I almost forgot about Kentucky Route Zero. I bought that a while ago and played through the two episodes currently available, but I don't think the next episode is even anywhere in sight at this point. I don't really mind as it's a very unique game and the kind of thing I just forget about until the next one comes out, but episodic does seem like a strange choice.

I got it on Xbox 360, and it didn't come out until today, so no I haven't. I'm not sure if I'll get a chance to play it until this weekend though. Walking Dead Season 2 episode 1 didn't quite hook me the way season 1 did, but I expect I'll get more involved. I am actually looking forward to TWAU Episode 3 more than WDS2E1 at this point, which is weird to me because I didn't even think I'd like TWAU. I think it's probably just because they are one episode ahead, and I've had more time to invest into the characters (besides Clementine of course). Plus, not much happened in WDS2E1. As much as I like Clementine, I'm not sure playing as her was the right choice. She doesn't have a very strong personality, so it might not work as well as poor Lee. I guess I'll see soon enough.

Is anyone else confused as all hell over Tales of Borderlands or whatever it's called? I've played a CRAZY amount of Borderlands (my wife is a huge fan), and of course, I'm a huge Telltale fan, and I don't really find this idea appealing - when I should be the audience it was made for... I'll keep an open mind, but it seems... bizarre. My wife was equally confused when I tried to explain it to her...

I haven't even heard of the Borderlands episodic game. Actually I think I heard the name before, but don't know any details. Looking it up now, the website and trailer don't have any real info, only that it looks like they'll be working with Gearbox on it. I agree, very weird. I haven't played Borderlands at all, does the game have good characters and stories? Or maybe this is going to be more action focused and break away from the point and click and timed dialogue choices a bit?

Now Game of Thrones, I understand why they're doing that. It will be interesting to see how that turns out, even though I haven't watched Game of Thrones.

I enjoy game of thrones, but I'm not super stoked for the tell tale game. I loved bttf because it's one of my favorite films, and reuniting most of the original cast was amazeballs. I loved walking dead because the setting lends itself well to tough decisions.

Game of Thrones though seems really weird to me. Matt made a good point about ttg using established ip, but game of thrones just seems like pure opportunism to me.

Who knows, maybe it will be amazing, but I am skeptical about their choice of the hottest show amongst their target demographic. Almost seems too easy.

But it's not like tell tale isn't amazing. I'm sure they'll innovate.

I believe that Telltale didn't use the Fables name so as not to infringe on Microsoft's trademarks with the Fable series.

I've just been getting caught up on the Game Of Thrones TV show, and I really like it. I'm not sure how they'll handle a game. I would guess they'll again do a side story or prequel, to allow for player choice without straying too far from the series canon.

If you like the TV show, you should read the books. They are even BETTER! The TV show is kind of straying from the books, and I'm not sure how I feel about it. We'll see where it goes this season I guess.

I'm not sure if Telltale's comic art style will really lend itself well to Game of Thrones, so I'm not sure what they are going to do. Doing realistic graphics would probably be a big challenge since you need fancier tech, so we'll see how the game turns out.

I've always liked the concept behind episodic games however usually in practice it turns out like wasted potential.

Recent example would be stuff like "The Wolf Among Us". The main gripe I have about that game's episodic nature is that there's too big a divide between episodes, the first episode was released in October and then the second episode was released not long ago in February. That's almost a full four months between releases which in my opinion seems way too stretched. By that point I may have lost interest in playing much of that particular series or I could potentially forget important plot details/small pieces of info between episodes which would dampen the overall story experience for me.

If it's done right however and the window between each of the releases is much shorter then I think there's a great potential for episodic gaming for sure! It's just finding that sweet spot of time, perhaps making the game in full first and then releasing in small periods is the way to go. Then again I'm not a game developer so I wouldn't really know hahaha

I think the problem is that the advantage from a development standpoint to episodic games is releasing them as you make them. If you released them all in one go, I think you'd be pretty much better off selling it for one lump sum. It's kind of like the new netflix "season" model. I think everyone prefers to consume content at their own pace, so if the content is ready, it's better to release it.

If you look at Alan Wake, which is divided into episodes, or Remedy's new game, Quantum Break, they are both split into "episodes" but they are marketed as a traditional full price game, which is much easier I think.

To be fair, I think Telltale does an admirable job of churning out content. I really don't know how they do it just because there is almost a month waiting period to release content on PSN at least. We had a few other considerations with Retro/Grade, but we pretty much finished the end of June and released the end of August. Content has to be queued way in advance and you have to get certified and all that. Maybe Telltale gets a free pass, so they can line up with Steam.

With Neverending Nightmares, I'll probably be patching the final build the day before "release". hahah It is helpful to have players looking over the game and finding bugs, which is the great thing about alpha/beta access.