Tiny Diggers – An iPad Construction Truck Game for Kids Age 2-5

When I first started writing on this site about six months ago, one of the first articles I wrote had to deal with Episodic content and how it was working. Here we are six months later and I felt it was about time to follow up on the original article to see how the the three titles I mentioned in that article are coming along. And in summary up front, I can tell you that overall, episodic content does not live up to the hype except in the pocketbooks of the corporations.

At this time six months ago, we were anxiously awaiting Half Life: Episode Two. Valve originally had planned to go to adding episodes with the intent of cutting costs for the developer and the consumer, while limiting the time between releases for new games. At first, this seemed like a good plan, because it beat having to wait six years between releases (yes it was that long between Half Life and Half Life 2.). Gabe Newell waxed poetic about how releasing episodes would be the wave of the future for extending the shelf life of a title while limiting the design process of a new engine.

The plan was for Valve to put out Episodes approximately every six months at a cost of about $20 an episode. Most episodes would give the user about 4-5 hours of additional play and add to the whole overall Half Life storyline. Episode I would focus on Alyx and give us more of the story from her angle. The plan from myself was met with skepticism, but I gave Gabe the benefit of the doubt. They also said that Episode II would follow within six months thereafter. So where do we stand now with Half Life 2: Episode 2. Well, it is a year since its original release date and yet we do not have it. Now it is suppose to come out in the Orange Box (yes a new collection of stuff), but it seems to defeat the purpose.

The original intent of episodic content was to give us little chunks at a time. Instead they delayed the release for a year and then decide to release it with three other programs. Seems to me that is more of a full release than a small chunk of gaming. Yes it is nice to get Portal and Team Fortress 2 (delayed seven years since its original 1999 announcement), but this was not what they had explained to us. I am sure that the blind faithful will buy without question, but as much as I like the Half Life universe, I feel that this was a shaft job on the consumer. Because the Orange Box contains Half Life 2 and Episode 1, something most PC owners have already bought. And to buy the other stuff outside of the package on Steam will actually cost more than the Orange Box. So I have to say that Valve would get an C on their original promise. The did get us Episode 1 after a delay, but we saw nothing after that until eighteen months later.

Next we have Sin Episodes: Emergence. This was a game that I really liked, because it was a follow up to a game that had a lot of promise, but was overshadowed by Half Life in 1998. Ritual decided to go with Episodic content under the guidance of Gabe Newell, and the first episode was released after a short delay in May of 2006. The game received lukewarm reviews from the major critics due to bugs and a lack of multiplayer that had been announced previously. Ritual fixed the bugs and said a multiplayer pack would come shortly after, but then we received silence. And it was a deafining silence as the company never would release a second episode. The CEO quit and the company was assimilated by Mumbo Jumbo which quickly announced that it would focus on casual fare and left the Sin universe in the dust. So, the Sin franchise gets a D-, because while it did release the first episode, we were left hanging, never to find out what happened.

Lastly we will end on a good note. Telltale Games was lucky enough to receive the rights to create a Sam and Max game after LucasArts canned the sequel they were making with the characters. Telltale Games announced that the game would be broken up over six episodes released on a monthly basis. Not only did Telltale Games keep up the promise, but they are now working on another batch of episodes to release to the public. They released the games on Gametap first for two weeks of exclusiveness and then released them through their website. They released each episode on time and each one was a lot of fun to play.

At the end of the six episode run, they even put together a nice box set that included all the episodes in one place. It included a few extras which was a bummer if you had bought all six episodes online. This is the way that episodic content is suppose to work. You release each episode within a certain time frame of the previous one and you give the player enough play to whet his appetite, but not too much to make it feel like a full on game. Keep them coming back for the next part. The Sam and Max games were about four hours each and never felt like a chore to play. I give the guys at Telltale Games an A-, if only because they did include extra stuff in the box set that I don’t get unless I buy the games again.

So I would say that as of now, Episodic content is a promise unfulfilled at best and a failure at worst. While Telltale Games met the challenge, Valve and Ritual dropped the ball, and in Ritual’s case, it was the worst way possible to drop the ball, as the loyal customers will never see the end of a game that they invested in, with the promise of more to come. I think that there is enough time to turn this ship around, but the bigger companies, need to start looking at the smaller companies that understand what it means to release Episodic content.

Do you agree or disagree with me? Sound off and let it be known.