This is an idea that came to me yesterday. What if there was a video game that played out like a t.v. series? Each week a new episode or chapter…whatever you want to call it, is released and allows the player to move farther along in the story. Of course each chapter would end with a cliffhanger to keep people coming back. I don’t know, I think it’s a neat idea.
The only downside I can think of is people would have to download the new chapter each week. But you can justify it by saying its the time they would take having to watch stupid commercials during a regular episode. Of course in order for this to work it would have to be very immersive with fantastic writing and storyline. But if a talented team could pull that off I think this could potentially attract a lot of people.
I have thought about this and it sounds like a good idea. There are some technical issues to doing this but if you think about it, a whole “season” would be done beforehand and you would be just releasing it slowly for drama (not any technical reason), just like a TV series. So you could have all the level data or whatever already in the initial application you downloaded and you would only have to download a small package for every new “episode” to unlock the new “episode” data on the application. Of course for new “seasons” you would have to have new data and thus a new application or a large patch, but at that point people would already be invested and wouldn’t mind a long download for something they really like.
The first thing that came to my mind was “Siren: Blood Curse” for PS3, was a pretty great survival horror game that was released as 12 individual “episodes” on Playstation Network.
Cause of Death on the iPhone has this sort of episodic gaming, you can go through the entire first “season” and then every few weeks get a new “Now Playing” episode to download and play for free. Once their is a new “Now Playing” episode available the old episode then becomes in app purchase for the user to buy.
I think this idea is great, but rather than adding 1 episode per week, why don’t just make it expandable?
I’m saying that because 1 episode per week might be hard to accomplish, but if your game is “expandable”, you can just sell a series of 3 or 4 missions for a reasonable price every month or so, it could be done!
Plus you don’t have to pre-make the episodes to ensure a constant rate, you can make them at your own rate, and make them available whenever they’re ready, might be 1 week, or maybe two months, whatever! Of course it’s not how a big company would do it, but I think if you’re not AAA, people will accept that you’re relaxed like that, they might even like it more that way, depends on your approach. Best thing is to be honest from the beginning.
Overall your idea is great, and you should go for it. I think Monkey Island was doing something like that, even, so it’s not a crazy untold idea, but it’s a very original approach for selling your game. Good luck!
There are a lot of these kind of games already. Its called “episodic” game.
I think “Back to the Future” is one good example - its coming out one episode almost every month.
Sam and Max is another great example. I think they were produced by the same company.
“Telltale’s Sam Max Save the World was their first fully completed episodic series, followed by Sam Max Beyond Time and Space and Sam Max: The Devil’s Playhouse”. Each game had at least 5-6 episodes.
Half-Life 2 is another example except they are taking wayyyyyyyy to long to push out one episode.
Oh yeh another one - Pocket God on iPhone - they churning out 1 episode every 2 weeks since 2009!! Pocket God - Wikipedia
Seems like it’s true, AAA companies are taking this approach, as da Bawss said. Maybe you should do the same! As an indie developer, there’s a lot to be gained with episodic games. You can get revenue faster, and there’s less pressure for you!
Kind of like minecraft, only instead of releasing a beta sandbox and giving little updates to the people, you release a full working game, and then release the episodes! It’s much more relaxed imo, and doesn’t force you to finish a whole game with dozens of levels before you can sell it.
Maybe this considered something between casual gaming and hardcode gaming. You become involved in the game enough to get the fun you need, but you still have time to get back to work!
The only difference is that each episode needs to be a stand alone experience like the sam and max games but give them an underlying narrative that ties in the episodes in a season. As opposed to making updates and adding more levels or features etc.
Thats good idea. Downloading episodes shouldnt be problem. People have decent lines those days so it should be that much of a problem.
But as you said story in game has to be good, i am thinking of something like Longest journey or Mass effect, which would eventually require VERY talented small team.
Hmm, yeah, you’re right, plus you gotta give the user something worth buying. Just ‘missions’ doesn’t seem like a good deal. The missions should at least hold an underlying narrative that ties everything together, at least some degree of coherence, right? hehe
I would definitely go ahead go ahead and make the entire season, all 20 episodes? or so. THEN, release one episode per week, players would have to pay for the first episode, say 10$ or so, but after the initial purchase, the following episodes are free IF AND ONLY IF they purchased the first episode. Something like Open a Patcher Screen before the actual game and give the player a PLAY button in a corner, with a graphic in the window also. The graphic could be a teaser/trailer for the next episode, and then the player could download it right from there. SO only people who could open the patcher could download the episodes, and they could only open the patcher if they have bought the pilot episode.
I dont know about patcher…it would require some protection which would lead to GameGuard or similar shields and i hate those things. They cause milions of bugs and issues for each game they are used.
