Comments on: Episodic games vs episodic gameplay?

By: Alexis

Alexis — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 19:42:49 +0000

That’s way more clear now… and very interesting! I already thought of this with the movies: take a rather short story, and make the film done by different directors, each with his own vision, his own actors. We could apply this to video games and compare the visions of different designers… as an exercise of style.

What about the economic side of episodes? So far, Sam & Max seem to be the only ones able to follow a real episode format: quite cheap (10$), released regularly and with a satisfaying length.

How long would it need to get one hour of new quality gameplay?

By: Balthazar

Balthazar — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 17:37:59 +0000

Episodic games as for now are built exactly like a TV series: same characters, same setting, and for games, same gameplay. Think about Half Life ep 1 and 2, Sin, Sam&Max… Every episode has a different narrative, but the gameplay stays generally the same.

When I talk about episodic gameplay, I’m trying to think about a series of games where we recognize that the gameplay is at the core of the game, and not the story.

You could even think about an episodic game where the story is always the same, and it’s the gameplay that changes from episode to episode, which would probably change how the story is perceived anyways.

That’s what I tried to call episodic gameplay… I have to admit that it’s very new to me too, but I believe that there’s something there…

By: Alexis

Alexis — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 16:48:40 +0000

I don’t exactly get your idea of “episodic gameplay” instead of “episodic games”.

A game is basically gameplay (or should be). So what’s the difference? I haven’t played the games you refer to, and this should help understanding. I’ll try anyway.

Do you mean that all the episodes share the same basic gameplay, but that each episode is then built on its own specific gameplay? Must be what you mean by Shadow of the Colossus I guess.