14 DAY TRIAL // Mark Rein, the vice president of Epic Games, the developers of the Unreal 3 engine that is going to power a lot of "next generation" games, attacked the "broken" episodic gaming model in a conference held at the Game Developers' Conference in Brighton UK.
"One of the problems is that you are getting a piece of a game," he said in the conference. "Customers are supposed to buy half a game... then wait six months for an episode?" he then asked rhetorically.
From Mr. Rein's point of view, episodic games are bound to create a predicament from which there's no way out. On one hand, a long timespan between episodes is bound to diminish interest in the game, a phenomenon which he named "franchise fatigue": "I always feel that when I put a game down for a certain time I want to try a new game." "Franchise fatigue will set in to these episodic games if they don't shorten the time between episodes," he added.
On the other hand, shortening the timespan would inevitably lead to recycled content: "You are going to see a lot of recycled content, walking through the same environment you saw in a previous episode, shooting the same enemies with the same weapons."
The best model for the video gaming industry in his view is the current "blockbuster" model, less risky and potentially more lucrative. "Gamers want rich experiences. We are cool already so why must the game business continually feel the need to emulate other mediums," he concluded.
"Blockbuster" games or half-baked episodic ones? How about neither...