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Preys-World - Episodic Gaming: Value for money or cynical rip-off?

Friday 28th of July, 2006 - 11:35:41 GMT

Shareware has always been a part of the gaming landscape with Doom being one of the first games to really take advantage of this system of delivering games to consumers. However over time as games got bigger and more expensive to make, shareware was ignored as full retail products were seen as the way to go. However with the spread of broadband and the popularity of delivery systems such as Steam, shareware has been reborn as Episodic Gaming.

Now many developers are jumping on the idea of releasing their games in episodic form with a few hours of gaming released every so often for a reduced price. Valve were the first company to adopt this idea with their Half-Life franchise and with Steam they had the ideal infrastructure in place to deliver the episodes to gamers. Others were quick to follow with Ritual adopting the same strategy to revive their SiN franchise and just recently Telltale Games have announced that Sam and Max will be embracing episodic gaming.

On the face of it this all sounds great for gamers. They no longer have to wait 2-3 years to get their next fix from a franchise, which in the case of Half-Life is even better news as there was around 6 years between Half-Life and Half-Life 2. Also these gaming nuggets often come out at lower prices with Half-Life 2: Episode 1 and SiN Episodes both available from Steam for around £12. So not only are you getting more of your favourite product quicker, but you are also getting it for less. But is this really the case?

Whilst you can get HL2: Episode 1 for £12 off Steam, this is only possible because of the low exchange rate from dollars to pounds. If Valve were a UK company than that $19.99 price would probably turn into a £19.99 price. In fact if you wanted the actual box and CD then you would have to fork out £19.99 as that was the retail price of the game in the shops. However £19.99 is still quite a bit lower than the current rrp of PC games which stands at £34.99. So surely it is still a bargain? However if you look at what you get for your money from both HL2: Episode 1 and the first SiN episode then maybe we are being ripped off. The first HL and SiN episodes both had a play time of around 5-6 hours, Half-Life 2 on the other hand had nearly 3 times that. So for an extra £15 you get around twice as much content. The series is set to get 2 more episodes to complement the first and complete the saga. So if each episode costs £19.99 then in order to see out the whole story you have to pay out £59.97. However if Valve were to make Half-Life 3 instead of the three episodes you would only have to pay £34.99 for it. Episodic gaming isn’t looking as good a bargain now is it. The same applies to SiN, but there are plans for up to 7 episodes which would cost in total £139.93 and judging by the first episode would contain around 3 full games worth of content.

It seems that if you really look at what is happening with episodic gaming then perhaps the consumer is getting a bit of a bum deal. In theory you are paying for a full game, but in three instalments and you are also paying more. This to me sounds like a bit of a rip-off as yet again games makers are trying to get as much as they can out of us gamers. It isn’t all bad news though. Valve recently stated that Episode 2 would include a number of added bonuses including the fabled Team Fortress 2 and new game Portal. Ritual also sweetened the SiN pot with the inclusion of the original game plus the expansion pack when you brought the first SiN episode. This I think is what developers need to do. £19.99 is a lot to pay for around 6 hour’s gameplay. So in order to beat this they need to either add in some bonuses like Valve are doing or increase the amount of content that comes with each episode.

Obviously this form of gaming is only in its infancy and it will be a while until things sort themselves out, but until then those who are going down the episodic route need to beware. As the price of gaming increases people are no longer able to buy so many games, so in order for episodic gaming to be seen as a viable avenue in which to deliver games to gamers they need to either reduce the amount of money they are charging for each episode or include more content. Otherwise it is will just be seen as a cynical rip-off.