Sunday Thoughts: Episodic Content

Those of you who don’t listen to the podcast or pay much attention to me, and I can’t blame you if you largely ignore me, probably don’t know how much I love comic books. The fact is I love them a lot, an almost worrying amount if I’m honest. I have a lot of single issues, and the number increases weekly.

Whilst I love comics, I do often ask myself why I pick them up every week. I mean for almost every story you can wait six to eight months for a collected edition, and pay less money than you would if you picked it up as individual issues are released.

[drop]I suppose part of it’s wanting to keep up with everyone else, if you’re reading a story months after everyone else is done with it you can’t really have much of a discussion. Certainly a few people will talk to you about it, but you’re just going to have better conversations if everyone’s reading it at the same time. It’d be like watching Lost now and trying to have a conversation about a particular scene in one episode; you’re probably not going to get much response.

There are other elements that add to the draw of getting comics as soon as I can though, and it’s one of those I really want to talk about today. It’s the art of the cliffhanger, needing to know what what happens next. It’s about getting a bite sized chunk you can consume quickly and being left begging for more, being desperate to see just how Spider-Man survives this or how Batman beats the Joker this time. Obviously you’re pretty sure they’re going to win, I mean the hero does tend to, but it’s finding out how that intrigues and entices.

TV shows are the same as well, but here’s the important bit, the bit that most games seem to forget about when they talk about episodic content; it’s all about timing. A story driven TV show comes out every week, in some cases every day, and leaves you with enough to come back for the next episode. Comics tend to come out about once a month and that’s just about at the limit, comics that are on a fortnightly schedule do hold attention much better.

Any longer than a month though and you’re in trouble. There was (and possibly still is) a series called Scarlet, and interesting book about a fairly normal girl sparking a rebellion against the corrupt police force in her city. It was intriguing, enjoyably paced, well written and, because it was on a bi-monthly schedule, I’d often forget what had been happening in the last issue. It disappeared after five issues with very little information on its future, and now I can’t remember many of the plot details beyond the broad overview.

It seems odd then that episodic content for games rarely seems to hit to the kind of quick schedule that works so well in other mediums. Looks at The Walking Dead, episode one was in April and although the second episode was scheduled for this month there’s been little word on it so far.

There are, obviously, different development concerns with games, and they have to go through certification in a way that no other medium does. Still, it seems like some of this could be taken into account, or more content could be produced in advance.

This seems to be the approach that Spartan Ops is taking. If you don’t know about Spartan Ops, it’s an episodic co-op campaign for Halo 4. A new episode will hit each week and, impressively, each features five missions as well as narrative content. 343 have also said that they’re trying to weave narrative strands into those missions, something that’s certainly welcome.

[drop2]The best aspect though? It’s completely free as long as you have Xbox Live Gold and, given that it’s an online co-op campaign, requiring Gold isn’t really much of a restriction.

Of course I’m not saying that every developer should make their episodic content free, that would be lunacy. Obviously Microsoft are throwing money at this, and that’s also probably helping in making sure it hits every week. Still, it’s hard to argue that the general approach to the content isn’t good.

Whilst I suppose some may feel a bit overwhelmed by new content every week, I think it’s a fantastic approach. It keeps the game fresh in peoples minds and by having it hit weekly 343 and Microsoft can create a real buzz around the product long after its release.

Would it work for a product that’s entirely episodic though? I really don’t know. Without a big budget like Halo it might be tricky to pre-load all of the content, but then again you have to do it for a non-episodic release. I mean if you release a full game you have to have everything ready to go before release, why is this such an issue for developers working on episodic titles?

Maybe the simple answer is that games just can’t work in episodes, but I’d like that to not be the case. Whilst huge games can be great, it’d be nice to see someone really nail down the episodic style with a quality story told every week or fortnight. It would be nice to see those differing approaches, and I don’t think one would harm the other; just because I love TV shows doesn’t mean I don’t see films right?