Square-Enix's New Episodic Formula May Be a Good Thing

[Deshin]

Hi all, been a while since I've posted but after some stuff shaking down in the game world recently and based on some conversations I've had with people, I'd like to share my own thoughts on the subject and see what everyone else thinks about it.

For those not in the know, please see here: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/165887-Hitman-Goes-Fully-Episodic
and if Jim Sterling is to be believed, this mindset is going to be applied to other games in the SE roster like Tomb Raider and Deus Ex: http://www.thejimquisition.com/2016/01/why-square-enix-is-carving-its-games-to-bits-the-jimquisition/

Now everyone is up to date, let's dive in.
I'll be up front about it, I believe that Square-Enix's new policy of making their games episodic is a good thing.
The primary reason being? Those types of games are the ones that would be best suited to being Episodic.

I'll explain. Let's take Hitman as that's the one that's up there for sure, I'll go into Tomb Raider and Deus Ex later.
There have been 5 "main" Hitman games: Hitman: Codename 47, Hitman 2: Silent Assassin, Hitman: Contracts, Hitman: Blood Money, and Hitman: Absolution. These games have all had the same rough theme; "You are a Hitman and you kill people", with the game being based around levels/missions with a specific target(s) and various ways to go about it. There has been some story element but for the most part it's only fluff in the larger scale of "you're assassinating people".

These days every primary game system, be it PC or Console, has a Hard Drive and an Internet Connection. Ok SURE there are the outliers to that train of thought, but those can be worked around via still releasing physical media (if Minecraft can do it, anyone can). The old system of "Company makes game" -> "Company puts game on disc" -> "Customer buys game" -> "Customer plays game running off the disc" is an old model and was the standard because of the limitations of the time.

Let's theorize and daydream for a moment. Imagine Hitman was to be released today as a brand new IP. Would it be SO bad if instead of a "new game" every 2 years (old release model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitman_(video_game_series)#Games) there was a single "core" installation of "Hitman: The Game" and "new content" was delivered as a slew of 4-5 missions (a single campaign, if you will) every 6 months?

As we're still fresh into this console generation there's not much that can be improved upon vertically. Even if you look at the first 4 Hitman games all on the PS2 there wasn't much of an improvement from first to last aside from visual fidelity, which can also be administered over the course of this new idea's timeline via updates. I'm not saying every year they have to rewrite the coding to really bling it up, but, and let's be honest here, how much prettier/shinier are games going to become? If they release a "normal" Hitman game this year on PS4/XBone/PC how much visual change will there be to 2018's release, or 2020's?

This part is subjective and won't be shared by everyone, but personally speaking I always thought the storyline got in the way of the Hitman games. When I think back on playing I don't even remember what the storyline really was about. I remember some stuff about him being betrayed? The things I remember are sneaking around a mansion in the moores, or a redneck wedding party, or a fancy hotel. Hitman, at its' core and most fun, is being put into a situation devoid of context and working out the gigantic puzzle to kill the target. Thinking about it, Hitman: Contracts was essentially what we're talking about. The whole thing was one gigantic series of flashbacks giving us unrelated, stand alone missions; and that game was awesome.

So if we look at the whole formula objectively; a series like Hitman is prime for being Episodic. I think that people are knee-jerking to the idea because the water has been tainted. When people see games being "cut up" their first thought is Day One DLC or games with content purposefully stripped out in order to be sold back to us after the fact. This... is a legitimate argument and unfortunate reality of the industry. but just because shady practices have gone on in the past doesn't mean that we should preemptively brand every new idea with the same branding iron just because, "This thing is a similar thing to this thing and is therefore bad!"

At the end of the day, if we love Hitman as a series and a franchise, then this new method of development and production, if viewed objectively, could be a good thing. There is of course a lot of faith to be had going in here though. There's no assurance that they won't scrap the idea after a few months in, or end up nickel and diming us to hell and back, or pushing out missions that are scarcely a couple of hours of entertainment and slapping a $20 price-tag on it. But the thing is those fears and worries could happen at any time already. What's the difference between pushing out a "proper" Hitman $60 release then just adding DLC to it? There's no real difference, only that instead of multiple separate games DLC for each one you have a single "big" game with a lot of DLC. In a way it's reminiscent of MMOs releasing expansions instead of a typical "Game + DLC" model.

As for Tomb Raider and Deus Ex? I postulate the same argument above can be applied to them as well.
Tomb Raider at its' best is raiding tombs. The title is a dead give-away. The big complaints people have with Tomb Raider is when they try to ham-fistedly shove in a storyline into a game that doesn't need storyline. "Oh no, now Lara is dead!", "Now Lara is alive but she's been framed for murder!", "Now Lara is a child and look at this struggle to overcome!". I say it's all a bunch of wank. Tomb Raider at its's best never relied on story as anything more than a reason to go into this place and gun down the inhabitants. Similar to Hitman: Contracts being nothing more than a flashback plot-device to give us a slew of missions without storyline connecting it altogether, so too was Tomb Raider Chronicles (5) which saw Lara's friends sitting around telling stories of her adventures; once again a fab game.

Same can be applied here with "Tomb Raider: The Game" being a core installation housing all the main components and the mansion for kicks and packs of missions being released every few months. "Pack 1" can be Lara hunting down the fabled Bow of Patachiki in Peru spread across 4 missions, "Pack 2" can be Lara hunting down the legendary Headband of *Obscure-Deity-Here* in Timbuktu. You get the idea.
This method would work for Hitman and Tomb Raider because those games, at a very core level, would be well suited to an Episodic Formula. They come in missions and storyline has only ever fucked over the respective titles instead of invigorating them. No one gives a shit about the protagonists and their moping, no one wanted goth Lara Croft in Angel of Darkness; we want to raid tombs and assassinate targets and this could be a big step forward in bringing those core principals back out into the spotlight.

Deus Ex is a bit tricky because that game IS something is heavily plot driven. Of the 3 IPs being considered it would be the biggest overhaul in driving the game forward. But once again, being objective, I COULD see a series like Deus Ex falling out of a storyline-favoured format and falling into a "You're basically Robocop, go do Robocop things".

Before I wrap this up I'd like to address one more thing. Why are people so up in arms about Episodic format but Telltale Games gets a free pass? Sure it's "their thing" and if you go into a Telltale game you come to expect it; but taking a huge step back I believe that Telltale are more guilty of what people say SE are trying to do than SE themselves. The Telltale Games' titles (Walking Dead, Wolf Among Us, Game of Thrones, etc), though being episodic, are all heavily connected via larger over-arcing stories and come off as feeling a LOT more like "a full game cut up into pieces". If you buy The Walking Dead (which you totally should because that game rocked), you can't skip Episode 3. I mean, you *can* but if you play the rest you'd be missing something. But with Hitman or Tomb Raider you can skip a game and not miss a beat, and hopefully that would apply to the proposed Episodic Format as well. "Oh you didn't buy last month's pack with Lara in the Amazon? Here's her in the mountains of Laos, enjoy!", with no connecting storyline of "Why is she here?", or, "What happened to that NPC?" you could miss from a connecting episode.

Maybe we should give SE a shot here and see if they can make something special. Yes it CAN go badly and burst into flames and permanently ruin the respective francise, but that's a gamble we take every single time a game is released. Underworld did it to Tomb Raider and that was sticking with the old method that people are clamoring for. Adapt or die, food for thought.

 

[Here Comes Tomorrow]

Here's the issue:

Steam currently has Hitman 2016 listed as ?50, it gives no indication of being episodic.
Squeenix will of course charge for new episodes.
People do not like paying ?50 for part of a game, even less than they like being charged ?25 to buy other parts of the game that should have been included in the first place.
The differece between DLC and Episodic should be obvious.

There is no part of this that works out better for the consumer. It is entierly designed to get more money from us.

Also, its the same problem as Kickstarter, Season Passes and pre-buying. You're paying in advance for no guarentee of quality. It's not so bad for episodic games because you don't have to buy the other parts, but if you don't buy them you're still left with an incomplete product

 

[DrownedAmmet]

Here's the issue:

Steam currently has Hitman 2016 listed as ?50, it gives no indication of being episodic.
Squeenix will of course charge for new episodes.
People do not like paying ?50 for part of a game, even less than they like being charged ?25 to buy other parts of the game that should have been included in the first place.
The differece between DLC and Episodic should be obvious.

There is no part of this that works out better for the consumer. It is entierly designed to get more money from us.

Also, its the same problem as Kickstarter, Season Passes and pre-buying. You're paying in advance for no guarentee of quality. It's not so bad for episodic games because you don't have to buy the other parts, but if you don't buy them you're still left with an incomplete product

It pretty much comes down to that, your buying parts of the incomplete game.

It could work, I think most players don't finish most games, so if it's done right, so if you release a game in smaller chunks conceivably people would be more likely to finish them

I've only seen it done well for adventure games, though

 

[meiam]

Well because that means every 6 month I'll have to remember what happen last time and how to play the game, I could possibly forget some feature or gameplay element in between. And this is assuming I still care and remember about the game in 6 month. And there's also the fact that your hoping it all work out once you buy the first game, they could very well decide that sales are disappointing and just drop the game unfinished. If they do make these game episodic I'll just buy them once everything is release, so there essentially a big delay.

Also half life tried the whole episodic, didn't work at all.

Telltale game are pretty much tv shows so people are already used to waiting awhile between every episode. And there gameplay (I use the term very loosely) is super simple so you don't really have to get back in them.

 

[Deshin]

Steam currently has Hitman 2016 listed as ?50, it gives no indication of being episodic.

As I linked before, http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/165887-Hitman-Goes-Fully-Episodic
Steam's pre-order information is out of date.
"The first episode will cost $15, with each following episode costing $10 each - or you can purchase the whole game for $60."

People do not like paying ?50 for part of a game, even less than they like being charged ?25 to buy other parts of the game that should have been included in the first place.

This is a slippery slope because when it comes to extra content the drawn line can be subjective. (unless it's something blatant like Capcom actually selling on disc content's unlock codes) Because you could also say "I'm not buying the sequel, it's just content they cut out of the first game." Of course that is not always the case but when it comes to Episodic content you can either look at it as "Cut content they'll charge us for later" or "Content that wouldn't have ever been made if it didn't sell well". Much in the same way a sequel might never get made if the first title doesn't sell. Or how about movies that end on cliffhangers? Isn't that, in and of itself, a form of cutting content to have to watch multiple movies when you could have put it into a single movie? Example: Did The Hobbit need to be a trilogy?

There is no part of this that works out better for the consumer. It is entierly designed to get more money from us.

Except that it might be a better distribution method than the current system.

It feels like you didn't really read my argument that I put forward; all your points/rebuttals were addressed in my initial post with no further explanation than just restating the counter points.

 

[Cowabungaa]

It could work, I think most players don't finish most games, so if it's done right, so if you release a game in smaller chunks conceivably people would be more likely to finish them

At the same time you run the risk that people lose interest after certain episodes because it's taking too long for the next episode to come out. I've been running into that problem with Talltale's GoT game.

With Hitman specifically we also have no idea how many episodes they want to release. The way they're going about it sounds to my ears like one thing and one thing alone: "We're only going to finish the game if enough people are going to buy it."

 

[sXeth]

Their best bet would be if the episodes were self-contained, with minimal nods to an over-arching plot.

Like the first 3 ACs, minus the drag-out spinoffs of 2, and ideally with a better payoff.

If you try and strain the usual games story out over a huge period with gaps, and no real conclusions in episode, people are going to fall off the train pretty quick.

 

[Lufia Erim]

You know. Call me old school, but i prefer to buy my games when they are whole complete experiences. Instead of having to remember a year down the line what was going on back when i was playing before. It's kind of why i will see an rpg to the end. If i take a break I'll forget what was going on and why I'm doing what I'm doing.

Not to mention the pricing better be on point. If you expect me to pay full price for episodes you are sadly mistaken. I rather wait until the entire game is out and pay 60$ for the full thing IF i am interested in your game.

Also, if i so much as hear an episode is sloppy or isn't good, you can forget the whole deal. If i hear episodes 1 and 2 are good, episodes 3 and 4 are awful but episode 5 is amazing, i still won't buy it.

And If they dare end the last episode on a cliffhanger, you are dead in the water.

All that being said, if others like this format , more power to them , but like i said, I'm old fashioned.

 

[Hairless Mammoth]

Something like Hitman might, might, work as an episodic release, but the any publisher that wants to move their AAA franchises to that model would have actually take care to release a decent product. Squenix isn't as infamous as Warner Bros, EA, or Ubi when it comes publisher with some kind of bad reputation, but they've pulled plenty of the typical ill thought out, greedy AAA publisher moves too. I can see Square messing up Hitman and the FF7 remake's business model in many ways. I already think splitting up the remake of any open world RPG will greatly affect the quality and pacing of the game (for the worse).

There is definitely the issues others have mentioned above, too. Enough people loosing interest midway through a series, sales numbers being too low, development of the next installment getting far behind schedule, or the dev closing down for whatever reason can all kill an episode game. Publishers need to work on their quality and customer (and employee) trust issues before trying to radically change the landscape.

What is getting glanced over is the internet connection issue. Yeah, most people with high end systems now have them plugged into the interwebs, but there are still groups with slow, capped or nonexistent connections, such rural households, travelers, military service members, and even people who only use mobile internet, maybe out of financial necessity. (The high speed internet availability in the US is garbage, even in many urban neighborhoods.)

For multiplayer, the internet has become mandatory,[footnote]Partially because local multiplayer features have been purposely picked out of games over the years by the publishers.[/footnote] and the massive day one updates are required. But a person only interested in the single player may still buy the discs to stay under their stupid data caps, to avoid long download times,[footnote]Preloading may not be an option, or they may not have been interested in the game/episode at the time.[/footnote] or just because they can't download games. Any episodic game would have those people waiting for a disc containing all or a few episodes to eventually come out, if it does. A few episodic games now and then would help with those with higher data caps, but that may be nullified if every game they wish to play ends up on a monthly or bi-monthly release schedule.

I do see more publishers would want to jump on this bandwagon to curb used game sales on consoles and to cut development costs (First episodes didn't meet sales expectations? Cancel current project and have the dev work on a new title.), but it's a matter of if they can get people swayed over.

 

[Saetha]

Deus Ex is a bit tricky because that game IS something is heavily plot driven. Of the 3 IPs being considered it would be the biggest overhaul in driving the game forward. But once again, being objective, I COULD see a series like Deus Ex falling out of a storyline-favoured format and falling into a "You're basically Robocop, go do Robocop things".

Okaaaay, but... wwwhhyyyyy?

Like, no comment from me on Hitman and Tomb Raider, because I've never played either (I was going to try Hitman until I learned a new one was coming out and decided to just wait to see if it's worthwhile.) and personally I don't care one way or the other about Square Enix's new episodic format. It's something they've never tried before, and I won't pass judgement on it as a good (or bad) idea until I've seen their execution. Maybe they'll do a stellar job of it. I dunno.

But, taking the Deus Ex out of Deus Ex? That does sound like a bad idea to me, a fantastically awful one as a matter of fact. The first Deus Ex lived and died on it's story, and Human Revolution might not be as great in that regard, but it still fascinated me more than most game stories. Certainly, the story never seemed to get in the way of anything (It was fumbled a bit at the end, maybe, but even that wasn't getting in the way.) Why would you want to make it Robocop: The Game? In an industry already painfully simplistic in it's use of narrative, you want to diminish one of the few games that, while not maybe not succeeding, at least tries to be more than "Murder people, don't ask questions." - and that's just not cool with me.

Abandoning narrative is never something that should be encouraged, and it certainly shouldn't be counted as a point in the game's favor - if anything, it's a negative a game most overcome. Perhaps, instead of saying game narratives are awful and they should forget about trying to actually tell a story, you should encourage to them tell their stories better, yeah?

 

[Redryhno]

I think a reason why Telltale games usually gets a free pass when it comes to their episodic model, is that they're games aren't really games per say, more like interactive movies or to put it properly a television series, and the fact they barely contain any element of gameplay, plus it's TT's shtick and people are more familar with them doing it.


When you have a publisher dividng a game into parts or episodes, a game like the FF7 remake (Which I still think doesn't need to be remade) or Hitman, games with actual gameplay, then we have a problem here.

Arent super story heavy games like what Telltale does far worse for the episodic model than a game in the model that the OP suggested?

It's a lot easier to forget a plot than the gameplay, and it's easier to relearn gameplay if you start from the middle again than a complex storyline.

And exactly what about Telltale makes you think they have complex storylines? Otherwise I'd mostly agree with you here. Also every episode they put out largely is its own self-contained story with an objective and is hinged on a cliffhanger at the end of pretty much every single one.

And I also disagree on gameplay being easier to relearn than plot. Especially in the Hitman games where there's quite a bit of different interactions with different items that you actually have to learn to begin with.

 

[Foolery]

Here's the issue:

Steam currently has Hitman 2016 listed as ?50, it gives no indication of being episodic.
Squeenix will of course charge for new episodes.
People do not like paying ?50 for part of a game, even less than they like being charged ?25 to buy other parts of the game that should have been included in the first place.
The differece between DLC and Episodic should be obvious.

There is no part of this that works out better for the consumer. It is entierly designed to get more money from us.

Also, its the same problem as Kickstarter, Season Passes and pre-buying. You're paying in advance for no guarentee of quality. It's not so bad for episodic games because you don't have to buy the other parts, but if you don't buy them you're still left with an incomplete product

Yup. When I hear a game has a season pass or DLC coming sometime, my typical response is to wait and buy the GOTY edition at a discounted price.

 

[shrekfan246]

It could work, I think most players don't finish most games, so if it's done right, so if you release a game in smaller chunks conceivably people would be more likely to finish them

I've only seen it done well for adventure games, though

I can see how the theory might be arrived at, but most evidence points to the contrary. Tons of people barely even finish the first episodes of things like TellTale's games, and then because they have to wait two+ months before the second episode is even available, the interest is completely gone. And the interest for new adopters or most early buyers is only going to go down as time passes on, because episodic titles almost entirely stop getting press after their first episode releases.

It's perhaps not the best metric to measure with, but when you look at the global achievement stats on Steam, for a large number of story-driven games even the "beat the first chapter" achievement tends to hover around a 34% achieved rate. For most games these days, you can get that first achievement within the first hour or two of starting the game. When the majority of people who have bought your game don't even get that far in, why would you ever think they're going to keep coming back for new installments every few months?

Also, the thing that makes me love Human Revolution so much isn't running around Detroit/Hong Kong/Montreal doing Robocop stuff, it's the narrative that ties everything together. Cutting the narrative to ribbons to accommodate an episodic release sounds like a monumentally bad idea to me (and as much as I found the gameplay of Human Revolution to be enjoyable, it was nowhere near good enough to hold up the game on its own merits).

 

[Something Amyss]

I'll be brief about this, but part of the problem is the trust needed to invest in episodic content. A lot of companies have really screwed the pooch on this in the past, and I don't particularly trust Squarenix to do it better.

I am either investing 15 bucks in a partial game on the promise of more content or 15 dollars on a complete game on the promise of additional content. I don't trust a large franchise to do that, honestly. Especially not the same publisher where Hitman, Tomb Raider, and Sleeping Dogs all sold millions of copies and somehow were disappointing.

Yes, I probably would give a smaller franchise more leeway. More, not total.

 

[Redryhno]

Maybe complex was the wrong word, but it's mostly because A) They actually have one, and B) It's pretty good.

Debatable. Only story they've done I've actually cared enough about to buy the game instead of just watch someone else go through it is Wolf Among Us. Which I'm pretty sure they're never going to return to because it's easier to ship jump with franchises to make their initial money over and over again...Really ticks me off.

And if they ARE good, then you'd think that you'd easily remember them because of their quality, don'cha think? Personally I just bought the whole thing after seeing the first episode and just waited for when it was finished before I played it.

 

[Ryallen]

When Jim Sterling reported on this and used FF VII as the example, I remember him saying that each installment of the game, which would be cut into four parts, would be $15 total or $50 for the "season pass" and then started talking about it being bad and full of shit without really talking about why. Truth be told, while I wouldn't be okay with all companies doing this, it's not like it's a bad model inherently, and as you said, Telltale AND Squeenix have proven that this can work well if done right, and they have in fact done this right. Story driven games in theory would be very difficult to do, but as we've seen, they obviously do. The Hitman thing seems like it would actually work, if Squeenix was willing to remove the story from the installments that they would put out. Deus Ex, however, I can't really see happening, as it is entirely story driven.