Valve rethinking episodic game plan
Category: PC, Posted: 09/25/2007 at 12:37PM CDT by Billy Wang, Previews Editor
All Valve delay jokes aside, they still deliver fine products, whenever they're released. Valve's Gabe Newell sat down with CVG and discussed possible changes to their episodic game plan.
"I think what we really want to do is have a couple of examples out there - Episode One, and how long it was to play and how long it took to develop, Episode Two, Portal and TF2 and then the third part of the trilogy; and then sit down with the community and say, 'OK, so what do you want?'"
One of the advantages of an episodic plan is that Valve can release continual updates to its Source engine in the form of bite-sized episodes rather than gamers having to wait several years for another Half-Life 2-like game.
Once Half-Life 2: Episode Three is released; Newell and company will take a look and evaluate its procedures.
Newell praised Telltale Games for its episodic game plan with Sam & Max: Season 1 and its upcoming Season 2 for this fall. Telltale gained kudos from gamers (including me) for releasing a new game episode every month, so for Valve to give the nod to the independent developer, is a good sign that they're heading in that direction too.
The Orange Box will be released for PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 on October 9th.
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As long as they don't take years and years to make tham, and the story quality doesn't take a nosedive, then i'll be happy.
episodic content ruined (k, not really ruined, but hurt) Half-Life for me. Half-Life 1 and 2 were big, long, epic games that you got excited about and looked forward to. episodic content took away that feeling.
It's kinda like yeah there's more half-life, but only about 4 hours worth; what's the point? I remember I finished episode 1 in one day, played it through a second time with commentary on, and haven't looked at it since.
I think it's a good strategy and approach to releases. For every episode you put out there you are feeding the dedicated fans of the series new twists and turns while inviting new players to come and see what the game is all about. Nobody wants to play sequels or in this case Episodes out of place so it can in turn develop all new fans to the series.
Books used to be episodic. I bet you never knew that!