News Valve may reconsider episodic games

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2007/09/26/valve_may_reconsider_episodic_games/1

In a bold move, Gabe Newell says it may be up to gamers whether Half-Life continues in the episodic mould or returns to a normal release format after the current trilogy finishes.

or ?

 

tbh it takes them so long to release a single episode they might as well move to a full release thing once more - at least my PC will be up to date by the time they have the next one out!

 

Well, I only got around to playing Ep1 the other week...played about 2 hours per night and finished it in 3 nights. I actually didn't mind the limited length of the game - the last year has seen my spare time diminish, so shorter titles are good for me.

The problem I've got is that there's still a long wait between episodes. 1½ years to develop a 6 hour(ish) game seems a bit too long imo...especially since most of the work had already been done (engine, character models etc).

What's the estimated play time of Episode 2 then? I'm assuming it'll be similar to Ep1?

 

Fully in agreement. For time taken on each episode, and the TCO greater than that of a single game, I don't really like episodic content - I can see why people might, but I don't. And that isn't even taking into account the possibility that if one episode is unpopular, that the whole thing gets canned.

 

With the development cycle of the HL episodes i thought it had already been canned for short expensive games which bore only a passing resemblance to an episode . Seriously though if TV took this long to make Jack Bower would have very very long days. I think the only game which comes to mind as working episcopally was Sam and Max but i never got into them.

 

Wasn't HL2 only like 8 hoursish anyway? Admittedly the big chunk of time for HL2 was spent on the source engine, but the episodes still keep building on the engine, adding new feature and the like. We're getting near HL2 length games for less than HL2 cost, and a lot quicker than HL2 took to make.

 

evar? Your spellcheck is seriously dusty

Loving the episodes so far, HL2 was an utter anticlimax being a whole 4 hours of gameplay, with episodes each are this sort length along with all the other goodies like engine upgrades (multithreaded source) that will hopefully allow ep2 and/or ep3 todo some crazy stuff with physics and/or graphics.

After all SP games tend to have their place on my steam list, back to the 'normal' section once they're done, whereas the MP version that I would see as an extra (and excellent value - orange box) lives on to fulfill 'everyday' gameplay (TF2 is awesome, espcially in competative games)

 

Nah, get rid!

When I first heard about episodic games, I thought 'Great! That means we can carry on with the story pretty soon!'. I envisaged that with the source engine done (lest we forget how long THAT took!), they could now bang out a couple of new hours of gameplay every couple of months, with maybe 6~10-ish in total. Very short, but frequent, like a TV show.

But rather than re-using the engine to extend the story, they're re-using the story to extend the engine! HDR lighting and fancy cinematic physics (or whatever it is coming up) are all very nice, but its the story and the freaking GAMEPLAY that I am bothered about!

Lets have HL3 as a proper game, please!

 

Eps1 was rubbish, more of a retarded platformer than a shooter, intelligent or otherwise.

I hope after eps 3 they do go back to full games as even waiting 3-4 years is better than dripfeed delayed short pap

 

You kidding. Episode 1 may have been short, but it was not in any way rubbish and it was definitely not a retarded platformer. It introduced a far more in-depth character to the mix and you played along side in cooperation for a large part. The simple action of shining your torch on enemies so that Alyx could see them was brilliant.

 

seeing how long valve takes between the episodes it is questionable if we really want to wait till 2013 (or so) for HL3... so maybe better stick with the episodes...

 

I still remember, as many of you do, that feeling and rush of playing HL2 for the first time and being totally blown away by the excellent in-depth thorough story, and the sheer volume of coolness that oozed from the game. Ep1 added to that, but I wanted more. More!

I really think I'd prefer them to just work on a full game. That way you'll have everything in one big awesome package, instead of having a 'fix' with episodes.

 

episodic gaming was a good idea but has become a dud. I expected at least two a yr but valve has
dragged out episode2 way too long I think they should have put all this time into hl3. I think their
intentions were good but just could not pull it off complete games are the way to go

 

I believe gamers are patient enough to wait for a long-lasting and memorable game... the episodic content is not necessary, to put it simply.

 

i for one arent that patient. 1.5 year for a 3~4hr game? that sucks. really suck. especially when there are better games out there. i luv HL series, but the waiting in anticipation is getting frustrating. i wont even buy Ep.2 just coz im sick of waiting.

 

I think of episode content as a 2 hour game progressing every 2 oe three months. Although i loved EP1 in the playing, i was somehow diseponinted in the shortness of it. I wanted to play more, longer. If the mod community can make a a nice singleplayer mod in 5 months. Why does it take valve 2 years to make a episode?

Ok, you have to work on the storyline, but they must have worked out the whole universe in storytime by now since the HalfLife universe started a decade ago. Damn i'm getting way to old for this sh!t What i miss from the original HalfLife is the puzzle solving involved, or am i the only one who loved that? I say bring back the puzzles and do less shooting. This way it will take me more time to play the game to!

 

If you think about it, HL2 game-play was 10h. It took them 6~7years. HL2:EP1 was 4h, it took them 2 years to make it. If you think carefully, they gave us more content in a smaller period of time. If HL2 was episodic, you'd have roughly 3h game-play every 2 years. TBH... as long as I can play Half-Life, I'm more than happy, I'm wetting myself in excitement! HL series <3

 

im pretty sure the reason it took ep1/ep2 so long to come out was because for ep1, they had to come up with a new story to continue form hl2, and ep2 was probably done a long time ago, except they wanted to add tf2 and portal to the package, and those took a while to develop, etc...

so the time between each episodic release is justified, and for $45ish, getting 3 games (2 are single player, ep2 is prolly 5-6 hours of play, and portal could be up to 10 hours of play! i rly dont know :-/. and tf2 is multiplayer, so it will last as long as you feel like playing it, and from playing the beta, its pretty awsome.)

 

I'd really, really like to see valve set aside 2-3 maybe even 4 years to develop a MASSIVELY long game, but chunk up the end as maybe a second episode. Instead of 1 game with 8hrs of play & 3 extra "episodes" with 6hrs... makes 2 episodes of like 8-9+ hrs each. I'm more than positive if they are working on the 2 as a whole game and then just splitting it, it could be out in 3-4yrs. And make for one hell of a story.

 

the nice thing about episodic content is it has allowed valve to update the source engine for each engine, keeping a pretty outdated engine near the forefront

the downside, the engine is still cruddy and flawed, and their just milking it really, the games are far too overpriced (we payed almost as much for E1 (and/or E2) as we did for HL2, and E1 didnt come with CSS, etc etc), and it still takes them forever to make them