I was listening to Gaming Steve‘s latest podcast and his take on episodic content. And it got me thinking…

Episodic content is good for the industry because it allows developers and publishers to realize their return on investment throughout the development lifecycle. No longer do they have to wait after a three-year long project to release a game to retail, cross their fingers, and see how it sells.

The development process itself shouldn’t benefit much from episodic content, and would probably end up being longer than doing it via the conventional model. If you look at a project plan for game development, the engine, or game architecture, is the biggest technical task and extends the development phase from end to end. Input into that – like the game assets and level creation – is typically conducted episodically. This way, milestones can be set throughout development and hands-on game testing and balancing can be done in a somewhat parallel fashion. So for episodic content, nothing really changes. The engine must be done, but these milestones now can be hard stops for release candidates.

What this does provide is the ability to create more diversified and original content throughout the life of a game. Assets are normally reused throughout a game, primarily to cut down on the time it would take to design and create them. This is why it is commonplace to see the same textures or game objects scattered throughout a game, or levels repeating themselves, or the same enemy models over and over again. With episodic content, these hard stops will allow design teams to rethink their assets and change as they see fit. In addition, the underlying game engine can also go through an iterative development process to tweak things like physics, squeak out performance increases, or even update multiplayer code. For the latter, I would assume if a game provides a multiplayer content, that it must be consistent throughout and compatible with all previously released episodes. But for the majority of the game, the game engine can evolve as necessary without any negative impact, tied together with a common user interface. A positive side-effect to this is the reduction in the number of patches – again, with the exception of multiplayer gaming, since one cannot depend on the consumer to buy all of the episodes to reap the benefits of future engine enhancements.

And one very important upside to episodic content is that it lends itself very well to digital distribution by nature. Digital distribution eliminates the publisher, and therefore puts the revenue solely in the hands of the developer. Sure, there is some overhead here that developers would have to take on which had been previously the role of the publisher, such as marketing and financials, but I think the positives still outweigh the negatives by a large margin.

But enough about the developers, is this good for the consumer? Certainly they wouldn’t want to be nickeled and dimed to death for game content. And one negative is that they may ultimately pay more than they would for a conventional release if they buy each episode. I would imagine the sales graph for episodic games would look peak early and slowly trend downward, with the majority of people picking up the first couple of episodes out of curiosity and hype, but rapidly dropping off as people lose interest or time to play them. The key for the developer is to keep consumers coming back. Whether that equates to shorter, more frequent bursts of content or lower episodic price points, the model remains to be seen.

The positives are, if done correctly, will produce game content on the whole that is longer than typical releases, with more varied gameplay and graphics throughout. It also allows the consumer to get their hands on a game earlier than normal. And of course, digital distribution means more impulse buying and sampling, especially at a lower price point. Ten dollars for four hours of instant satisfaction is a pretty enticing proposition for consumers.

I think the best test of episodic content for would be on the console space, specifically with an online service like Xbox Live, and used in conjunction with the traditional retail channel. For example, Halo 2 was well received but yet people complained that it didn’t have a proper ending. This may have been a result of a rush to get the product to market. But why not extend the life of the single-player game by releasing episodic content that would bridge the gap between Halo 2 and the inevitable Halo 3? One thing to be careful of is to not exclude gamers who do not have the means, either technically or financially, to participate in episodic gaming of this nature. Halo 2 and Halo 3 would build upon the main story arc, so that those who did not play the “bridge” episodes did not miss out on the overall story. To compare it to another media, it would be the way the Star Wars Clone Wars cartoon bridged Episode II and III.

But from a development standpoint, this would reduce initial investment of the product and realize the return on that investment much earlier than normal. In addition, it would extend the gaming experience and continue to drive revenue potentially longer than a typical retail product would, while keeping core development teams healthy and active by providing new content. Digital distribution of new content would benefit the developers financially, while continually driving new sales of the retail product to late adopters.

I think it’s inevitable that episodic content will happen, and will undoubtedly continue to evolve from its current infant state. But it looks at this early state that the positives to both developers and consumers clearly outweigh the negatives.