Epic Games VP Mark Rein called episodic gaming a "broken business," triggering outrage among some delegates during the Develop Conference in Brighton, England today. During his keynote, Rein also talked about the economics of next generation console development, offering useful tips to developers and pubs, and in an entertaining tirade, he tore into Intel, saying the chip maker "ruined the PC gaming business."
Regarding the hot topic of episodic, he said, "I've heard a lot of insane talk about episodic content. Very little of it makes any actual sense. It's a broken business."
He explained, "Customers are supposed to buy half a game for $20, then wait six months for an episode? When I put a game down, I want to try a new one. Episodic games that offer faster turnaround will inevitably be using a lot of recycled content, walking through the same environments and shooting the same enemies with the same weapons."
From the consumer standpoint I certainly agree. I would rather spend $40-50 on a game that has a full plot line then $10 here and $20 there for story fragments.
Basically episodic content means we're going to be left with cliffhangers on every other game to try and get us to buy the next episode. What happens when the game is cancelled? We'll never know what happened to Johnny Spacedoom as he entered the vortex because company A just went bankrupt!
Johnny Spacedoom unfortunately was unable to escape the vortex as he was using the same weapons, and equipment that he was provided in Spacedoom Episode 1.
Sorry to spoil the plot!