The Future is Now
Brendan Sinclair over at GameSpot has a feature chronicling the history of digital distribution in games. He goes all the way back to the early 80s with Gameline downloadable game service for Atari 2600, and works his way up to Valve's Steam, the casual games market, and console manufacturers like Microsoft and Nintendo who hope to see people downloading games through their consoles in the next generation. Sinclair gets responses from representatives of EB Games, which tried and failed at digital distribution a few years ago; Three Rings, the company behind Puzzle Pirates; Telltale Games, the developer of Bone and the upcoming Sam & Max game; and Infinium Labs, which still claims the Phantom exists.
At the moment, everyone has a stake in seeing digital distribution succeed or fail. It could give developers a way to circumvent the traditional retail model and get games straight to consumers. ... On the consumer level, digital distribution could change not only how gamers get their games, but also who they get them from, how much they pay for them, and even the demographics of who gamers are.Most of the industry professionals questioned seem to be aware that digital distribution won't come close to replacing the retail model any time in the near future; however, they all share a belief that it is a model whose time has come.
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That's not technically true. I mean it is for full-on AAA titles, but Valve doesn't want to use that model anymore. When I was at their offices they were talking very strongly about their desire to abandon in it in favor of smaller more focused titles such as Aftermath and the string of HL1 expansions. Aftermath is only $12.95, which is ludicrously affordable for even an expansion pack. The fact that they're breaking the $19.99 barrier is pretty surprising. Maybe the game is super small, but I doubt it.
They really want to focus on innovations and improvements on a more frequent basis (say yearly or twice yearly instead of once every six years) with quality products to showcase those improvements. They feel this will keep team members motivated and likely to not get burned out, which leads to fresher ideas. They also hope it will keep consumers happy, if they can end up spending the same amount or less over a long time period but have more frequent access to the content they like.
Then there's stuff like Rag Doll Kung Fu over Steam, which is an entirely non-Valve-related product, and is nowhere near the cost of a full game. Again, in terms of content, it's nowhere near the size of a full game, but the point is Steam is not relying on the $49.99 Full Game At Full Price model.-
I disagree with that approach as a replacement for AAA titles, an epic is much more enjoyable than a TV series. However I still like some TV. What we need is big companies like Valve continuing to make their 'epics' and smaller dev teams making the 'series'.
Episodic content has some serious story and design issues in film and literature, games like HL1+2 would have been no where near the same experience with episodic releases; they simply could not have been designed in the same way. This can be seen if you compare an epic novel with Charles Dickens; he is always creating false climaxes out of nothing in his stories because his novels were originaly serials. This creates many contrived plot devices and cheesy coincidences much like soap operas of today.-
I disagree on a certain level. A full-fledged film is anywhere from an hour and a half to three hours. Even a "short" game is ten hours long. Who says we need fifty hour games to tell a compelling story? Saying that to maintain the storytelling level of a two hour movie we need a twenty-plus hour game is a little overkill to me. When it really comes down to it, most "epic" games are very bloated when it comes to storytelling; they sacrifice any semblance of tight storytelling and cohesive narrative arc in the interest of just being really really long.
Of course I undertand that one big reason games are longer is because there's plenty of gameplay during which the story is not being told. However, companies like Valve are among those who clearly attempt to keep storytelling in the game at all times, not just in between the gameplay.
I welcome shorter, tighter games with open arms. In my opinion the best storytelling in a game to date--and I know this is an arguable thing, but it's my personal pick--is Full Throttle, and that game is very short. It provides an incredibly satisfying experience the whole way through, with incredibly well developed characters, a very well told story, absolutely face-exploding atmosphere, and it did it without having anywhere near as many hours as a Final Fantasy.-
I disagree that Valve attempts to keep the storyline going during the gamplay.. in fact, it's non-existent for the majority of the HL2, barring the first hour. Let's also not forget that we are playing games. I'm all for great storylines, but I dont want to see games focus on them if it means leaving gameplay 2nd.
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Half-Life 2 wasn't as successful in that regard as Half-Life 1 was, but that wasn't really the main point of my post. I don't see story as the most important element in games either, but I was responding to a post which at least from my understand seemed to be claiming that to tell a good cohesive story you need an "epic" and I was trying to disagree with that.
Anyway, for myself, there is no one most important element to games. A game can focus on story at the expense of gameplay, gameplay at the expense of story, visual style at the expense of level design, whatever, as long as it's GOOD. And the definition of what's good varies from game to game. As I was saying, I love Full Throttle, but I don't think that's necessarily what all games should aspire to be. The storytelling/atmosphere angle worked wondefully for that game, and for many it doesn't. There is no one right way.
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After playing the first episode of Bone, I'm a little wary of episodic content. It wasn't very satisfactory at all. You get 2 hours and you'll have to wait another 4-6 months for an update.
There's no fun in it when you have to pace yourself because you fear the, "to be continued" screen.-
Bear in mind Bone is only one example, though. I'd say to wait for things like Aftermath and SiN Episodes (or even Sam and Max) for what will probably be better showcases of this kind of thing.
As far as Bone goes, Telltale was kind of lacking a really good designer until now. They recently hired Dave Grossman (co-designer/writer on Monkey Island 1 and 2, Day of the Tentacle, etc.) and from what I've heard when he arrived he sort of went "Ok, what the hell is this, time to start over". I suspect future Telltale endeavors (including future Bone episodes) will be stronger.-
"Ok, what the hell is this, time to start over" hahaha. I like that.
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Unless....you have all the episodes planned out beforehand? I don't see what's so "epic" about about a normal game that sets it apart from episodic content. Do you watch TV? There are some VERY nice shows out there, that have less "contrived plot devices and cheesy coincidences" than the majority of movies.
Maybe we need episodic content to broaden our gaming pallet. How many games of that type have you played through? And how many games try to be this epic giant thing? It's not like all games from now on will be split up into chunks.
I just hope somebody makes an episodic game with the storytelling style of Cowboy Bebop. It seems perfect.-
What sucks about episodes, gaming or TV, is that if you like a show/game, but everybody else hates it, you get cut off from it and you never see any resolution in the conflicts, regardless of how you feel about it.
To a certain extent I agree that it would bring a new fresh breath into gaming, but I don't know if it's one I would want to toy with as a developer, especially if I'm a giant one. The smaller ones can of course test the market and whenever they get an adequete response they can continue, but the number of "failed first episodes" is what worries me. A developer is likely going to pull out of a project if it doesn't sell well the first time around.-
I'd think that a larger developer would have a better chance at this. Valve is pretty much self-supported at this point, no?
With episodic content I could see it being easier to guage what works and what doesn't. Since the development is spread across multiple episodes, each one could explore a different aspect of the story/gameplay/whatever just to see what works.
I think this would be harder in a normal game where the developers are pretty much going all in on a gamble. The years spent on the final product is a bigger risk than with smaller episodes that are spread out.
I'm no developer, so hopefully one will shed some light on the issue.
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Its nothing to do with planning, nearly all TV shows use cheesy and contrived devices, even the best ones. The good ones are just good enough most of the time to overcome this. There are exceptions to this but they could be counted on one hand. That is from about 50 years of mainstream tv, imagine what it will be like for games, which typically have poor writing.
The ammount of plot in a twenty hour game is often similar to that of a standard length film so it is comparable. Its not just about the plot though, its how the experience plays out, playing a game over 2-3 years is going to be different than playing it through in a week or 2.
Would you have rather have had LOTOR split up into 10 different films or watch it in 3 3hour+ chunks?-
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LOTOR is 3 different books. The book itself was better read as a whole rather than waiting ages for the next installment, however reading is a completely different experience to watching a film and more akin to playing a game in the time it takes up. Sitting in the cinema for 9 hours is not fun (some people do like watching LOTOR back to back, and starwars etc).
LOTOR is split up for time reasons and each section is longer than the average film/book so there are non of the issues related to serials.
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And no, not all long games are 'epics', personaly I think most fps games (and a lot of RPGs) are just plane shit. A lot of this has either to do with repetative gameplay (DOOM3 >:/ ) or horribly bad stories (Farcry). Those sort of games would be great as a episodic release, mainly because they are just about shooting stuff, which is fun.
Just like films; you have a lot of bad long films, like 'Alexander', and a few amazing ones, like 'Laurence of Arabia'. That doesnt mean people shouldnt try to make long films. It does, however, mean that people make fewer 'epics' and proects which are less well funded make either shorter films or TV series.
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I'm equally as skeptical
http://www.shacknews.com/ja.zz?id=10780313
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^^^ End of thread right here.
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I don't think digital distribution will mean lower prices as much as stable prices. Games cost more to make, one cost they can cut out is the middle man. Plus think of another possive: This about the gas saved by not having some truck ship a copy to a store and you driving to the store and back home.
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This is a huge issue with digital distribution and prices. I think the *potential* for digital distribution to bring prices down (or at the very least keep them from inflating) exists, but there needs to be a lot more competition in that space first.
When we released Savage, we sold it directly on-line as well as retail. We wanted to cut the price of the on-line purchase, but all the stores said they would pull it off the shelves if we did that, so we had to charge the same price in order to be in the retail space. I'm pretty sure the same sort of thing happenned with HL2. I think that once digital dist becomes more of a standard broadly accepted thing, the demands of retail will hold less sway and there will be competition in the new space.
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Yep, very true. That's what's nice about Aftermath being online-only (for now anyway). $12.95!
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they were under the contract with the publisher, so they couldn't bring the price down. But you are right, prices will not go down in the future anyway/
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The reason prices haven't come down is due to piracy. Piracy!!!! Scream it from the roofs. Oh wait I heard that back in 88 so goto another FUD boogieman publishers. You should get down on your knees and thank warez traders for keeping you alive.
Yeah the steam model works well. You pay the same price as a boxed version yet your the one doing all the legwork in d/ling it to your system and backing it up. Bend over some more you sheeple since you enjoy being screwed so much now.
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