Greg Kasavin Executive Editor

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Games get compared to movies all the time, but no one bothers comparing them to television shows. That's understandable, because, like movies, games are one-off deals. If we're talking about single-player games here, you play through them and then you're done. Now you can wait a year or two for a sequel. But I think there's something to be said for the episodic model that most television shows follow, and I see it as an untapped opportunity for game designers and publishers. You can maybe think of a few cases in which such efforts have failed previously. But I'm not yet willing to dismiss the idea as a bad one.

Majestic was an innovative attempt.

The best example of an attempt at an episodic game is Electronic Arts' Majestic--an innovative effort that captured a lot of nongamers' attention but simply didn't follow through as a compelling enough product. Basically, when you became a Majestic player, you embroiled yourself in conspiracy theories and a seemingly elaborate plot. Most Majestic players would agree that the first few days of the experience were completely unique and enthralling. Then, the game quickly tapered off. Majestic was intended to keep players occupied for months, but it just didn't pan out. I don't think that's the fault of the concept so much as a shortcoming of the game design itself.

There are some other examples. There's a little-known computer role-playing game called Siege of Avalon, which was originally released in episodic form--the first episode was free, and everything. Unfortunately, I never played the game for myself, and it was maybe a bit ahead of its time, since 100 megabyte downloads were pretty hefty back in the year 2000. At any rate, it's probably the closest example of what I'm getting at in this article, and I don't think the game's relative obscurity suggests that the episodic model itself was the problem. As another example, Bandai's .hack series was split into four installments released in three-month intervals. This series has a dedicated following, but the problems in the execution are undeniable. Essentially, each installment is virtually the same game as the next one, and seeing as the very first .hack game was a highly repetitive experience, well...let's just say the series starts to get pretty old after a while.

The .hack series was an interesting experiment, but as far as I'm concerned, it's not successful at creating episodic gameplay.

Also, arguably, some massively multiplayer online role-playing games feature a sort of episodic structure. Asheron's Call routinely featured "world events" that would change the lay of the land somehow, encouraging players to stick with the game for the long haul. Meanwhile, BioWare's Neverwinter Nights was designed from the ground up to support expansion modules. Two retail expansions have already shipped and have generally met with acclaim. So, some game developers out there have been exploring these possibilities. I think they need to get together with some shrewd business people and come up with a new distribution model surrounding the whole concept.

Imagine your favorite first-person shooter, role-playing game, or action adventure game. Now imagine that game broken up into one- to two-hour sequences. Now imagine that the first part was free and subsequent parts were delivered to you automatically for five bucks a pop, each month. Would you take the bait?

Max Payne 2 wouldn't have seemed so short if it had been split up into one- to two-hour installments and released episodically over time.

I would. Take the game Max Payne, or its sequel. Those games are already broken up into discrete parts. People like to complain that both Max Paynes are too short. I suppose they are, but only if you compare them to other games. The average nongamer would tell you that sitting in front of a screen for one or two hours is a good, long time. Meanwhile, I think the main reason Max Payne and its sequel seem so short is that they present captivating storylines and entertaining action, which collectively compel you to play through these games as quickly as you can.

If a game is fundamentally enjoyable--it plays well and has an interesting premise or characters or situations--then people would be more than willing to have their exposure to it rationed over time. I recently played through Metroid: Zero Mission for the Game Boy Advance, casually in an afternoon. It's a cool game, but the depressing thought then occurred to me that it's going to be months or years until the next one is released. The game is quite short and recycles most of the same assets and gameplay as its predecessors--it uses a tried-and-true formula, that is. So, why shouldn't Nintendo turn the adventures of Samus Aran into an ongoing saga, with new installments released every few months rather than years apart? I, for one, would be thrilled.

Here's the catch: These episodes shouldn't cost as much as "normal" games. One problem that's going to limit the expansion of games into the mainstream is that they're rather unaffordable at $50 a pop. If you split a good $50 game into a dozen $5 episodes, you end up making more money in the long run anyway--assuming you retain an audience over time, which admittedly is a questionable assumption. Still, who would say no to paying $5 or so for a great, neatly self-contained two hours' worth of entertaining gameplay and story?

Microsoft is playing Pin the Tail on the Donkey with this stuff right now with its pay-per-download Xbox Live content, so you know that's one company that's at least still experimenting. But I genuinely think that games could take the old television model of being packaged in neatly self-contained episodes with cliff-hanger endings that encourage audiences to come back for the next go-round. That way, we can all stop obsessing about how short games are, because there's no expectation that they're going to be these massive marathons in the first place. Game designers can instead focus on quality without worrying about having to pad these episodes out, and the law of economics dictates that the lower price point of such episodes would naturally encourage a larger audience.

Gamers are growing older. We don't all have time to spend eight or 10 hours at a time playing Final Fantasy. We also don't all have time to play games every single day. Sometimes we go back to a game we were playing and don't even remember what the heck we were doing. Sometimes we spend $50 on a game, never get all the way through it, and then wish we hadn't wasted our money. I think there are a lot of people out there who want to be gamers but don't want to make the commitment of living the "gamer lifestyle" of having their entire existence revolve around their hobby. And, as you've just read, I can think of at least one reasonable-sounding solution for people like that.