Many Games Could be Episodic

Maybe it’s just my diminished attention span, but I’ve been recently playing Broken Sword and Red Faction: Guerilla, and I keep playing them in a stop and start fashion. I’ll pick the game up, play it for a few hours, then put it down and not come back for weeks or even longer. Oftentimes it’s because I don’t find the game engrossing enough to be hooked, and other times because another more interesting title has captured my imagination.

It’s a shame really, because they’re by no means bad games, but the experiences that they presented were designed to be continually absorbed over the span of a few days. We’re not supposed to leave large gaps between saving the game and loading it up again, and I often found that when I came back to games which I hadn’t played in a while I had to re-learn the controls, reacquaint myself with the happenings of the plot and generally suffer the indignity of dying or failing missions a few times before I got the hang of things.

Contrast that with Dead Rising 2: Case Zero. It was an experience that I could enjoy from start to finish, being satisfied when I reached the end, and resulted in me craving more a week later. The experience was compact enough and felt a lot like an episode. And this got me thinking: I decided that some of the continual experiences which I never got hooked on should’ve been divided up more evenly as episodes.

Take Sam & Max: The Devil’s Playhouse for example. After 3-4 hours of play, I could imagine myself putting the game down for a week or so before returning to it. Thankfully, because of the way Telltale had structured it – in episodic format – I could play an episode and forget about the series for around a month. When I was back in the action again, the game’s narrative was structured in a way that the cliffhanger of the previous episode kept the events fresh, whilst the cleanly divided structure of the gameplay didn’t deteriorate the quality of my experience.

The best way to describe The Devil’s Playhouse is that it’s digestable. When I put it down I didn’t feel as if I’d eaten half a meal, and it wasn’t like I’d started eating a half-eaten meal when I returned. Of course, an episodic structure doesn’t dictate how the game is sold and distributed. Alan Wake, for example, adopted the episodic structure too. That was a fully priced game, advertised and sold as such. Its episodic structure allowed cliffhangers and respite points perfect for pick up and put down play, and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience over the course of a month.

However, if those games were continual experiences like Broken Sword and Red Faction: Guerilla, I think I probably would’ve enjoyed them less; I would’ve had little motivation to go back to them in a week or so. Let’s also not forget that if I’d spent a good deal of time not playing them, a recap session might be in order before I could continue.

The episodic structure also shouldn’t be confused with levels. Whereas levels are shorter and encourage you to play just one more, episodes act as clear stopgaps in the experience. They tie up a part of the narrative until next time, sometimes leaving a cliffhanger or hook into the next one. Episodes could also include traditional levels inside them, carving them up with checkpoints for an overnight break or gaps of only a few hours. The end of the episode would then act as the marker for a more extended break, allowing the player to recharge their batteries.

The last great thing about episodes is that, as Alan Wake has proven, people who always prefer the continual experience don’t lose out from its episodic structure. I know a few people who played it as they would any other game, and the episodic structure had no negative impact their enjoyment; kind of like how having a back-to-back marathon of a great TV show on DVD isn’t necessarily a diminished experience when up against watching it weekly.

In keeping with the TV show analogy, it should also be acknowledged that there’s also room for the big blockbusters. That will never change with games, either. Titles such as BioShock, Mass Effect and Final Fantasy would suffer if they were cut up into episodic chunks designed to be easily digestible, and I’d be horrified if any developer compromised a great experience for that.

But the big difference between games like BioShock and games like Alan Wake is that I’d happily free up a few hours of my time over a number of consecutive days to complete BioShock in one big gulp; the experience is engrossing enough for me to dedicate that time. On the other hand, episodic or not, Alan Wake would never have gripped me in that way; its cliffhangers and digestible chunks were only to its benefit.