For many people, 24 has rejuvenated the episodic formula of television drama. Where most TV series are predicated on each episode featuring its own discrete storylines and themes, 24 takes one long, convoluted plot (plus associated subplots) and spins it out over six months, slowly evolving each of its elements and characters. It is, metaphorically speaking, a novel rather than a collection of interconnected short stories.

The episodic game follows a similar pattern. The accepted model is that an opening episode, or chapter as it is sometimes called, is distributed free as an internet download. A month or so later, the next chapter is introduced over the web for a subscription fee, and so on until the game's narrative is complete.

It is a highly tempting model from a variety of perspectives. For developers it means making games as they go along, to a certain extent. For players it removes the expensive up-front shelf-price and gives them the opportunity to 'leave the game' if they don't like it or to stick with it if they do.

A good example is Siege of Avalon, a single-player mediaeval adventure game. It began life as an episodic game with its chapters available through the internet. Finally culminating with its sixth chapter, it was afterwards boxed up and sold conventionally as a CD-Rom. Downloadable chapters were then removed from the site in response to retailers undercutting the price by trading the boxed set at a mark-down.

Most forays into truly episodic gaming have, though, met sticky ends. Origin's Wing Commander: Secret Ops failed because the initial download size of 120Mb was just too massive for the majority of machines when it was released in 1998. EA's Majestic failed because it not only required players to access new episodes - it actually became intrusive: phoning them, faxing them, e-mailing them with new details and twists in the game narrative's conspiracy. A bit like Jack Bauer actually phoning you at home and telling you there's a bomb in your house. A grand experiment; but way too ambitious.

French games developer Quantic Dream is the latest in line to experiment with the formula. Their game Fahrenheit, due for release episodically in 2003 as download on PC, PlayStation2 and Xbox, is intended as a cop show merged with a sci-fi/horror series, in which players control multiple characters all trying to work out the mystery at the game's core - and whose actions influence those of the other characters in the plot. Each episode features a cliffhanger to draw players back for the next instalment.

David Cage, CEO of Quantic Dream describes the plot of Fahrenheit as "like a rubber band. It has a beginning, a middle and an end, but the player can affect it by their actions, changing its length or its form. At the end, the experience of two different players can be quite different, but they both have the key information needed to play the next episode."

Equally buoyant about episodic gaming are some of the head bods at Xbox Live, Microsoft's new online console gaming service. Microsoft spokesperson Michael Mott imagines online consoles and broadband delivering "episodic games that tell two-thirds of the story, and then each month you come back and a new download tells the rest. A great example would be Halo 2," he adds. "The story doesn't really end, it just kind of extends into the next mission, and so on."

It is of course an attractive business model: like MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games), episodic games, if good enough, almost guarantee a continuous revenue stream as players pay their subs each month. There is also clear appeal from an educational perspective, although it is highly problematic: pupils might be able to access fresh episodes after completing tasks from the last week, thus mirroring the episodic nature of timetabled lessons.

The major flaw in such an idea is whether episodic games, educational or otherwise, require players absolutely to complete one episode before proceeding to the next. It is accepted that a great many players never actually reach the very end of the games they have purchased; therefore, would episodic games be necessarily easy to ensure players proceeded to the end of each instalment? If this is the case, then many skilled players will find it simply boring. Games aren't just fun: they're hard fun - challenging - with the pleasure of success predicated on overcoming the difficulties that games present.

The episodic game-as-TV-series model seems inapplicable to education. Indeed, given that many theorists agree that games are at their most educationally useful when players are able to communicate and collaborate with each other, the single-player genre to which truly episodic games cleave seems wholly inappropriate.

More interesting possibilities lie then with multiplayer games such as Asheron's Call and Anarchy Online, where players may team up and cooperate as much as they may fight or compete with each other. These games aren't purely episodic. But the addition of updates and patches opens new possibilities, increases the narrative scope and offers more quests for players to complete.

In some respects this model reflects the ways in which teachers differentiate work to make it appropriate for all learners within one class. With online games migrating to web-enabled consoles, MMORPGs are likely to become more mainstream, and less the vanguard of the hardcore gamer. The Xbox Live starter pack even contains a headset allowing players to communicate vocally, and, via broadband connectivity, to send invitations to other players to join in team or competitive play.

Games with add-on or episodic content available easily through the internet are likely to become increasingly the norm, and increasingly easy to access. In the case of MMORPGs, generally this means increasing the historical and fantastical scope of the virtual worlds, although realistically-modelled scenarios could be presented that deliver information and opportunities to players in ways which more accurately mimic the real world, stimulating collaborative work both within the game as well as other work outside of it.

Episodic TV proves that with the right blend of appeal viewers will return for more; educationalists long for materials that will keep drawing children into learning activities; while games developers are becoming increasingly aware of the potential benefit to them and to players of the episodic games mould. Sooner or later, someone is going to crack the formula, and it could change completely players' relationships to computer and video games.


Links:

Siege of Avalon - www.siege-of-avalon.com
Fahrenheit - www.fahrenheitgame.com/htmlus/index.htm
David Cage interview in Wired Magazine - www.wired.com/news/games/0,2101,54188,00.html
Michael Mott interview on gamespy.com - www.gamespy.com/interviews/november02/xboxlive/index3.shtml


April 2003