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Okay, so the whole debate about episodic games has been done to death. Don’t worry, I won’t start blabbing about the reduced risk for developers or that whole value-for-money issue. Almost everything about those topics has already been said. I want to talk about something else. You see, while most people see episodic gaming as a new production model, I think its most important advantage is actually being somewhat overlooked. Sam & Max shows, most of all, how episodic games function as a marketing model.

Sam & Max are on a monthly release schedule, meaning there’s a Sam & Max news cycle every two weeks — alternating between reviews of the current episode and previews of the next one. That means blogs have something new to write about every two weeks. That means players are reminded of Sam & Max every two weeks. Like an inverse pyramid, coverage for later episodes promotes the earlier episodes, in theory lifting the season as a whole.

If that doesn’t break with the traditional hit-driven nature of the video game industry, I don’t know what does.

Having said that, Telltale’s approach is also vaguely reminiscent of what another company already did years ago. As much as Telltale is seen as a continuation of the LucasArts adventure game tradition, I actually prefer to liken them to (gasp) good old Sierra. I know I’m making a pretty far-flung connection here, but I think their focus on episodic games is actually sort of a miniature version of Sierra’s sequel strategy (King’s Quest, Space Quest, Leisure Suit Larry, Quest for Glory, etc.). Telltale isn’t building the perfectly polished, completely original and at times visionary adventure games that LucasArts made. They are setting up multiple pillars (Sam & Max, Bone, CSI, and hopefully more) each with multiple installments. Not polished to extreme perfection, just solid product. It’s about brand building and getting gamers to come back for more. I think that approach fits really well with Sam & Max, which is a pretty weird and niche intellectual property (but one that lends itself to an episodic structure very well).

There are always games with such a broad appeal that, given the right marketing campaign leading up to the Big Launch, they can immediately sell millions. But not all games are like Gears of War or The Sims (thankfully!). Some games need time to gather buzz. Sadly, most games don’t get that chance. If a game doesn’t immediately sell, it’s pulled from the shelves. Telltale circumvents this through digital distribution. On top of that, since Sam & Max has six little releases spread over half a year instead of one big launch, the series is allowed to gradually reach boiling temperature.

I’m reminded of what Monkey Island creator Ron Gilbert said in 2005 in an interview with Idle Thumbs about the critically acclaimed but financially lackluster Beyond Good & Evil:

I think the problem with those games is, publishers put out a new game and then when it fails, they turn around 180 degrees and run away from it. What they need to do, what Ubisoft needs to do, is do Beyond Good and Evil 2. They should immediately turn around and do that again, because that game got very good reviews, it certainly has—I don’t know if I’d call it a cult following—a group of people who really like that. There’s something about that game that appealed to people. They should hit it again.

In the same interview he also mentioned his past company Humongous Entertainment, which created the long-running series of Freddi Fish and Pajama Sam games. “It really wasn’t until we’d put about three or four of those things that it started to catch, and when it did, it caught really really big.”

I guess what I’m suggesting here is that episodic is theoretically the same as doing lots of sequels, except it’s all compressed in a very short timeframe making it a lot more feasible for a small independent developer to pull off.

Now, I actually have no idea what Sam & Max’s sales numbers are, but it is apparently selling well, and I’d be surprised if each new episode didn’t also see a small boost in full season purchases. Of course, the flip side of the increased exposure gained from a monthly release schedule is the risk of overexposure. You want people to anticipate the next game and not get burned out. I think Sam & Max will probably hit a ceiling when episode six comes out. Fortunately, if there is ever a second season, there will probably be a long gap between the two that would get people warmed up again.

While I do believe that episodic brings some new creative possibilities, such as character arcs, running jokes and call-backs to previous episodes (here’s some further reading I found in the comments yesterday) I think that what I just tried to describe is the real lesson to learn from episodic gaming.

TO BE CONTINUED.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 30th, 2007 at 1:44 am and is filed under Adventure games, Game Industry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.