Problems of the episodic distribution model

The success of The Walking Dead has returned the interest of developers of mobile and not only games to the episodic model of content distribution. But is everything so good in the “Danish Kingdom”?

Interesting material on episodic projects appeared on Gamezebo. Is it called – Do long delays hurt episodic games? (“Do postponements of releases harm episodic games”). 

According to her, thanks to the success of Telltale Games, there is now a trend for such entertainment. You don’t have to go far for examples. Just last month, In Fear I Trust and République appeared on the App Store.

In theory, an episodic system is a good idea. Moreover, it is very relevant in today’s market, where new series can be distributed both as separate applications and as an IAP for an already released distribution. 

Four months, son, be patient (The Walking Dead)Another undoubted advantage is the ability to focus on the wishes of the players during the development of each series.

To highlight in the story those characters that everyone liked, to remove the moments that cause harsh criticism. 

But the approach also has quite obvious “pitfalls”. One of the main ones is long breaks between releases and, as a rule, constant delays. 

There is a situation when users are waiting for the continuation of the story not even for a month or two, but for all four (as happened with The Wolf Among Us from the same Telltale Games). Waiting leads to disappointment, to a negative perception of the product and the distribution model as a whole. 

Jacob Jones and the Bigfoot MysteryMoreover, some players have a fear that they will never see a sequel at all, for which, in fact, they have already paid money (if they bought the entire “package”).

And these fears are quite true.

The second episodes to the previously warmly-received Jacob Jones and the Bigfoot Mystery and The Journey Down never came out. One was released in May last year, the second in May 2012. 

Long breaks between releases also negatively affect the popularity of IP. The very idea of episodic distribution implies that by releasing series after series, the company is slowly strengthening the user base, spurring the visibility of the title. But if you don’t do that, why resort to such a model at all? To sell the same product twice/thrice? 

The Journey DownIt is clear that developers of large single projects often resort to such a scheme, which simply “did not pull” the whole development financially.

But where did they get the confidence that the money they collected would be enough to complete the game?

So it turns out that today release delays are rather working against this kind of distribution of games.

Let’s add on our own: it seems to us that such a scheme can work only if a large company takes over it, which from the very beginning will be able to establish a regular supply of content.