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Epic's Mark Rein Slams Episodic Gaming
by Chris Remo, Jul 12, 2006 9:00am PDTDuring the Develop Conference in Brighton today, Epic Games VP Mark Rein delivered a keynote about the economic issues of next generation development, and the outspoken executives had some harsh words for the growing trend of episodic game content. "IÂ’ve heard a lot of insane talk about episodic content," he said. "Very little of it makes any actual sense. ItÂ’s a broken business." Rein believes that the nature of episodic development will lead to too much repetition in games.
He explained, “Customers are supposed to buy half a game for $20, then wait six months for an episode? When I put a game down, I want to try a new one. Episodic games that offer faster turnaround will inevitably be using a lot of recycled content, walking through the same environments and shooting the same enemies with the same weapons.” He said that episodic games could never compete will full-priced products. “They’re competing against massive marketing budgets. Distribution without marketing is worthless. You can’t buy retail marketing with a wholesale price of $15.” He added, “Full-price games have a cohesive start, middle and end.”In fact, stated Rein, the games industry already operates on a proven episodic model as illustrated by the industry's frequent spinoffs and sequels. "What scares me is people betting their business on making money out of this [new episodic model]." Companies such as Valve and Telltale Games currently have business plans with a heavy emphasis on episodic content. Some of Rein's statements were reportedly criticized by the keynote's audience. "Mark, you are a dinosaur, you are wrong," said one attendant, according to Next Generation. Another pointed out that Rein's company's flagship product, Unreal Engine 3, is heavily geared towards high-end, high-budget game development, and his comments regarding episodic content may be biased and self-serving. Rein noted that Epic offers an Xbox Live Arcade model for its engine. Indeed, Naked Sky's upcoming Live Arcade and PC title RoboBlitz uses Unreal Engine 3. However, based on a Naked Sky press release regarding the game, that situation may not be particularly common. "Next-generation game engines like Unreal Engine 3 use very large textures which make the 50MB requirement essentially impossible to meet with existing technologies," reads the statement; the developer avoided the problem by licensing technology to procedurally generate textures rather than have artists create them ahead of time. This is similar to techniques used in Will Wright's upcoming Spore. Rein also reiterated a common opinion of his that Intel has been a prime factor in the decline of the PC gaming market by way of its widespread adoption of integrated graphics solutions rather than dedicated cards. "Intel is evil, we need to kick its ass," he said. "The difference in price in offering better graphics chips is negligible. You couldn’t buy a meal for that price. We’re talking five bucks.”
Comments
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Iwata openly said that they will be testing new franchises via the Wii download service via small bite sized episodic downloads in order to save money. This way if the make a flop they won't have to take on all the debt from making a full game.
Seeing as a huge portion of the game market is flops and only the hits make money for companies this makes so much sense.
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Episodes are usually stand-alone games (like HL2:EP1). Whereas expansion packs require you to own the original game first (like the CoD expansion pack "United Offensive")
But other than that, what's the real difference?
--> If you don't own CoD, you're not likely going to want to play CoD: United Offensive.
--> If you don't own the original game (say HL2), you're not very likely to play the next "Episode" in that game.
Is there any reason why CoD: United Offensive couldn't have been a standalone product -- a'la an "Episode -- and shipped with the basic game engine files to make it run, but only the content for the expansion.
I don't quite understand the difference between Episode ("new" concept) VS. Expansion Pack (which we've had since the Commodore 64 days... I remember buying expansion packs for "Test Drive" in like '89) help me out.
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-BF2: Special Forces $35
-Day of Defeat Source $20
-Sin Episodes: 1 $20
-HL Episode 1 $20
-Non-Port XBLA Game $10
Which has the most appeal? All about have the same amount of content imho.
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Did he mention how UT 2007 was coming along?
I'm amazed that he can say all this with a straight face since the UT franchise has gone down the EA Sports path. Sports games have been "episodic" for years. UT has been "episodic" in that regard.
The only difference I see with Valve's approach is that they're trying to make their cycle 6 to 12 months.
This is a good thing for gamers.... Waiting 6 years for games sucks.
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Same crap with half life also wait 6 months they cant expect me to play this over and over during 6 months ? Episodic is nothing but a joke.
I want back thoose fps gamers that took days, even weeks to complete (doom3) being one of them.
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Awhile ago, I wrote about episodic gaming and why our industry depends on it to succeed.
http://game.rbkdesign.com/articles/episodic_games.php
As a summary, the most important point I make is that when games take years to develop, the industry evolves at a slower pace than if we used the episodic dev method more. With that, we iterate at a much faster rate and learn from our mistakes faster. In the end, we evolve the collective knowledge of the industry to make better games much sooner than if we stick to multi-year dev cycles. There's too many benefits to Episodic game dev to ignore it.
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It's like the gas pump, you like it now when that shit falls below $3/gallon don't you? Why are we so happy about that? Does anyone even remember what it used to cost?
Value/dollar is a big thing, even in gaming. Goddamn Diablo 2 and the original Half-Life were some of the best bang for my buck values ever. $50 for kajillions of hours out of those things. Now look I get to pay $15 for 4 hours. Am I supposed to be onboard with that?
The MAN gets you used to certain things so you don't bitch about it. He's lubing you up before he slips it in, then you won't scream as loud.
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Freak'n system builders always go lowend if they have the chance. They'll choose something 1/4 as slow if it saves them a dollar.
The games use the same basic weapons and character models and game modes, just mainly new maps and vehicles and little goodies and updates to the engine.
Do we have Unreal Tourney 2K7 now? Just curious, I quit playing around 2K4 or something.
If I'm wrong, so be it, but this is how I view UT now - a rehashed product. Not that the stuff id Software has been putting out is any better...
Atleast Prey has some originality...
If episodic gaming stays below the $20 mark, has the same game time as the few out now (Sin Emergnece, HL Episode 1), they will do OK ONLY IF they maintain a 6 month product cycle, IMO.
However, I also like like the idea of purchasing full length games while offering additional content as bonus items over time. It adds incentive for game players to buy the game as opposed to pirate it. I would be much more liable to buy a game if I knew there was a possibility down the road that I would be getting additional game content down the road at no cost.
Really, I guess if the content in episodic gaming is fresh and worth the price of admission, then I don't see a problem with it. Maybe after all the episodes in a game are released they could be packaged as a bundle and sold at a discount.
That being said, I think there is a market for it for established franchises, and like others have said it's funny coming from a guy that publishes the same game every year on a new engine.
Just because you have episodic content doesn't mean you can't have regular full priced games, lets celebrate both of them.
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"He also accused Intel of killing the PC games market with its integrated graphics laptops and desktops. “Intel is evil, we need to kick its ass. … The difference in price in offering better graphics chips is negligible. You couldn’t buy a meal for that price [difference]. We’re talking five bucks.â€Â
I'm not so sure you can actually produce a dedicated GPU for the relatively minor marginal cost of $5 over an integrated chipset. I realize this is hyperbole, but anyone else get the idea that he might feeling that his nice shiny high-end graphics engine might find itself behind the 8 ball?
That being said, he's the last person to be allowed to make these complaints, his company shovels out the same damn game every 2 years for the last 6 - meh.
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We won't be seeing a full-on Single player title from Valve for a while (like, 4-5 years'ish). They're set on small development teams doing small projects. The next biggest thing we'll see from Valve, I reckon, is more of a technological update than a title - whether it's new features for Steam, Hammer, the rendered within Source, etc. etc.
For now they'll continue having small teams doing small projects: CS:S/DoD:S maps, HL:2 episodes, tech updates. TF2 will be a title we can buy seperately in stores or on Steam, thats a given, but it won't be any different from CS:S or DoD:S in terms of production value or content. That isn't to say though that art style, sounds, video filtering features, etc. etc. won't be unique to TF2, similar to how DoD:S now has film-grain video filters.
That's my 2 cents.
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For those of you in the anti-episodic camp, why do you think there is a difference between what Valve calls an episode and a real game? Does adding the descriptive term "Episodic" to a title all of a sudden decrease the games worth?
I'm not implying that the only difference is the label. Sure episodes are meant to be shorter than a traditional full length game but as many have pointed out, there have already been other "full length" games released *cough* Max Payne 2 *cough* at full price and many people have bought them.
Hell, even the newly released 3-5 year dev time Prey is rumoured to be 8 hours and they are charging $60 for it.
So I wonder why the hate for episodic content? I mean if an episode is 5 hours, and there are 3 of them released then that adds up to a 15 hour game. If each episode costs $20, that is $60 total. It ends up being exactly the same as before except now you get to play installments of it sooner.
That might be the aspect some people dont like but how is it any different than a full length game with sequels or cliffhanger endings? Personally I thought HL2 Ep1 was an entire game with a sequel coming to continue the story. How is this any different than buying the original HL and knowing that the story isnt done at the end of that?
Is waiting 3-5+ years for a sequel really better than waiting 6 months for for the next segment?
/end rant
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I am for sequels. I am for new ways to play video games.
I guess I would like to see episodic content start advancing in maturity/capability so perhaps we can see if it would be cool, even after these rants.
Maybe they don't have a "goal" yet of how it would flow to the consumer? It's just feeling out its own development time and pricing structure, so perhaps adding some "what could it be in 5 years" would help?
But his comments don't apply to Valve. Look at the trailer for Episode 2. New enemies, new weapons, new vehicles, entirely new environment: the game takes place mostly outdoors. I don't see that as repetitive. And the story is evolving, as well.
I'd prefer episodic content for singleplayer games, because it breaks down huge amounts of work into smaller, more manageable pieces. Valve can work on implementing 1-2 major features per episode rather than a dozen in one big game every 4-6 years. One episode every six months or every year is good enough for me. They're like novellas.
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I can see how it could be used very well with a story-driven game, though.
I don't mind reusing or revisiting an environment so long as there is a compelling storyline to draw me along.
I.
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Personally, I'd like to buy an episode, play through it and, if I enjoyed it enough, go back to the store/website and pick up/download the next one, or at least be able to wait only one month, two at most. For this reason, even though I bought, played, and enjoyed both Half-Life 1 and 2 and SiN, I have yet to purchase any episodes. I will though, one day, when there are enough episodes available to do what I just described.
I know, I know, this whole episodic gaming thing is just getting started, that major players like Valve are doing this with little or nothing to go by. In time, however, they will have this down pat, they will be able to crank out episodes with more frequency, but that's where I need the state of episodic gaming to be before I spend my time and money on it, and Rein should allow for some leeway in his view of the industry to let the idea grow and let it happen.
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Episodal content keeps interest in an established franchise. If he is slamming the price, remember, with free content, you get what you pay for. Not to say there hasn't been incredible mods in the past.
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What I don't like is the idea of beginning a story in game 1 and then having to wait months for the resolution of the story... or perhaps even just another cliffhanger.
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Valve has already mentioned this.