I just clocked in 62 hours playing Persona 4 last night, and I'm not even done yet. I don’t even want to know how many hours my dear husband had spent (and still spending!) on Fallout 3. In between neglecting the cats and housework, both of us try to spend as much time as we can playing games. This means staying at home a lot. Those who are still in school or in between jobs are most probably not very sympathetic towards the epic struggle to squeeze in some serious RPG gaming hours.

By nature, RPGs demand marathon-like hours of playing because they are long, intensive, and narrative-ly complex. In short, playing a RPG is like cultivating a relationship: you need lots of patience and time, especially with JRPGs. But for those who don’t have the hours to play, RPGs lose their charm. I have a cousin who comes from a hard-core JRPG gaming family. But recently, she prefers casual games because she no longer has the time or energy to invest in JRPGs.

But what if RPGs change their format? Instead of a solid 60 hours hunk down in front of the TV, why not break up the game into bite-size pieces? As an alternative to getting people to buy a $60 game, which they may or may not lose interest halfway, developers should break it up into segments that gamers can download over the Playstation or Xbox network and get charged per segment instead. So if Part 1 of the story (kinda like the pilot episode) is intriguing enough, people will pay the money to get part II and so on and so forth. The benefits are mind boggling:

1)      Game companies will be motivated to produce better games, which means paying more attention to the game writers and the overall gameplay experience Don't let game companies pocket our hard earn money from MINDLESS sequels!

2)      Gamers won’t have to pay a full $60 for a game that may get crappy halfway. If each segment cost $10 to download play and the game is being broken up to 6 segments, gamers won’t have to dole out so much money when they got bored and stopped playing! This in turn will motivate game companies to produce better titles.

3)      Episodic gaming is the best cure against piracy…although those darn pirates will most probably find a way to beat the system eventually. Still, this will buy the game industry some time to replenish their coffers.

4)      Episodic gaming will also entice ex-RPG gamers who got intimidated and overwhelmed by the long hours needed to finish a game.

Imagine playing as tough CSI office (who secretly has a crush on his hot agent partner!) solving mysteries and catching new baddies every week while following a centralized story arc (the typical 'save the world' scenario). I think I’ll be far more interested playing that than watching crappy reality TV shows.

Already, so many developers are touting episodic gaming as the next big wave and are rolling out various prototypes. Still, I think that they are overlooking the HUGE RPG niche since their “gamepisodes” (that sounded much cooler in my head!) seemed to be mostly action or FPS oriented. 

What do you RPG gamers think? Great leap forward or bad idea? Come on, pry your frozen dead fingers from the controllers and type in some comments, damn it! Haha...just kidding...please don't throw those controllers at me. *whimpers*

 

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DrZeiss

Good idea. Especially for new IPs because it's not going to make a difference if there's 6 episodes to FFXIII, gamers will still most probably buy it all.
Then again, you also have to look at the publisher's point of view. They are running a business so if someone paid $60 and didn't finish it, they don't care. It's money in their pocket already. If gamers have pay $10 per episode, it could mean that the game companies will earn much less since a lot of friends I know don't usually play through most of their games. One can argue that since it's at a lower price, more people are willing to try it out?
I guess it might all come down to design too? If they design it well, like having good cliffhangers(not cheesy ones) at the end of each episode, it might entice players to want to buy the next one and keep going.
Finally, I don't agree with your fourth point since you still need many hours to finish the whole game as RPGs in general tell a much broader story than one episode can contain.

Mandifesto

Episodic content is working great for smaller RPG developers already. On the Rainslick Precipice of Darkness is a great example. Why shouldn't AAA titles go this route as well?

@ Zeiss, Lionhead Studios is pretty much already there with Fable 2, releasing the game's additional content in small bits over Xbox Live. It's a smart financial model as well, since Lionhead can get money from us with each chunk of story, in addition to the price of a full game. A game that runs more than six episodes, even if you only pay ten or fifteen dollars for them, already makes more money than a standard AAA title. For many IPs out there, particularly in say the Square Enix lineup, people across the globe would buy the titles simply because they have Final Fantasy in the title. Yes, it means they have to change how they develop games, but it's actually more of a money maker than you might think.

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