If this happens, who knows how long we will have to wait on Half-Life 3 from start to finish.

Telltale Games do this and it works pretty well.

For one they don't have to compress the game into a 6 or 8 hour experience they can make each episode longer.

They don't have any distribution costs either as its on the net and the stores don't get to take a cut out either so its a chunk of money saved.

With that money put back into development a game in episodes would have a lot more content than a normal game.

It's really a no brainer.

So instead of seeing "PLEASE INSERT DISK 2," we'll see "PLEASE DOWNLOAD EPISODE 2."

And instead of taking 5 seconds to get back into the game, it'll take a half hour. Excellent.

Aww. Seriously? C'mon guys. We can do better than that.

I seriously, do not want this to happen.

Sure you can make a gaming experience last longer then 6 to 8 hours, which can result in an improved narrative. But I don't want to have to keep waiting to finish a game.

Don't try waste my time and bandwidth on downloading episodic content. Instead why don't you make good quality games that have enough content to fit into a certain timespace chosen at the time of development.

Pretty sure most consumers actively hate this idea, so I don't know if it will actually be put into full force for long. It's been tried several times and only Telltale Games had success with it, and then only because adventure gamers were freaking desperate as hell for new titles at the time.

Me personally: full boxed retail please, for now and forever. Call me old but I like a box with a nice manual and a disc I know is mine forever, not an account.

I'm for this, but as an OPTION.
More than anything, isn't releasing a completed game like this just called, oh, I don't know, a demo?
That said, there are a few games this could work well with. Both well, and cleverly.

Think of it like this. You have a general hub area, where all the sidequests are, and you can discuss with other people the mystery ongoing in the game, hone your skills, earn some extra cash, etcetera. Then, the developer could launch "Part two" of the game, adding some resolution to the story, but giving the dedicated fans more to talk about, to conspire about, to train etc.

Which sounds an awful lot like an MMO, I know. But I'm thinking of this element:
People discussing what might happen next in a game when they're all at the same point for a little while will get people to notice. And when people notice, they want to try. They want to be part of that action. Think of it like this: Imagine how many people resubscribe to WoW after each patch. Something new and exciting brought to an already rich universe, and people want to get involved in it.
Of course, you may contest that this is just "DLC" as it were. Well, it kinda is, kinda not. It's a different way of keeping people coming back to the game, simply because they want to see if what they've been working for is like they expected.

Now of course, this wouldn't really work for all genres, the main thing I'm thinking of here is RPGs and the like. But it's an idea to twist episodic content from being just "extended demos" as such.

And my god I write a lot when sleep deprived. I'm going to get a very, very strong coffee and stare at the snow for a few hours. :)

This seems pretty pro-consumer to me.

The Fable II model gave you the first part for free: big demo, basically. If you don't like the first 15% of the game, no harm no foul.

The subsequent unlocking of story progression would cost you. If you go in for a little, and the game starts to suck, then great! That's a game I won't finish that I never paid full price for, and didn't have to waste a rental on. Further, if I have a life changing event and decide that i like third person RTS water gun battles like that, I can play what I've got on my harddrive and decide to go in for the rest of it later. Hell, it may even be on sale for the remainder of the "episodes" by then.

And timing is the other thing. This isn't slow drip episodic, if we're looking at the Fable II model. All the episodes are there and available for you to DL at your own pace.

'smaller up-front experiences and lower prices at the beginning' my ass. When everybody starts doing things in episodes, developers will charge whatever the hell they want for each installment. I see each episode typically costing $5-10 more than it's worth, so we'd end up paying more for the same thing.

The nickle-and-diming is bad enough with the advent of DLC. Now we'll start paying several times just to see the end credits? It's not a matter of "don't like, don't pay," it's "don't pay extra, don't get a satisfying experience."

The only justifiable reason for buying in episodes is storage space. You can keep a little more open space on the hard drive by downloading smaller files, and deleting them soon as you're done with that section. But if you like replaying games, then that advantage is gone.

I guess buying in episodes lets you quit whenever you want, if you decide you didn't like the gameplay from part 1. But demos serve that purpose better.

Another problem I see is if we get the first two "episodes" of such a game we'll never get the third.

THIS!!!

thx for the spoilers^^