[Steve Ince]

That's kind of the way I've been thinking.

[Fairygdmther]

Steve, there's another issue that no one has mentioned here: trust. We all feel we know and trust you. You will do as you promise, in terms of episodes. You wouldn't leave us dangling with an unfinished theme. You will at least finish off each segment to a satisfying conclusion.

M

[Crapstorm]

I remember a few years ago Private Moon Studios in Hungary proposed a similar plan: put out a series of 12 episodes, one every 2 months, each providing 5-6 hours of gameplay for $10. The game was called AGON and I think it's safe to say that the business plan was a flop. The first three episodes took over 2 years to produce and each gave only 1 to 4 hours of play. It was a beautiful, intelligent game in my opinion, but its production and sales did not go as planned. Most adventure game insiders didn't even take notice until the CD-ROM compilation of the first three episodes was released as The Mysterious Codex.

Steve, you might want to compare Private Moon's approach to Telltale's and figure out why one failed while the other succeeded. It may have something to do with the method of marketting and distribution. The only place to download AGON was on Private Moon's website, while Bone can be discovered and downloaded on any of dozens of casual game sites.

[Steve Ince]

Originally Posted by Fairygdmther

Steve, there's another issue that no one has mentioned here: trust. We all feel we know and trust you. You will do as you promise, in terms of episodes. You wouldn't leave us dangling with an unfinished theme. You will at least finish off each segment to a satisfying conclusion.

M

Many thanks for that vote of confidence. Now you've given me a lot to live up to.

Crapstorm: The development side is all down to being realistic in how much you can do in the time you have available. As for marketing, I think that Telltale have that side of things mastered and I have a lot of respect and admiration for how well they've been able to spread Bone about.

[bysmitty]

Put me down for episodic.

...bysmitty

[bigjko]

I'd love to get it delivered sooner in episodic format. I'd buy it. It also makes it easier for one to fork out the cash for something without knowing anything about the game. It costs less, and if you like it you'll buy the rest of it. If you don't, then you didn't pay for a full game, anyway.

[VictimOfScience]

I am having the same problem with episodic gaming as I have been having with microtransactions. Best case for me is to buy a whole game. I will however be willing to buy an expansion pack to it later if it adds a worthy amount of material to what I already have. I will not, however, pay $3 for new skins for models, $1.99 for a new building, etc.

Episodic gaming seems to have yet to find its structure. Ron Gilbert brought up a good point that a game that is over in 2 hours should be roughly the cost of a movie, ~$8-10. That makes sense, but in that case, each episode here would be ~$24-30 and if there are 4 episodes, that makes the price of the whole game ~$96-120! That seems extremely excessive, even if its the best game I ever played.

I love the idea of digital distribution and think that it is one of the best things to ever happen to gaming. For developers to see more profit from their efforts instead of giving most of it to publishers (or having to deal with them at all!) is a very good thing indeed. Instead of episodic content, perhaps one could create a lengthy demo (~2 hours or so) of a game and distibute it through online channels to whet the appetites of the consumers all the while working on the finished (and complete) product. If we have to wait, we have to wait. I, for one, don't mind waiting.

[Steve Ince]

One of the problems for me is to find a balance between charging a fair price and the number of possible sales. If I knew in advance that I could definitely sell 10,000 copies, say, that would affect the price point more favourably. I don't want people to think that I'm aiming to get rich by charging too much, but I want to charge enough to be able to make a living and be able to fund further game development.

In some ways it's more of a collaboration between myself as the developer and all of you as customers. By buying my games you are, in a way, saying that you want to invest in the future development. In return I will bring you the best games I can.

[Lucien21]

Originally Posted by VictimOfScience

Episodic gaming seems to have yet to find its structure. Ron Gilbert brought up a good point that a game that is over in 2 hours should be roughly the cost of a movie, ~$8-10. That makes sense, but in that case, each episode here would be ~$24-30 and if there are 4 episodes, that makes the price of the whole game ~$96-120! That seems extremely excessive, even if its the best game I ever played.

Im not sure that adds up. Ron Gilbert was using the movie ticket as an example of comparative entertainment. I don't think you could charge $8-10 per 2 hours.

The game would have to be priced at a competitive price similar to other available games and market demand.

In the States most full prove adventures are $20-30 and the episodic ones I have seen have been $10-$15 for 2-6 hours of entertainment.

However Steve would have to work out how many sales he was likely to have and a price point that would see him turn a profit without pricing himself out of the market.

I think the market could probably take about $15 (£10) for 5-6 hours of gameplay.

[Once A Villain]

Originally Posted by Steve Ince

One of the problems for me is to find a balance between charging a fair price and the number of possible sales. If I knew in advance that I could definitely sell 10,000 copies, say, that would affect the price point more favourably. I don't want people to think that I'm aiming to get rich by charging too much, but I want to charge enough to be able to make a living and be able to fund further game development.

In some ways it's more of a collaboration between myself as the developer and all of you as customers. By buying my games you are, in a way, saying that you want to invest in the future development. In return I will bring you the best games I can.

Well said. I'm going through the same exact thing right now, albeit at an earlier stage in development than you're at I believe.

[jannar85]

By the way, just a suggestion if you don't find a good enough way to sell it over the net - I heard Telltale Games said a while ago, that they would be interested selling other adventure games for one through Telltale Now!

Maybe something to think about?

[VictimOfScience]

Originally Posted by Lucien21

Im not sure that adds up. Ron Gilbert was using the movie ticket as an example of comparative entertainment. I don't think you could charge $8-10 per 2 hours.

The game would have to be priced at a competitive price similar to other available games and market demand.

In the States most full prove adventures are $20-30 and the episodic ones I have seen have been $10-$15 for 2-6 hours of entertainment.

However Steve would have to work out how many sales he was likely to have and a price point that would see him turn a profit without pricing himself out of the market.

I think the market could probably take about $15 (£10) for 5-6 hours of gameplay.

I think the notion here is that its still a very new idea and no one is exactly sure how it works. Telltale has been great in terms of figuring out what people are willing to pay for.

I am a huge fan of supporting the little guy, whether that's in gaming, music, movies, literature or anything else, but obviously there has to be a limit. The trick is finding out where that limit is so that gamers don't feel ripped off and developers can actually fund more creation. A tough call, but one that will work itself out no doubt.

As far as what I would pay, I recently paid $70 for the Collector's Edition of Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and I am of the mindset that it is easily worth every penny. I got it home and put 96 hours over the next couple of weeks into it and have still not come close to doing everything. Half Life 2 was another game I paid something in the neighborhood of $80 for the Collector's Edition for, but, like Oblivion, it was well worth it with the additions of Deathmatch, Counter-Strike: Source, and all of the mods. Incredible replay value in both of these.

That said, adventure games are something I am more fond of than anything else. I find myself going back to the old ones time and time again, even moreso than most of the newer titles coming out nowadays. They nearly got lost in the deluge of FPSs that have taken the mainstage for the past few years, but lately though, it has been unbelievably incredible that so many really top-notch adventures have been turning up with the promise of more on the way. Ron Gilbert is so right in acknowledging that there is still a nicely sized market of people who want a story and who don't necessarily need the slickest graphics and physics and such. The big publishers don't seem to realize this and it is a shame, but smaller devs can turn to the models that Telltale and Valve have put forth in terms of delivering aptly priced content immediately without the hassle and waste of brick and mortar stores and game boxes (though I still treasure my original LucasArts adventure boxes :-).

Originally Posted by Steve Ince

In some ways it's more of a collaboration between myself as the developer and all of you as customers. By buying my games you are, in a way, saying that you want to invest in the future development. In return I will bring you the best games I can.

Steve, I truly hope that you are able to find the right balance between the content and the price and that development continues and the world gets to see what a great story you have to tell. I'll be ready and waiting to download the first episode (or the game as the case may be :-).

[Junkface]

Originally Posted by Steve Ince

The story, too, must be handled differently. Taking the existing story and simply chopping it into chunks would not work, so each episode will have its own conclusions while still adding to the overall story arc. What I hope this will mean is that people could play any episode and still get something worthwhile from it, but would get more if they played all the episodes in order.

So long as you feel you can structure it like this without compromising your overall vision I'm all for it. Crapstorm's point regarding being able to release the episodes relatively frequently (say, at least two a year) is an important one too, I think.

One of the problems for me is to find a balance between charging a fair price and the number of possible sales. If I knew in advance that I could definitely sell 10,000 copies, say, that would affect the price point more favourably. I don't want people to think that I'm aiming to get rich by charging too much, but I want to charge enough to be able to make a living and be able to fund further game development.

I doubt this kind of anecdotal evidence will be of much help to you, but for the kind of length of episode you're talking about, if done with decent production values (same sort of quality visuals as the screenshots we've seen, good voice acting), and with your commitment to interaction density, I would pay $20 per episode without hesitation and believe some of my friends would as well (they definitely would eventually after sufficient cajoling from me.) Upon consideration I could probably go up to $30. Like I said, I don't know how useful information is to you, but hopefully it can contribute to giving you a price range to think about.

[Crapstorm]

For whatever reason, developers seem to be extremely handicapped when it comes to accurately estimating completion times for their projects. One would be hard pressed to name a recent adventure game that did not push back its release date at least once. Independent games are most susceptible to unforseen production delays because the developer is usually trying to hold down a day job at the same time. It's easy to underestimate how much idle time the human brain requires.

[Steve Ince]

By the way, and in the meantime, for those who are interested, I have just created a demo of Mr. Smoozles Goes Nutso:

http://www.juniper-games.com/smoozles/downloads.htm

Get it before supplies run out!

Oh, wait a minute...

[SoccerDude28]

Hi Steve

To me it's not much about quantity but quality. For example, I bought Half Life 2 episode 1 last month, and though it was only 4 to 5 hours long, it was some of the best 4 to 5 hours I've spent on a video game. Would I buy episode 2 when it comes out? Hell yeah I would.

But whether you are planning on episodic content or a full version of the game, who is your target audience? Is this a game that is targetted more for the adventure newbie or the mass market like the bone series was (especially episode 1), or more for us veteran folks who have a "few" adventures under their belts?

[Captain Blondebeard]

To be quick and to the point I will say that it would take an incedible review to get me to buy any it in an episodic format.

[Dale Baldwin]

Originally Posted by Steve Ince

By the way, and in the meantime, for those who are interested, I have just created a demo of Mr. Smoozles Goes Nutso:

I've moved the couple of posts about this isn't the MSGN thread in General, which you can find here.

[Steve Ince]

Okay, thanks Dale.