Just wondering if anybody has considered this kind of model for game developement. Basically you create the core of your game, say a world (city, village, island, space station), props (weapons, items, vehicles), characters (antagonist(s), protagonist(s), supporting cast(s)) etc and then periodically release stories encapsulated in episodes based on your core game world. A good analogy for this is a TV series as opposed to a feature length movie possibly with sequels. The way i see it Indie game developers cannot afford to make that "blockbuster movie" like Lord of the Rings but at least they can make that "innovative series" like LOST or Deadwood (or Desperate Housewives if your thinking a SIMS-like series
).
Take the TV series "Smallville" for example, you could build your game core; create the town of Smallville, write the engine code as an FPS, 3PS whatever, make your computer AI, characters (Clark, parents, friends etc), weapons, items etc. See once you do this you dont really have to do it again. Your opening episode (free teaser) could be based on Krypton and here you control Clark's father trying to evacuate his family from the doomed planet. Obviously this would be heavily story oriented and should end in a cliffhanger, persuading players to buy the next episode. The next episode could be navigating Clark's pod avoiding meteors through space until it finally crashes in Smallville. Subsequent episodes could be based on anything from facing a new meteor freak boss to trying to score with Lana,
or even combinations of plots. Updates to your core engine might only include stuff like coding new powers for Clark as he grows up, you will have to create new scripts for new episodes.
You must have gotten the picture by now. Think about it, no need for publishers and pretty cheap development costs once the main core engine is up 'n' running. If you really score big time and get a huge fanbase then you can even guarantee sales for the next episode, episodes can even be influenced by your fans... kinda like giving them what they want.
However the model also has it's drawbacks; Internet exclusive sales cus i don't think retailers will give shelf space to £10.00 mods, if your game story sucks or starts sucking (you do a dumb thing like kill off a popular character
) people loose interest and stop following the series, you need to bring something new to the table every episode or interest drops, tight developement times to ensure an episode is released like every couple of months or less, guarantee that you will finnish the game and not leave players hanging or playing for a finnish that never comes
etc.
Here is an upcoming example of this game developement model by Ritual Entertainment. It's called Sin Episodes based on the original game Sin. It uses the Half Life 2 Source engine and is going to be distributed via Steam. Check it out.
Anyways, what do you guys and gals think? The way forward? It sucks?
