Susan Arendt
Culture

GameTap VP Responds to Viewer Mail

About a month or so ago, GameTap vice president Rick Sanchez wrote a feature for Gamasutra called "Why Bother With Episodic Games?" and, as might be expected, many Gamasutra readers wrote in to voice their opinions on the piece. Rather than answer on Sanchez’s behalf, Gamasutra took some of the correspondence with them to DICE […]

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About a month or so ago, GameTap vice president Rick Sanchez wrote a feature for Gamasutra called "Why Bother With Episodic Games?" and, as might be expected, many Gamasutra readers wrote in to voice their opinions on the piece. Rather than answer on Sanchez's behalf, Gamasutra took some of the correspondence with them to DICE to get the answers right from the main man himself. Nifty idea, and always gratifying to see one of the higher-ups taking time out from his schedule to actually talk, albeit a bit indirectly, to the folks who actually play the games.

The main sticking point seemed to be the definition of "episodic content," with Sanchez coming down on the side that any type of game could be episodic, not just story-driven games:

Any game can be episodic. A music-based puzzle game can be episodic, because every month you swap out the music. I don't think episodic is a story function in gaming, it's just a type of content delivery. So, anything. First-person shooters. Adventure games. Real-time strategy.
Puzzle games. Board games. All those things can be delivered episodically, the main point being, you get content, close together, you get digestible chunks, and you know when you're getting your next episode.

Q&A: GameTap's Rick Sanchez Responds to Your Letters [Gamasutra]