Red_Avatar: However, Valve are showing how NOT to do it. They take as long between episodes as most companies take to make a full game.
Aliasalpha: Companies including themselves. Haven't both Left 4 Dead games (or left 4 dead + retail expansion) come out since half life 2 ep2?
Yep they have :S I mean, okay, you want to make other games as well, fine but at least continue working on the new episode.
Red_Avatar: Rant incoming!
tor: I'm with you. The post-Bone Telltale games are the only successful episodic games I can think of. People were hyping the episodic concept all over the place a while back, but almost every attempt has ended in failure. Too bad, it sounded like a good idea at the time.
I never liked the idea for the same reason why I don't like EA's new "demo" system: all advantages are for the developers/publishers and none for us. We get games thinly stretched across big periods of time, the risk of seeing a series die, we got to wait ages before we see the end of the story, with each new episode, the game looks older and older, it's harder to get "into" the game when you know it's going to suddenly end with a gape of several months to several years, etc. etc. For publishers, it's great because it lets them cut costs by pulling a game if it's not unsuccessful but guess what happens to those who DID buy the first episode(s)? They get screwed sideways.