Episodic Games: Rewriting the Adventure Genre

Right after the Capcom panel on the making of Street Fighter IV, I rushed on over to Room 3 in the San Diego Convention Center to catch a gathering of some of the luminaries of the modern adventure games field as they discussed their forays into the rapidly developing world of episodic gaming.

The panel began with Frank Cifaldi of Gametap introducing the rest of the team--Dave Grossman and Dan Connors of Telltale Games, and Joel DeYoung and Arthur We of Hothead Games--and asking each of the groups to define what they thought of adventure games as being. According to Telltale, they see them as an evolution of the sorts of games released by LucasArts in their heyday (Day of the Tentacle, etc.). Telltale was formed specifically to try to bring a new outlook on that genre, and they believe that adventure games are games in which the story can be advanced in ways that don't exclusively involve shooting people.

Hothead agreed with Telltale's assessment about how influential LucasArts games were, and said that they wanted to try to bring something new to the genre so as to modernize it. Penny Arcade Adventures was their first attempt, and they tried to do this by mixing in elements of role-playing games. They also declined to comment on just how many episodes they planned on making for PAA, though they did say "a bunch."

Connors began to discuss how important an episodic release schedule was for Telltale, citing the system as a valuable means of developing an ongoing relationship with their customers, getting content out frequently, and establishing a feedback loop. The latter result was a benefit constantly brought up by Hothead as well because of how important it is in consistently improving their products.

When talking about period of time between releases, Telltale said that they were most influenced by comic books, which they think has just the right schedule going for it. Hothead said that they were trying to keep to a four-month gap between releases, which is mostly because their goal is to be "platform agnostic." In particular, they cited the lengthy process of being certified for release on XBLA.

Hothead spoke a little about their new upcoming game, which is called Deathspank and based on the character of the same name created by Ron Gilbert. Deathspank is the misadventures of a superhero that means well but usually manages to do more harm than good, and is a bit of a departure from PAA as it's a Diablo-style hack and slash game.

When asked if adventure games are going to stick in the realm of humor rather than drama, Grossman admitted that comedy was easier for him because it establishes a willing suspension of disbelief that makes the often ridiculous puzzles that appear in an adventure game a bit easier to swallow. Connors does say that Telltale is interested in pursuing that, and postulates that certain stories like The Da Vinci Code would only work in the adventure genre.

One person very interested in the panel was God of War and Twisted Metal creator David Jaffe, who asked a couple questions adventure games and episodic content. He wanted to know if a retail boxset of the complete seasons would reach customers better than digital distribution, to which Connors replied that word of mouth is the biggest driver of their sales, primarily propagated by customers who by a complete season in advance and tell their friends about it as new episodes come out for download.

Jaffe also went on to voice his opinion that there's a huge pacing issue in most adventure games--that every time you enter a new area, you have to enter a "work mode" to click everything and gather everything before you can enter a "fun mode." The general consensus to this argument was that any adventure game that makes you feel that way is poorly designed, though Cifaldi disagreed because he felt that convention was a necessary part of the genre.

Throughout the presentation, several other key facts were let out:

* Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People is coming out "a Monday soon." Connors originally said "this coming Monday" but corrected himself.
* Telltale is now working on a new episodic series based on Wallace & Gromit
* Sam & Max: Season 1 will be out on the Wii in September, and may be coming on XBLA and PSN later one
* Sam & Max: Freelance Police is totally fun and awesome, but probably never coming out. Boo.
* The iPhone and mobile market is something that they're interested in, but there are challenges to working with it