HL2 Ep2 Delayed, Sun Rises In East

This is Valve: it took them six years to release a $50 game with 12 - 15 hours of gameplay.

OTOH, if it means we get HL 2.5, not Quake 4, I’ll deal. Good games, like fine wine, take time.

<insert requisite DNF joke>

We know that. Valve knows that. We know Valve knows that. Valve knows we know that. So why the hell did they talk up episodic content + Source and how it will let them deliver content so much faster?

People here are just holding Valve to what they said. No more.

Again, a year or so between releases is fast for Valve.

Half Life: Opposing Force. :)

Bwahaha. Deja-vu!

I predicted it on this forum!

Noone is surprised beside Valve, really.

Even Ep1 was planned to be out before the end of the year, then delayed to “February” and finally released in June, so I wouldn’t be surprised if Ep2 will follow a similar path.

So did half the forum, Hrose.

That’s the point of the first line I quoted.

Is it just me, or is episodic nothing more then a hype-inducing label for budget ware and/or expansion packs. I mean, having played HL:EP1, thats exactly what it was, an expansion pack (a bad one too, I thought, but thats for another day). The only difference from traditional expansion packs was the stand alone quality. But other then that, things like price, length, the fact it was the same engine with the same characters, etc. OK, in Half Life’s case the expansions are all promised before hand and represent a continual story. So, unless you play all three you’ll never know the entire story. On the other hand, its Bloody Half Life, we all know that we’ll never know the entire story, period. Thats Half Life’s M.O.

Other experiments with Episodic content (Sam and Max, SiN), are very analogious to budget ware. Game’s retailing at $20, and are either shorter or otherwise lacking in production values compared to their $50 counterparts. Calling them episodic seems to be simply removing the stigma of being budget ware. I should think Serious Sam did that for them. Its like the whole “next-gen” thing. What does “next-gen” actually mean? New, plain and simple. I guess saying your console is new isn’t exciting enough, it has to be “next-gen”. So it is with episodic content. Valve isn’t releasing expansion packs, those are so 2004. No, Valve is revolutionizing the industry with episodic content.

This is annoying. I would gladly pay you tuesday for Portal today. I don’t even want to play episode 2 :/

The whole “episodic games” thing was bullshit to begin with. TV series and newspaper cartoons are episodic because they have to be – they fill a daily or weekly slot in a medium driven by advertising. Also, the installments are either preproduced for an entire season, or can be produced quickly enough in time for the next episode. None of these things is true for games – they take too long to produce, production time is hard to estimate, and there aren’t any external schedules they need to fit in. So what’s the point?

Step 1: Episodic content

Step 2:?

Step 3: Profit!

Quoted for correctness

WTF? Step 2: MILLIONS AND MILLIONS OF DOLLARS FROM SELLING EPISODIC CONTENT because you’re MOTHERFUCKING VALVE AND HAVE NEVER PUT OUT A GAME THAT WASN’T AWESOME, more like.

Since when is ‘episodic’ a synonym for ‘regular’?

Yeah, I’m a pedant and this news is crap.

I dunno, since always? You think people wouldn’t laugh at you if you published “Episode 1: The Beginning” today, “Episode 2: The Middle” in two weeks, and “Episode 3: The End” in three years?

Also, if you take regularity out of the equation what’s the distinction between episodes and sequels or expansions? Just the fact that they’re really short?

Chris Nahr:

Really? Cos every English dictionary on earth would probably disagree with you. Unless this is a U.S. English thing.

We’re not talking about dictionaries but about a term that has been established by numerous discussions in the last couple of months. “Episodic” games are served up in small chunks on a regular and fairly frequent basis, like TV shows. That’s what the word means in this context.