When Don’t Nod first broke into the mainstream withLife is Strangein 2015, it was one of the first studios outside ofTelltale Gamesto adopt the Telltale model. WithThe Walking Dead, Telltale popularized an episodic release model for adventure games, and all of its releases until its closure followed the same model. Other studios began to catch on: Don’t Nod followed suit with the first two LiS games and 2020’sTell Me Why. In an example that was less obviously Telltale-influenced, IO Interactive used the same structure in doling out levels forHitman (2016).
Where Did All The Episodic Games Go?
But Telltale went out of business. Don’t Nod abandoned the episodic model for its LiS-like adventure game Twin Mirror, and didn’t return in any of the three games it developed after. For Hitman 2 and 3,IOreleased the whole game at one time. For the past few years, it has seemed like the episodic model was essentially dead.
It didn’t get too much hype, but 3 out of 10, an ’interactive sitcom’ about a terrible game studio that had never released a game with a score better than, you guessed it, 3 out of 10, launched its first season with an episodic model in 2020, but swapped to a single release date for its second season in 2021.
This started to change with the resurrection of Telltale Games and the launch of its game based onThe Expansein 2023, a return to the old model which saw the five episodes released over a three-month period.Silent Hill: Ascenscion, which split the difference between TV and games, took an interesting hybridized approach, with audience members voting to determine the path forward in each installment. And Don’t Nod’s next game,Lost Records: Bloom & Rageis reverting to the episodic model. It will only have two episodes, with Tape 1 and Tape 2 set to release a month apart, but it’s still a return to that older model.
And Why Are Episodic Games Back?
So, why the change? The issues with the episodic model haven’t gone away. Developers still often see a big drop-off between the number of players who shell out for the first episode and the number willing to stick around through the end of the season, and that can lead to a notable decrease in budget and/or quality as the series nears its end. Lost Records has an interesting workaround. The second half is releasing just a month after the first, which leaves little time for development on the back half, suggesting they’ll both be basically done at the same time.
Doing two episodes, as opposed to the LiS’s game’s five, allows each episode to feel equally important. When a game is released across five episodes, that leaves three episodes in the middle where the story can lose its way and/or the audience can lose interest. With two, you have a premiere and a finale; both episodes are significant.
The demands that led to the episodic release model never changed. BetweenBaldur’s Gate 3,Fortnite,Apex Legends, andHades 2, early access games and games-as-a-service are still the biggest games in the world, and these release models are building on the same idea as episodic releases. They allow developers to build their games in partnership with the community that plays it along for the ride. The initial release can bring in an influx of cash that helps fund the rest of development. And games like Fortnite and Hades 2 are deeply interested in serialized storytelling, as is Concord, which is explicitly emphasizing its ongoing storytelling as a key part of its appeal.
So, maybe episodic games never went away. Maybe they just evolved. And maybe the biggest games in the world, like Fortnite, wouldn’t exist — at least not in the same way — without Life is Strange.
