Flashback Friday: When Episodic Gaming Seemed Like the Next Big Thing

In the early 2000's and some of the 2010's everyone was excited about episodic gaming. The big release of "Half-Life 2," was a huge hit. Then we started getting the episodes with 1, 2, and then...nothing. That VR-exclusive spin-off, "Alyx," is apparently a hoot and moves the story of, "Half-Life," forward a bit, but we're still waiting for a third episode, game, or anything else. Episodic gaming was hyped up as this big thing that would change games...and then fell flat on its face. The, "Half-Life," series wasn't alone, of course. Another example would be the sequel to the first-person shooter, "SiN," that was the promising-but-flawed  "SiN Episodes. " Another big promise of games-as-episodes that staleld out.

Episodic gaming did not utterly fail. Telltale did a solid job with its adventure games before it folded, and how each one would release in episodes. They did that with, "The Walking Dead," and their, "Fables," game, Batman game, and so forth. A bunch of people who used to be at Telltale and are now with AdHoc Studio dropped episodes of, "Dispatch," quite recently, so releasing your game in episodes can work, for a certain style of game, perhaps. Still, the reboot of, "SiN," was kind of cool even if it only dropped a single-of-a-planned-nine entries. It was a fun two to four hours, by all accounts (I vaguely recall maybe playing it way back in 2006/2007 or so without it making much of an impact in my mind), but just ran out of steam, money, etc.

"Half-Life," and its third episode/game/whatever has no official announcement all these years later, but there actually is a new, "SiN," game of sorts in the form of, "SiN Reloaded," which take the original games and updates it for modern audiences with the studio behind it eager to possibly finish, "SiN Episodes," all these years later in some fashion. Never say die, I suppose. I do wonder if the sequel was revisted and completed, if it would just be an entire game or done in little releases? Imagine if 20-something years after the (mostly) failure of episodic gaming outside of some adventure games that the format made a big comeback. At least, that way we wouldn't be waiting decades for some big-name games if little chunks came out now and then at an affordable price--emphasis on affordable. Strange things are always happening in the World of gaming.