Has anyone here thought about making a game which had a storyline which folks needed to purchase new episodes to see the whole thing?

Some background:
http://www.sirlin.net/Features/feature_EpisodicGames.htm

I'm thinking of making a game where the first "episode" is free and charge for subsequent ones... anyone tried this out?

I believe this was the "magic formula" that Apogee software used...

I.E. You got the first episode of Commander Keen for free. To see more, you had to buy.

the big problem is playing 1 episode of the game
is playing too much of the game.

Given that you let them play 6 levels, that's like playing
an entire game (in the arcades) and they may get tired
and not be bothered to buy the rest of the episodes.

So you have to be careful about giving away too much.

Originally posted by jcvw75
the big problem is playing 1 episode of the game
is playing too much of the game.

Given that you let them play 6 levels, that's like playing
an entire game (in the arcades) and they may get tired
and not be bothered to buy the rest of the episodes.

So you have to be careful about giving away too much.

thats a matter of designing the right demo and the right incentives.

and still, to contradict your opinion, take a look at Commander keen 4 & Jazz Jackrabbit.

both had an enourmus amount of gameplay in them, and look how far they had come.

good ol' Doom had the entire first episode in the demo and was still successful.

it depends however on the games' story i think - if the player dives very deeply into the story in the first episode, they surely will want to get the other episodes ASAP to see how the story goes on.

I've seen the opposite problem with at least one or two games... it was presented as episodes with the first one free, but the first episode was so short and contentless that you worried that later episodes would be just as bad and you wouldn't want to pay for each of them. (Of course, in either case, if the plot had been *compelling* rather than passable, the length wouldn't have been such a problem.)

Yeah, I agree with Papillon. If your first eposide is good and ends on a nice cliff hanger ending and contains a fairly good preview as to what is avalible in the next series, then yeah, people will be inclinded to purchase your game. Provided that you acually have a good game on your hands mind you.

Of course the first episode has to be made so that it is fun, but also easy enough to finish 'cause I don't think that anyone would buy the other episodes without finishing the first one.

Also that is assuming we are talking about the apogee model where the first episode is free and the other two (or however many) require registration. Which I think would work better than purchasing one episode at a time, for instance if you have for example.

Catacombs I, II, III, IV, V and VI for sale at $10 each, the user is able to work out that it's gonna cost them $50 to get the full game, and might even decide to skip getting the first episode because they can see it's too much money.

But if you organised it so that you could get Catacombs I, II and III for $25 (With the first episode free) and you could get Catacombs IV, V and VI for $25 (With episode IV for free) then you might have a better chance at selling all of your episodes.

In short, I don't think selling them one at a time is a good idea, and of corse this only would work for certain genres. RPGs and Platform games are the only two I can really think of.

Originally posted by aspiral
good ol' Doom had the entire first episode in the demo and was still successful.

it depends however on the games' story i think....

OTOH, Doom didn't have much of a story. :) If you have a good game--bottom line--it will sell, story or not.

My "big" project will use a variation of this theme, offering episodes but also new features with each episode (story, items, enemies, gameplay, etc). With a component based object system (think of the Sims, a plug-in object model) this offers many ways to create a lot of value for your customers with a steady stream of new content for them and sales for you.

As a bonus, you could offer single objects or groups of objects for sale at their whim. Obviously this requires a sort of "open" design, but I think it's worth exploring. Not to mention allowing players to create free content (plug-in objects such as items, enemies, etc) for other players, which would help foster a fan community for the game.

Am I off topic? :) Sorry.................