Episodic gaming is becoming more commonplace every day. However it does seem to be limited to certain genres,specifically narrative driven games and adventure games. The currently ongoing Monkey Island episodes are good examples.

Episodic games are a relatively new concept,and this seems to have led to some problems.There are issues with timing,should an episode come out every month,every week?

Monthly releases add to the suspense of waiting for the game and they are more suited to a stand alone game that is part of a bigger narrative, whereas weekly releases would help to keep the game fresh in gamers minds.

Look at games such as Half Life 2,that has been receiving episodic updates,but some would consider the time gap between each release to be ridiculous. This is the biggest problem with episodic games and needs to be addressed before the format can advance and become more commonly accepted.

At this years Gamescom it was announced by Lionhead that Fable 2 was going to be released in an episodic format over Xbox Live, and that the first episode would be free.I sthat the way of the future?

A game is released in stores and then 6 months to a year later,when the hype for it has died down they re-release it over an online distribution system(XBL,PSN,Steam etc) with an episode free to entice users who would not have bought the game first time round.

Is this a good or bad thing? I think it could be a great way to get people interested in games they would not have otherwise touched. So long as the support is kept up,that they would not just release 2 or 3 episodes and then leave it uncompleted.

The timing between releases is also crucial,I think weekly releases would best suit Fable 2.Playing 3 or 4 hours of the game a week seems better then playing 3 or 4 hours of a game each month, the gap is just to big,it is much better suited to stand alone episodes like the ones featured in Sam and Max or Monkey Island.

Sports games also seem to be heading toward an episodic future,many sports games only make incremental inprovements each year, so instead of paying full price for a slightly beefier version of the game you bought last year,would you be willing to pay maybe a quarter of that price for a download which contains those updates?

I know I would.

So I believe episodic gaming to be here to stay, although only with certain genres,it just doesn't seem suited to action games or FPS'.

If developers stick to the genres it works with and if they can work out the kinks with the timing of releases I think episodic games could become an important facet of the gaming world, at least in part.