14 DAY TRIAL // Speaking at the DICE 2012 event, TJ Galda, a senior developer at Electronic Arts, suggested that video games should take television as their model and actually sell players chapters of story in order to keep them engaged with a story in the long term.
The developers stated, “Call of Duty literally earned a billion dollars a day faster than Avatar. Maybe we shouldn't always be trying to aim for the film. And I'm a film guy saying that.”
In television show creators use multiple arcs to get viewers engaged and coming back for the next episodes and developers could do the same by putting out smaller content packages that follow different story arcs.
Galda added, “It could be even a subscription model - there's some serious money here.”
Episodic gaming has been tried by a number of companies for more casual game franchises and has failed to catch on.
Most developers and publishers are currently planning DLC for their titles, although the packages are rarely linked to the core story of the title.