Kevin Bruner, one of the people behind Telltale Games and their Sam and Max series, sat down with gamesindustry.biz at the Nordic Game conference and talked about the promise and peril of episodic gaming - with mostly really positive things to say. His thoughts on the benefits of episodic games for developers reminded me of John Laurence's comments on the micro-transaction model - essentially, it allows more freedom to the developer to create what they want, since 'risk and cost can be lowered up front':

It encourages a little bit more risk taking and allows you to fine tune things as you go along. At Telltale we tend to stay about 3 episodes ahead of what's on the market. That gives us a little time to course correct; we did that with Sam and Max, episode four was the first episode where we responded to consumer feedback.

So I think from a developers' perspective, since the risk and cost can be lowered up front, you have a little more control over your game. You can be a little bit more experimental. Then you've made the game you want to make and you can take it to more traditional channels.

A short interview that's worth a quick read through.

Telling Tales [gamesindustry.biz]

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