Epic Boss Lashes Out at Episodic Games

And Rein's got some harsh words for Intel too.

Ask the people at Valve, the makers of Half-Life 2, where the future of gaming lies, and there's a good chance you'll hear the phrases "digital distribution" and "|episodic content". It's part of a move by game makers to get content out to gamers quicker and more easily. But if you ask Epic vice president Mark Rein, that's just insane.

Rein spoke this week at the Develop conference in Brighton about how episodic gaming of the sort being popularised by Valve in the ongoing Half-Life 2 follow-up chapters is part of a "broken business model", according to a report by trade paper MCV.

"It's not feasible to bring out a level every week," Rein reportedly told the audience. "You'll see a lot of recycled content. Fatigue will set in, and franchise fatigue means diminishing returns."

He admitted that Half-Life 2 had got away with it, but that was because the series was already a big success. Episodic games delivered through digital distribution would still need the sort of marketing given to boxed games to succeed.

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And Rein, whose ideas were called dinosaur-like by members of the audience, didn't stop there. He next turned his hammer to chip maker Intel, saying that the low-spec graphics solutions offered by the company is holding back the PC games market because people who buy these cheap machines aren't able to run the latest games.

"There is a potential for catastrophic failure in the PC gaming market," he reportedly said. "If Intel left the PC graphics market we'd all be better off."

Alex Wollenschlaeger
Editor, Kikizo Games