I guess for the people that like the concept of episodic gaming, Sam & Max is a beacon of hope. They have a well planned out schedule that they seem to be hitting with releases coming every other month or so. This is a lot better than Valves yearly episode releases, which makes them feel more like a bunch of expansion packs than anything "episodic".
Part of that is its an Adventure game. What the player can see is strictly controlled, and the gameplay is well defined. You whip up some new areas, slap a quick and funny story on it, and ship the bugger out.
I wrote on the PCGamer podcast comments about episodic gaming something about this. That you arent going to have these huge epic games in episodic format. Instead, simpler games would work extremely well. You just need a gameplay hook...and make more levels. S&M (and adventure games in general) are ideal for this. FPS...not so much. FPS levels take a really long time to design, build, playtest, tweak, etc. And then you toss in new weapons, monsters, and gameplay hooks on top? No wonder it takes a year per episode.
If we're lucky, this might bring back the good old adventure genre. Then we can dump episodic releases and go back to doing the full thing.
