SiN 2 Shocker

I just seen This news piece over at IGN and it means that SiN 2 might be one of the most significant titles to be released in a long while.

Games have been getting smaller over time because most of game's creation time is spent on design and retooling. Retooling in itself (new graphic engine, building new character models and new base textures from scratch) has been getting more expensive, with players demanding graphics which cannot be created inhouse. The simple solution for developers who still want to develop a game in four years is to produce smaller games, but a better solution to this is to produce a small game with several small expansion packs to the original small game that continues the story and shares the same toolset and game design of the original. And this is called episodic content. Think of it not as Lord OF The Rings the trilogy, but more like Lord Of The Rings the high budget TV series, with each episode self-funding the next.

Guild Wars is doing this, but episodic content won't become excepted practise by the publisher community (note I did not say developer) when one smash hit title does it. Once that one game is launched, then publishers will realise the added profit in doing a serialised game as opposed to one big title every four years. The gamer benefits by being offered a wider selection of cheaper titles. And possibly these so-called smaller titles will even be the same size as the six hour pieces of shit we are getting now (no smaller games are not what we want, it is what is being forced on us).

EDIT: Incidentally Voodoo Extreme is currently running a poll on the lower right side of their site asking readers if they are happy with the current state of PC gaming.