Gabe Newell has suggested that episodic content may be coming to an end at Valve following the conclusion of Half-Life 2 Episode Three.
Speaking in an as-yet-unpublished interview with CVG, Newell said that while episodic content allowed Valve to ship new technology faster than “monolithic projects,” the company is planning to gather feedback from gamers before deciding how to proceed with its next project. “I think what we really want to do is have a couple of examples out there – Episode One, and how long it was to play and how long it took to develop, Episode Two, Portal and TF2 and then the third part of the trilogy, and then sit down with the community and say, ‘OK, so what do you want? Do you want us to do more episodes? Do you want us to really tighten down the time frames and look at the scope of what we’re doing so that that’s possible, for us to go back to the large monolithic projects?'”
Newell also said he would like to “share experiences” with Telltale Games, developer of the Sam & Max episodic adventure, as well as World of Warcraft developer Blizzard, which he described as delivering game updates in an episode-like fashion. Half-Life 2 Episode Two is set for release on October 10; Half-Life 2 Episode Three has no announced schedule. The full text of the interview will be published over the next few days.
