Lots of people saw the nine episodes listed and freaked out. We weren't thinking about this as a single game for $180. We never did.
We had three total "games" planned in this series. Each "game" was split into three "episodes," giving each game a clear beginning, middle and end.
While each three-episode arc had a self-contained story, there was also a meta-story that tied all three arcs together.
And Beamer, as for your statement that people will not pay for story only, I can point to dozens of counterexamples where people pay more than $20 for less than two hours of non-interactive story-based content willingly on a regular basis.
But instead, I'll just point out that since we released the game on May 10, we've released an entirely new game mode, seven new maps for that game mode with more on the way, we're working on multiplayer to give away, and we'll have an SDK out soon.
Thanks to Steam, we can make sure that everyone who purchased our game gets all of the freebies that we give away, not just the 10% of customers who happen to be web-savvy enough to read gaming news sites, know how to track down the downloads, and are able to install them.