Who hopes that this episodic content crap dies a horrible death?

Okay, I understand that financially it's a safer bet for a gamer. If the game sucks, you're only out of 15-20 bucks, rather than 40-50, which is good.
I'll grudgingly accept the "Gamers determine the storyline" fable that Ritual is telling us, because I've yet to see a single writer anywhere who lets his fans dictate his story to him, but who knows. They're crazy anyways, so it might just make it.

But let's look at what is, in my opinion, a monstrous downside.

A new game is revealed. It's coming out in a year. You see screenshots, read previews, it looks the fucking pimp, it's got game of the year written alllll over it.
It's finally out! You've predownloaded it, so you just download the last few Megs, and you go to play it! Finally! Yes!

Four hours later, the words "To be continued" flash on your screen. And you know you've got around 8 to 12 months to wait before you can play more. (In Valve's case, probably at least 18...)

This doesn't bother any of you? Is this the same blues crowd that has, by and large, always been railing against games for "being too short"??
That they're over too quickly? And yet, now a lot of you seem to rush to embrace the whole concept of a game that you will REALLY finish before having to take a leak.

The whole prospect of waiting for a game for a year or more (and it WILL be more when they have to develop new engines...), and then getting to play four hours worth of content is enough to make me think about just finding another hobby.

Not to mention, ofcourse, the length of time between an original and an expansion is often a problem for people buying it. For example, there's a banner ad playing right now for the Rome Total War expansion. Loved the game, played it a ton. It's been uninstalled, and I lost interest in it about five months or so ago. The whole expansion doesn't interest me, but it would have half a year ago.

I understand that for developers and publishers, episodic content is something they'd jizz themselves over. Charge more money for less content.

But why do GAMERS like it? To me it just doesn't make any sense.

As for the next HL episode, whatever Valve. Release the fucking thing already or shut your yap about it. What is it this time, did you change the name again? Or did it get stolen maybe?

Creston