Tbh, most people who tried it through Steam in the UK only lost ~ £15 - I make more than that in 2 hours at work.

Woe betide those who bought it at retail for £25 though, what with their DVD-case on the shelf proudly proclaiming it's Episode 1 and all...

At least they can't whine that piracy did them in on this one.

"This ushers in a new age in gaming, where you're left hanging just like a TV show gets cancelled mid-season. I'd prefer to just wait until a "season's worth" of content builds up and buy the episodes all at once just like you might do with TV shows. If the game or show doesn't last long enough, then I'll probably just skip it altogether. "

Exactly what I was thinking.
This comment was edited on Feb 1, 10:12.

I agree with every single thing you said. Every word. Every mark of punctuation. Great post.

To me it sounds like Sam and Max are doing it properly. I only played the first demo and I'll wait until the series is complete before buying into it.

As for HL2 EP1, just think of it as an expansion pack, you can hardly call it 'episodic', it's just semantics. Maybe it was 'episodic' to some people, but I just thought of it as a slightly irritating and short add-on, or 'expansion pack'.

Perhaps Sin was different, but I'll never know as I wasn't planning on looking at it until they had put out the full game. Obviously that's not going to happen now.

For those of you that took the risk in investing in this new attempt at a business model, I don't really feel sorry for you as you knew it was a gamble and most importantly, that it's yet another dumb-assed FPS with a minimal story line that probably (I've never played it) didn't amount to much.

How many people are really going to lose any sleep over it? You lost 20 bucks or whatever you got duped for, that's about it. Perhaps you've learned something and won't get ripped off in the future.

I'm really glad this failed. I'm sure that when Ritual was planning this out they had $$$ in their eyes. Not only will we make the initial money from the 1st episode, but people will tell their friends about it as the story gets bigger and better and our future episodes will create a franchise that will be continuous and seemless & people will remember it forever.

Except, people aren't your stupid little play toys. Gamers saw right through your greed scheme & it failed miserably. And good for them you assholes trying to charge $200 for a video game you fuckers. I'm glad your stupid game failed so much that you had to get bought out.

Some gamers are just the nicest customers. Complaining about everything and wishing failure on everyone

I was so mad about Steam when I was first conned by Valve, I wished a giant mutated squirrel would come and attack the company.

Now, all these years later I can say, at least that wind storm almost sent them to Oz. The real Oz, not Australia. Though, then I could fantasize about a giant, mutated kangaroo hopping up and down on what remained of the building after it crashed there.

I hope HL2 episodes dries up on Valve and they have to make a real game, hell ten episodes $20.00 each thats $200 for a game bull shit.

I was just thinking today that H-L 2 Episode 1 couldn't have been as successful as Valve had hoped or they'd have kept 'em coming. At least sticking closer to the ship dates.

Valve is about nothing if it's not about exploiting revenue streams and if a stream isn't as wet they'd thought, they abandon it right off and look for another way to nickel and dime and alienate their former fan base.

So, I guess that's two things they're about, revenue streams and finding new ways to alienate gamers.

"Some gamers are just the nicest customers. Complaining about everything and wishing failure on everyone"

Not failure but fair price, in my view steam and episodes is just another way to extract more money out of gamer’s pockets? If I’m wrong on this please enlighten me.

If you ignore the Episode 1 part of half life though and just treat it as a normal expansion pack it was a good addon.

I agree. Not a great expansion, but a good one.


But then you add Gabe Newell calling Episodes 1-3 "Half Life 3" collectively and they suddenly suck, don't they?

They aren't being presented as an expansion. They are being presented as a sequel. Or were. I'd imagine Valve is backing away from that, and will eventually get into full backpedal mode.

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Doomriders: the first new band worth a signature - http://www.deathwishinc.com/

Some gamers are just the nicest customers. Complaining about everything and wishing failure on everyone

I liked episode 1, Didnt care about the story but I enjoyed the gameplay. Too bad about episode 2, I would have liked to try the multiplayer.

Just like every other business they would borrow money to finish the product then make it back when it goes on sale,

Actually if the first Episode had actually broken even like Levelord claimed, Ritual wouldn't need to borrow any funds for the second one because the first episode was already supposedly self-funded by the company. So the money which paid for the first episode could have paid for the second one too since it was recouped from the first's sales. That is why Levelord's claim must be bullshit.

So the truth is that Ritual didn't want to fund the second episode because it knew it probably wouldn't make the money back or could better spend that money on another project.

If you ignore the Episode 1 part of half life though and just treat it as a normal expansion pack it was a good addon. I remember the original's Sin's expansion pack took about the same time as HL2:EP1 to complete but was more money.

Sam & Max are also showing that in some cases this episodic thingy can work - but yeah Sin Episodes never did bode well.

It was a halfarsed attempt to put a episodic sequel to a very old game which was totally overshadowed by the HL1 release.

Pity really cause I liked the first one a lot.

Vegetarian Logic: We'll save animals by eating their food

Im glad this episode crap is just that a 'steam'ing pile of crap!

I hope HL2 episodes dries up on Valve and they have to make a real game, hell ten episodes $20.00 each thats $200 for a game bull shit.

yeah, I got a bit rampant on that one. Sorry man. I laughed my ass off at "The Paragraph: Your Friend and Mine "

I fixed it somewhat but don't feel like going too hardcore on it. Thanks for a good laugh though.

This comment was edited on Jan 30, 17:12.

I tried to read that reply but the corneal bleeding it caused overwhelmed me. The Paragraph: Your Friend and Mine

This comment was edited on Jan 30, 16:52.

Unless you have a signed contract stating there would be an Episode Two, Ritual owes you nothing.

Did I mention the sheep? Ethics 101 might be something worth looking into

Consoles ARE playing a huge role in ruining the gaming industry when it comes to PC games. Walk into ANY gaming store today and you will find all the PC games condensed into a small corner or one small set of shelves.
It's a real sad time for PC gaming.

Not only have console games helped to ruin the PC game market but it has also began to affect the sales of PC hardware compared to previous years. One of the biggest reasons that computer hardware has advanced so rapidly in the past 10 years is to keep pace with cutting edge PC gaming.

I realise that game pirating has also played a huge role in the death of PC gaming as well (probably the biggest reason actually).

Also, it's much easier to develope a game on a set of known hardware such as an xbox 360 or PS2. It's much harder to make a game stable and enjoyable on the millions of different PC's out there. Even if you have 2 seemingly identical PC's, they will never be exactly the same as eachother. PC's are like snowflakes, no 2 are the same.

I enjoy the hell out of my xbox 360, but the games don't come anywhere near to as in depth or realistic as PC games of the past like Operation Flashpoint (you needed every key on the keyboard + the mouse), Project IGI, or many other games that were made over 7 years ago. The graphics are nice on consoles these days, but the games just seem watered down compared to oldschool PC gaming.

Now it almost feels like us older gamers have to wait for consoles to get to the quality level of PC games in order to see a decent game. If consoles would accept a mouse and keyboard, it would allow the developers to get the consoles to that point. Until then, we're stuck with games like Gears of War where the "A" button is responsible for several different operations depending on the situation. At least with a keyboard and a 10 button mouse, I can perform those several functions at will and don't need an onscreen prompt. I won't even get into the pittyful aiming of an anolog stick.

This comment was edited on Jan 30, 17:10.

Unless you have a signed contract stating there would be an Episode Two, Ritual owes you nothing.

...does this signal the end of public appearances by Bianca Beauchamp as Elexis Sinclair?!?

(Just thought I'd go off on a tangent here...)

COnsole gamers and consoles may not be ruining gaming ,but they are ruining the gameing buisness.

The most successful sector of the market is ruining the industry? That's quite a statement.