Microcontent, Telltale Games & Other Stuff

So I was reading the article for this week (Information Format Trends), and the part that interested me the most was the bit (no pun intended) on microcontent.

I'd argue that microcontent has been around a lot longer than the Internet, in the form of serialized content. Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, and other authors of the Victorian era published their novels bit by bit in magazines. Granted, a novel published in installments works a little differently than selling individual MP3s of songs from an album- installments are typically published on a certain schedule (once a week/month, etc), and the author has to make sure he or she keeps the reader interested enough in the story to buy the next installment. A more recent example (i.e. one that's not a hundred years old) of a serialized novel is The Green Mile by Stephen King. The novel was split into six volumes, and they were released monthly at a lower price than a complete novel (much like a single MP3 costs significantly less than a full album).

Another thing that I could argue is a form of microcontent are television shows- especially more recent shows like 24, Lost and Heroes, because they seem to follow the structure of serialized novels. Each episode doesn't contain a complete story, but rather, all of the episodes together form a large, overarching plot, and viewers are kept interested by plot twists, foreshadowing, and cliffhangers, and kept up to date with flashbacks and recaps that remind them of what happened in previous episodes.

But anyway, what I really wanted to write about was video games and microcontent (it always seems to come back to video games with me). The first thing I thought of when I was reading the section on microcontent was Telltale Games, a small, independent company that's pioneering serialized gaming. The decision to make their games episodic was originally done out of necessity- in order to cut down on publishing and packaging costs, Telltale decided to offer their games through downloads rather than seek a publisher and try to get their games sold in stores, and in order to make downloads as small as possible, they decided to break their games up into smaller increments. Coincidentally enough, their two major titles are based on comic book series, which might be yet another form of microcontent.

I first heard of Telltale when I learned they were making a game based on my favorite comic book series, BONE by Jeff Smith. The comic itself was published in nine volumes, and Telltale plans on splitting the game into nine parts that more or less correspond with them. So far, they've released two episodes of BONE, with each one ranging from about 4-6 hours in length (and although it's very hard to accurately measure a game's length, I will say that yes, that's pretty short as far as games go). Originally, the release schedule for BONE was to be "every couple of months", but the game was temporarily put on the backburner in order to put more effort into their second, and arguably more important, game: season one of Sam & Max.

Sam & Max, like BONE, is based on a comic book series of the same name by Steve Purcell. Sam & Max differs from BONE in that it has a unique storyline that merely draws on the themes, locations and characters of the comic, and it had a very different and much more strict release schedule. Season one contains six episodes, each one ranging from 2-4 hours in length (or so they claim- they *all* took me much longer, and I still haven't finished the final one). Episode One was released last October, and after a two month break, each episode after that was released once a month. I'm pretty sure Sam & Max is the very first *completed* episodic game, which makes it pretty notable. It (and BONE, to some extent) is also a good example of developers listening to customer feedback. For example, one major criticism of the game was its reuse of locations and characters in each episode. Telltale paid attention, and in the fourth, fifth and sixth episodes, the bulk of the gameplay takes place in entirely new and unique locations, with many new characters to interact with.

So what's my point? Well, the article seemed to put a negative spin on the concept of microcontent. I'll agree that buying a wallpaper for your cellphone seems kind of silly, but I don't think it'll ever get to the point where you pay $.25 for a sentence. Also, buying and selling content in small increments has been around since the Victorian era, so it's hardly a by-product of the instant access of the Internet. And in the case of Telltale Games, using microcontent put a small game developer on the map, which is pretty hard to do in the video game industry. By giving customers small chunks of games that they can download from their website, Telltale can get their games to the masses without relying on publishers and retail stores. And it's not just independent game developers that benefit from it- musicians do it all the time, and the course blog even has an article about Jonathan Coulton, who makes a living selling MP3s of his songs. So, I think microcontent is a good thing for independent artists (video games, music or otherwise) who probably wouldn't be able to get their material out there as easily without it.

Oh, and I also highly recommended any of Telltale's games or Coulton's music. :)