Siobhan Keogh: Playing with the Iron Throne

A scene from the Game of Thrones video game.

Siobhan Keogh delves into episodic video games, which make fans wait for episodes - just like TV shows.

In telltale's Game of Thrones video game, House Forrester is a family in turmoil, and it's up to you to save them. But you only get the opportunity to do so once every few months. Why? Because Game of Thrones, like the TV show and the A Song of Ice and Fire books, is an episodic adventure.

Episodic gaming has a long history, beginning in the late 70s with a game called Dunjonquest. Despite its back-story, Telltale Games really popularised episodic gaming in 2012, when it started releasing its adaptation of The Walking Dead.

Rather than make a whole game and release it all at once, Telltale released it in five episodes and called it a season. Each chapter was just a couple of hours long, but each one gave the player the opportunity to really connect with the characters and make important moral decisions. The best episodic games are like this - story-driven, single-player games that allow you to spend time getting to know the people involved.

Despite having to wait anxiously for months to continue adventuring in the Game of Thrones world, I really enjoy episodic games. The beauty of them is that in between episodes there is so much time to examine and dissect what you've done, and what other gamers have done. You can go over the best bits with your mates - or with strangers on the internet - and work out how your differing decisions changed the game.

In other words, episodic games create social interaction outside of the game in a way other games don't. It's the super-geeky equivalent of discussing Shortland Street at work.

Telltale knows this, and even prods you to have those discussions by showing you the decisions other people made at the end of each chapter.

Stewing in your decisions after the fact also allows you more time to think about your characters, and how you feel about them. In Game of Thrones you're responsible for the decisions of more than one member of House Forrester, and it's safe to say you wind up getting quite attached. (Don't get too attached though - all men must die.)

Game of Thrones - the game - allows you to become invested in your characters.

And there's also not a whole lot of time pressure - as long as you can set aside a couple of hours, you don't have to worry about the game being spoiled for you because some lunatic has taken a week off of work to smash through 50 hours of playtime and report back on who lives and dies before you have a chance to get there.

It might sound like episodic games are all upside, but they're obviously not for everyone - if you can't stand the idea of waiting for a few months between episodes, for example.

On the surface the months-long wait seems totally unnecessary. The best thing for the consumer would be if these games were developed TV-style - all produced up front and then, once finished, released in weekly instalments. That gives you enough time to play and discuss them without forgetting what you were up to by the time the next episode comes around.

Unfortunately, the games industry is not quite like TV, especially among the crowd that's using the episodic format right now. The companies developing this way tend to be indie developers who often don't have the funding to pay for the development of every episode up front. The sales of the first episodes are supposed to fund development of the rest.

Have you ever been watching a TV show and then seen it cancelled before the storylines are resolved? Well, the same is now beginning to happen to games - Sin Episodes, Bone, and Insecticide are projects that were abandoned when early episodes didn't sell well enough to fund the rest of the series.

But if, like me, you like being drip-fed pieces and having time to think them through before moving on, you might want to try out a couple of episodic games. The Walking Dead is now two seasons in, and though I personally preferred season one, it's still very, very good.

As for Game of Thrones, it's intended for existing fans so I can't recommend it unless you've read the books or watched the show. Maybe try Dontnod drama Life is Strange instead.

- TimeOut