Dreamfall Chapters - Goes Episodic

As many of us enjoy adventure games, I find it relevant to mention news about this game. Ragnar Tørnquist mentions in a Kickstarter Update that the game will be in five parts. He also mentions that Book One will be out Autumn 2014. He talks about the
story as well and how they decided to split the game into 5 episodes:

We initially debated splitting the game in two, like other recently Kickstarted adventure titles. And since our story is already divided into five books, this felt like the natural way to break it up. The shorter wait between books will also, we hope, be easier to endure. This is not going to change the game's story. The five Books will tell the story we always intended to tell; a story that concludes the Dreamer Cycle and Zoe Castillo's role in The Longest Journey saga…but not the saga itself. (Yep, there's more to come.)

They hope to earn money as well by releasing Book 1 this autumn:

By releasing Book One this autumn, we hope to start generating income, all of which will go right back into improving the quality and scope of subsequent books. And by dividing our work into five standalone releases, we're able to give each book the focus, polish and attention it needs. This will benefit the game in terms of quality and stability, and it will benefit the team in terms of how many balls they need to juggle at once.

PC Gamer's Phil Savage has this to say:

However, the traditional downside to episodic releases is the time in between each part. It's not yet clear what schedule Red Thread plan on working towards, with Tørnquist stating that the second episode's release date won't be revealed until the launch of the first part.

More information.

Huge fan of the Longest Journey/Dreamfall games, but not of episodes.

I like Ragnar's work but he takes too many different directions for me. I would always have to place a wait and see after his games are released. So if he's going episodic, I will not be seeing an LJ game for years. That just allows me to put other gaming stuff in the old noggin.

It's a win/win. He gets to do what he wants and I don't have to worry about it for a long time.

Dreamfall was so good it could have ended in one of its later in-game episodes, it felt a complete game already. Rare to see such original gems being made.

I'm totally against TV series on PC.
Imagine the scenario - Fox cancelling Firefly on PC. Then wait 3478563784567 years for ending and hope it will come.

Another thing to add here is DX:The Fall. It's an episodic game. And on top of that, it's a bloatware (link to facebook on the main menu).
But it's main platform are phones. On phones I couldn't care less how many people will get scammed. You want a proper game, go PC. You want to get conned, play phonegames.
The problem is that DX:The Fall got ported on PC with the same scam scheme. That should IMO be illegal and such games removed from respectable online stores.

I'm a backer on Dramfall 3 project, and now I'm very angry. Won't ask for refund, but if they said initially it'll be an episodic game, I wouldn't support it.

Which in the end means only one thing and that's a letter I'll write to KS. Politely asking they add some rules on games projects.
Game projects have to state in the first line under the title, with big and bold letters if it's a proper and full game, or is a DLC:The Game, episodic crap idea or other rotten design (example: you can't save anywhere) not mentioned deliberately.
Unless the industry standard is suddenly superexpensive DLCware/SeasonPassware and proper full games are non-standard.

I've kickstarted two games that became episodic after the campaign. Both of the games made the second episode free to the backers.

But I'm with you - I only buy episodic games when ALL the games have been completed. I love Sam & Max but would only but the series after it was finished.

I kickstarted it and they do say "all five episodes free of charge" to kickstarter and paypal users. I would be very pissed though if that was not the case so I'm just annoyed I guess.

I do think its a mistake economically to deliver the game this way since they will invariably need to sell the episodes cheaper as a result. They will likely get a lot of sales on the first episode only or for the set of 5. I only bought one episode of Winter Voices and I waited for all Sam&Max episodes were released before buying. I supposed they could get money sooner if they sell the first episode and then finish the rest. But I hope they know what they are doing since I'd hate for them to run out of money before the 5th is finished due to this strategy.

Not a fan of episodic games at all.

I'm not against episodic as I really liked the Telltale Sam and Max ones. But there's a proven problem with episodic and that is that there is a risk they don't finish the other episodes after the first one.

The first time this happened was with one of the earliest (first even?) example of episodic: namely SiN Episodes. The company got taken over by a social games developer and only the first of nine episodes appeared.

The second time this happened was with Dreamfall, it was supposed to be 3 episodes.

So of the three examples I know of only one (telltale) has had success, the others bowed out before completing.