Dispatch developer AdHoc Studios said developers need to think carefully before choosing an episodic business model.
Conversation with knowledgeExecutive producer and CEO Michael Cheung said launching the game as one big release would be the “conventional wisdom.” He added that the choice of episode release schedule was “madness” and that “everyone told us not to do it.”
“From a production standpoint, no one should do this,” he said.
“If you think episodes alone are what will make you successful, then good luck.
“The core of it all is creativity. If the creative is strong, you can cut it any way you want and it will probably hold up, even if it's a bad decision. If we'd said, “We're just going to put it all out,” it probably would have been fine. But it probably wouldn’t be as big as this.”
Chung continued, “If you make an episode with a not-so-good story, you're hitting on people who aren't attracted to you at all. You could say it's like a multiplier: if it's good, the result will be better. And if not, then frankly, it won't save you. It might even be worse. [studios]”
Before committing to the final release schedule for Dispatch, the developers at AdHoc spent a lot of time discussing the best course of action, which turned out to be releasing two episodes per week.
“We are now seeing the results of many reasons,” Chung explained.
“It will just take a longer period of time to cover this event. Television has been doing this for 70 years. We knew it created a “train is leaving the station, but not now – I can still do this” feeling in a few weeks, and people get it. When we look at the number of concurrent users at locations, that's exactly it – it just doubled every week. Again, the conventional wisdom is that whatever you guys do in the first week, the second week will be half that amount. literally the opposite of what we expected, I don’t think we foresaw the scale of this.”
Dispatch began on October 22 and it sold over a million copies within ten days of release. before exceeding two million units during the month. The studio recently told GI.biz that The project is on track and will reach its three-year sales target within three months..
