Dispatch Dev Thinks Other Studios Should Probably Avoid Episodic Releases

"Choung says the weekly-release format that helped Dispatch explode past 1 million sales in 10 days and put it on track to hit its three-year sales target in just three months was difficult at every turn and an actual "insane thing to do." Speaking to technology newsletter Knowledge, Choung recalled being warned repeatedly that releasing the game week by week instead of all at once was a terrible idea. But the team believed the format was essential for the story."

""What's inside that game is basically three feature-length premium animated films and a video game, all meshing and rubbing up against each other," he said. The narrative had always been structured episodically, even though it went against industry "conventional wisdom." Despite internal debate, AdHoc settled on releasing two episodes weekly rather than dropping the game all at once, splitting it into halves, or spacing out individual episodes."

"The bet paid off dramatically. "There would just be a longer time period for it to be covered," Choung explained. This kind of schedule created a sense that "the train is leaving the station, but not just yet--I can still make it," which encouraged players to jump in. Contrary to expectations that week-two numbers would fall, concurrent users kept doubling with each release. "Those things, we anticipated. I don't think we anticipated the scale of it," he said."

AdHoc's Dispatch used a weekly episodic release that drove over 1 million sales in 10 days and put the game on track to meet a three-year sales target within three months. The team adopted a two-episodes-per-week schedule because the narrative was structured episodically and the content combined three feature-length animated films with a video game. The staggered schedule extended coverage windows, created urgency that encouraged players to join, and produced rising concurrent users with each release. Production proved extremely difficult, and leadership warns that episodic weekly launches are risky and generally inadvisable despite commercial success.

Read at GameSpot