It feels like everyone I know’s gone batty for Dispatch, AdHoc’s superhero management sim that picks up Telltale’s choose-your-own-adventure torch and runs with it to, so I hear, great success.
A particular triumph? Its episodic release structure, which even won over our Fraser Brown—noted episode-sceptic—quite quickly. Indeed, the game’s executive producer Michael Choung said the format had “absolutely proven itself” two weeks ago—sustaining interest in the game over a longer period than a one-and-done release likely would have.
But Choung doesn’t see the approach as some kind of magic bullet AdHoc—or any studio—can just apply to everything. “It’s insane to do,” he told Edge’s Knowledge newsletter. “From every metric, from a production perspective, no one should do this.”
The point Choung is making isn’t that episodic releases ought to be avoided—that’d be an odd move from a developer whose game is on-track to beat its three-year “bull case” sales projections in three months—but rather that anyone looking on and getting ideas ought to realise it’s just one part of a bigger puzzle. “If you think episodic alone is going to be the thing that dictates success for you, then good luck!”
What’s the heart of Dispatch’s success, per Choung? “If the creative is strong, you can cut it up however you like, and it probably is going to make it through, even if it’s a poor decision.” Case in point: Choung reckons if AdHoc had put out Dispatch all at once, “it probably would have done okay. But it probably wouldn’t have been as big as this.”
Choung says applying an episodic release structure to a game without the story chops to back it up is “flirting with people that aren’t attracted to you whatsoever.” His advice? Think of episodic releases as a “multiplier” for whatever you have already. “If it’s good, then it’s going to do better. And if it’s not, honestly, it’s not going to save you. It might even be worse.”
Which, you know, seems reasonable to me, although I’d note that I reckon a big reason Dispatch caught on like it did is that the wait between episodes wasn’t gargantuan. Back in the days of early Telltale, you’d sometimes be waiting upwards of a month for a new episode, which is a recipe for enthusiasm to ebb, not flow. Dispatch’s weekly cadence did it a lot of favours, in my book.
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