Written in two months, counting over 20.000 words and taking into account more than 60 references – my bachelor-thesis is finally done, printed and submitted! As I already wrote in an earlier post the topic of my work were episodic games or to be more precise: “From Daily Soap to Monthly Game – Gameplay and Story Structures for Episodic Games”.

After analyzing all episodic games released so far I took a closer look at structures of TV series, especially of soap operas and prime time serials like Lost. My thesis shows that there are a lot of television structures that could be used as well for episodic games as long as some adjustments are made to take the interactivity of games into account. Finally I also pointed out that there are gameplay elements that could be used to create the same serial character as for example story cliffhangers or to enhance the effect of such serial story structures.

I’m really curious to see where the episodic format will go within the next years in the medium of games. In my opinion it has an enormous still unused potential.