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.

Currently I’m reading some really interesting books for my bachelor-thesis, which is about “Episodic Games”. Unfortunately nobody has written a book about this topic, yet. So I’m reading a lot of stuff about the episodic format in television and I must admit that there’s a lot I didn’t know about TV series before. But I’m also looking into some good books about game design in general and other related topics.

The following ones I found especially interesting so far:

• Third Person: A lot of very good articles from various authors about the topic of “vast narrative” in different media such as tabletop RPGs, literature, comics and of course video games
• Patterns in Game Design: This book isn’t really fun to read, because it’s written very academically, but it provides lots of good definitions for terms related to games (so it can be used as a “lexicon of gameplay”)
• “Previously on…”: This provides a deep insight into why modern prime time serials such as Lost, 24, The Sopranos and others became so successful in the last years
• 21st Century Game Design: A book that takes a look at the different target audiences of games in the 21st century. Not so much about the “how to design a good game” but more about “why design it in a specific way”