Episodic schedule
- Shorter updates that come more frequently 1
- Longer updates that come less frequently 21
- I don't caree as much about the length as long as they are regular 14
- I'm going to comment. BRACE YOURSELF. 1
When it comes to episodic style releases, which do you prefer? (To be honest, I may have already asked this. But I'm asking again).
When Stars starts to release I need to decide exactly how the episodes are going to be structured and how many there will be. This will determine how often I can update.
Remember that Stars is going to be 100% written and revised when I start releasing. This fact alone is going to help me maintain a much more consistent (and potentially shorter) release schedule than some other episodic releases because I won't be writing the content between each episode.
Rather, the gap will be for coding (things like expressions), artwork (I do kinda want CGs in every chapter), and beta testing.
I am already expecting the gap between episodes to be comparatively short. But that also depends on how I structure the releases.
One option is to do shorter episodes (1 chapter long each) that release more frequently. This way would mean about 10 episodes most likely because I think I would still release the final three chapters together. These comprise the ending sequences and story climax and breaking it into multiple updates feels weird.
The other option is to make each episode consist of at least two chapters. This would reduce it down to 6 episodes.
pros
the updates happen more often without lengthy gaps which will help people retain the plot threads. Probably 2 months between each episode. Maybe less.
cons
there would likely be updates where not much happens in the story because some chapters are less focused on plot and more focused on character moments
update amount would be more inconsistent as chapter length varies from 25k to 80k
more cliff hangers to deal with
players who are playing 1 character at a time may end up with very little playtime. There are chapters that are 60,000 words in length but playing through only 1 character is going to give you only about 20k of that.
update schedule may also not be 100% consistent as a 25k chapter will definitely take less prep than an 80k chapter...
pros
the updates have more content (often close to or more than 100k) and will likely be a little more consistent in length.
there will be plot developments in every update since character chapters will likely be paired with plot/action chapters
cons
the updates will take longer; there will be more expressions to code and more beta testing to be done. So could take more like 3-4 months between each episode.
I do acknowledge that, for some people, it's less about the length between updates and more about whether or not the updates happen predictably. I know some episodic releases go six months to a year between updates and it's hard to predict when they'll happen.
I think the biggest enemy to consistency is probably drafting which, in my case is already done. But still.
Anyway, yeah! I'm curious about preferences here.