SiN Episodes on hold

By Robert Purchese Published 30 January, 2007

"Not good enough."

Ritual Entertainment co-founder Richard 'Levelord' Gray has confirmed that SiN Episodes: Emergence didn't sell well enough to fund the development of a second game, and that work on it has been postponed.

"The first episode did well, but not good enough to completely self-fund the second episode," Gray told official community site Ritualistic. "We did continue with Episode 2, but we had to stop a few months ago due to a funding problem."

He was speaking the aftermath of Ritual Entertainment's acquisition by casual games company Mumbo Jumbo, whose CEO, Mark Cottam, had been recently reported as saying that it didn't want the developer "involved at all in the action style games".

Still, Richard Gray remains positive that his once independent team will return to the series when it's established in the casual games sector.

"What we plan to do right now, both Ritual and MumboJumbo, is establish ourselves in the casual gaming market with strong new franchises and then return to SiN at a later date," he explained. "We love SiN, make no mistake, and we definitely want to return to it."

Ritual has so far released one episode of the new SiN series, via Steam, which met with decent reviews.

There's no final word on what to expect from the new breed of games from the developer, but Gray expects multiple titles before the end of the year.

"I'm not going to give any specific dates, but our plans are to finish more than a few games this year," he added. "Expect to see the Ritual logo on your PC, PS3, Wii, Xbox, console downloads... everywhere!"

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

You may also like...

Comments (26) Latest comment 5 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Errol #1 5 years ago

    So the public are not ready for episodic gaming ?

  • decibel #2 5 years ago

    I think it's more along the lines of the public are not ready for a clichéathon like SiN Episodes :p

  • asphaltcowboy #3 5 years ago

    This is a f*cking car-crash :/

  • kangarootoo #4 5 years ago

    I don't think this is an issue of episodic content. I think it is marketing, plain and simple.

    Who can put their hands up in honesty and tell me they have seen any advertising for this game besides the odd article on EG? I couldn't even tell you from memory where you would go to buy and download the thing. If no-one knows about it, its not going to sell.

  • Xerx3s #5 5 years ago

    And this is why episodic content is shit and should be kicked while it's down.

  • Errol #6 5 years ago

    I think they got the price-point wrong as well. People might have paid £5 but not much more than that.

  • LOLLERS #7 5 years ago

    LEVELORD 4 EVA

  • Wite_Noiz #8 5 years ago

    I've got nothing against episodic content (SiN was... alright...), but it has to be well implemented, and you can't leave year(s) between episodes (I'm looking at you, Valve).

    TellTale's Sam & Max episodes are a good case study - but I've heard the third one feels more rushed that the previous two, with more reused content.

    And, as Errol said, the price must be right.
    I bought SiN for £10 (or thereabouts) from Steam and I'm glad I didn't pay any more. A little disappointed there won't be a sequel.

  • Laserbream #9 5 years ago

    SiN was behind the times when it first came out for goodness sake. I warned them that reviving it would end in trouble and now I am the one laughing while their precious empire burns and people run willy nilly screaming and gnashing their teeth.
    Edited by 1 at 30/01/07 @ 16:41

  • AcidSnake #10 5 years ago

    Levelord....

    /Fondly remembers whole weeks lost in the Duke Nukem level editor

  • Hunam #11 5 years ago

    Maybe they should have got the episodes out in a timely manner. Like 3 months apart or something, and that arena mode was a waste of dev costs too. Daft bastards, aside from the niggling (still niggling) issue with the adaptive difficulty i quite like the game, and like where it was going.

  • space_ace #12 5 years ago

    it's a, it's a, it's aaaa, it's a sin

  • Tyronne #13 5 years ago

    Almost bought this but ever so glad I did not.

  • MENTAL1ST Verified Senior Software Engineer, Picsel UK Ltd. #14 5 years ago

    Episodic gaming cannot and will not ever work.

    Half life 2 'episodes' aren't really episodes at all, they're more like yearly updates or large DLC expansion packs.

    Sin Episodes was canned.

    Sam & Max will come out on wii as a whole package, Telltale will realise they make more money like that and finally put an end to the ludicrous misconception that people will want to buy games a quarter at a time.

  • mallocks #15 5 years ago

    I hadn't decided on episodic gaming until this point, now I really do think it's something that holds no benefit for the buying public, at least until the promises made are met. Every 6 months? Right.

  • absolutezero #16 5 years ago

    To be honest im pretty sure this game fell victim to the pirates. A hell of alot of PC gamers don't pay for games as it is, what with PC titles being so easily pirated. Asking that audience to pay for something that lasts 3 hours was just never going to happen.

    More than likely they all d-loaded the game and then noticed it was a bit lacking.

  • dolphan #17 5 years ago

    And there's the problem. Episodic gaming is a great idea for good, successful games - it would be fine for HL2 if they didn't always underestimate development time. But take something middle of the range like this and you run a fair chance of getting it cancelled midway, which means if you liked it you lose out on the rest of the game.

  • Schiraman #18 5 years ago

    Well that just sucks. :(

    I don't think this means there's anything wrong with episodic content as an idea though, you need more than one or two games to try this format before you can reach a fair verdict.

  • YourMessageHere #19 5 years ago

    This is nothing to do with marketing or episodic content. It's to do with it being not only a crap game but a sequel to a crap game. Leading up to release, I was moderately interested, kept my eye on it although I didn't reckon the original, and I was eventually sickened by people going on about it; certainly no marketing lack that I could detect. Once it was out, I heard it was rubbish from pretty much everywhere and stayed away. That it was episodic had nothing to do with it, it was the fact it was reportedly a hackneyed, unoriginal game with only 3 weapons and a terrible storyline. This no more presages the death of episodic gaming than a crap TV series prompts the end of TV series, or at least it ought not to. Having said that, I still like the idea but there's nothing else out there that actually demonstrates episodic gaming working properly so far except Sam & Max, and I don't care about that.

    So far as I know, It's impossible to pirate Steam-exclusive games. If it's not impossible, it's sufficiently hassle-filled to make it unlikely anyone will bother, especially when you can pay a pittance and get it really easily.

  • Freek #20 5 years ago

    Sam and Max is working just fine, like has been said, Sin wasn't good enough, so it diden't sell.
    You have to make it good and you have to make it regular, Sin Episodes failed on both acounts. HL2 is failing on one, but still selling becuase it's really good.

    On Hold, is the new way saying canceld.
    Edited by 1 at 30/01/07 @ 21:05

  • GitSomE_UK #21 5 years ago

    So it's in the SiN BiN

    /Gets coat

  • zoidberg #22 5 years ago

    Sam & Max is working because it's friggin' SAM & MAX!

    Any other new IPs would've gotten mixed if poor reviews (if it weren't for biased editors) and been left to die somewhere between episodes 3 or 4.

    Sin was fun, with all that retro-ishness. Could see LLs designs right? OLD, but fun. Price was high because of the engine licensing costs... Source probably cost a fortune.

    As for Valve's attempts, I really can't put them down for not delivering on time. Why? Because everything they make is pure art-work. Every model, texture, set-piece, light and tone, everything is so well analysed and put together, that... it feels nice to have ONE developer who actually is focused more on quality. I love that they really have HIGH standards... someone has to raise the bar, somewhere right? If valve delivered on 6 month intervals, it would NOT have been the SAME stunning display of HL, but just some rushed, "let's make new levels" job.

    Plus, Team Fortress 2 and Portal! How are you arguing that?!

    EDIT: mixed points up.
    Edited by 1 at 31/01/07 @ 00:55

  • [TR] #23 5 years ago

    @zoidberg: You sure can put Valve down for not delivering on time.
    Tomb Raiders were coming a game a year back in the day. And they were called sequels (kinda). They sure were much larger than what I have in mind an episode should be.
    Sure, gameplay never changed much, but what you're expecting from episodic gaming are more levels and story, not sequels.
    HL2:Ep1 was nice for an expansion, but Ep2 should be here already. Valve wants to get some new environments, enemies and stuff in? Make it in Ep3 or something. Start work on it WAY before release time.
    I haven't played S&M, but so far, all the episodic gaming I've seen has failed.
    I really like the concept, but to get it right you have to do what S&M has been doing with evenly spaced releases. I don't know if that's been working for them, content and gameplay-wise, but on the schedule part, it's working.

  • Royal Fool #24 5 years ago

    It really must suck for all those programmers, artists and designers to be forced to work on casual games now. Woohoo.

  • Errol #25 5 years ago

    I'm sure they are free to leave if they want.

  • nickthegun #26 5 years ago

    "We love SiN, make no mistake, and we definitely want to return to it."

    to be honest, after all this, who would want it back?