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IO Interactive’s CEO Hakan Abrak recently spoke to gamesindustry.biz about 007 First Light, Hitman, and what’s going on at the studio. During the interview, Abrak hails Dispatch as a “freaking fantastic” game and believes it is full of potential lessons for how to successfully pull off episodic releases in the future.
Abrak was asked about Dispatch because of how its success compares to Hitman in 2016. Dispatch is showing episodic releases can still be highly successful, meanwhile, Hitman was heavily criticized.
The IO Interactive CEO sings the praises of Dispatch as “freaking fantastic” and a “very, very nice game”. Abrak also admits that IO Interactive was “too early with the concept, and there were many, many mistakes made”.
One of the biggest mistakes was the developer “banging on [about how] one Hitman level can yield 50 hours plus of gameplay, whereas the Dispatch structure is a bit different”. This is because “It’s a much more episodic format, where yes, you can go back and kiss Mandy, or not kiss her,” but there’s still less replay, and “when there’s less replay opportunity, then you want to have the next episode coming sooner”.
Abrak believes “there are learnings” from Dispatch and that it’s a “huge topic”. These potential lessons raise questions about “the future of gaming,” such as “Do all games need to be 40 hours?”.
007 First Light is coming out on March 27, and IO says they wanted to “make our own James Bond”. The game isn’t episodic, so it doesn’t need to worry about criticisms levied at Hitman, but Abrak is “thinking” about potential lessons from Dispatch “for future instalments”.
Dispatch shows path to success for episodic releases
Dispatch shows that episodic releases can still be extremely successful. The key reason for its success is that Episodes 1 and 2 came out on October 22, capped off by Episodes 7 and 8 on November 12. All episodes were out in three weeks, which is much faster than Hitman, where it took seven months for all six episodes to release.
The Dispatch model is also a lot quicker than Telltale Games’. Telltale attempted to release new episodes every month, but sometimes it took much longer.
Thanks to its episodic format, the Dispatch player count got bigger every week, thanks to extremely positive word of mouth. This helped it sell over 1 million copies in just 10 days and also contributed to the game being on track to beat its three-year sales target in just three months.
AdHoc is planning to stick with episodic releases for future projects. We know they are working on a game set in Critical Role’s Exandria, and they are “at least” thinking about the possibility of Dispatch Season 2.
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