I was once vehemently opposed to Valve's digital distribution product. This was mainly due to the horrific experiences that I and many others endured as part of our purchase of Half Life 2. You can read my blow-by-blow account of my purchasing, installation and registering woes and later, my continuing woes with attempting to keep playing the game on StarDestroyer.net (warning - heavy profanity present in those links).

But since then, I must admit that I have been turned around. Upon finally getting broadband (hah - what we in Australia are forced to accept as broadband anyway) I revisited Steam and found it to be a) working and b) a great collection point for a variety of unique, fun and (usually) good games. I am a regular purchaser of items from Steam. In fact, in recent times, probably more so than boxed products (mainly due to the fact that prices are a lot more competitive when you purchase via Steam - especially in Australia).

But there are problems with the system. And this isn't directly related to Steam, but it is a by-product of its success. Episodic Content/Distribution. This was meant to be the future - regular parcels of gameplay packaged at a lower price point and digitally distributed. Almost a return to the days of Shareware - remember the screens at the end of a lot of the old titles, asking you to send your cheque/money order for however many episodes of the game you wanted to buy. A great idea, but something that I rarely did - after all in 1992, despite having many years of gaming under my belt I was only in grade six and for whatever reason was apparently not to be trusted with a cheque account. That, and the fact that a single episode of Commander Keen was usually enough for me.

This economic model is still very shaky though. In a manner similar to the XBox Marketplace microtransaction, people are fiddling to find out how much the market is willing to bear for an episodic delivery game. And some developers are still struggling with the concept of what episodic even means. Which bring me back to Valve.

Half Life 2 was meant to be a flagship of the episodic fleet. New content being released through the "Episodes" series on a regular basis and at a low price-point. Instead, what we are presented with are regular expansion pack size content and premium expansion pack prices and on a release schedule that seems to be set by arcane lore and the readings of astral conjunctions. Valve has taken a tried and tested route: find fantastically (or even marginally) marketable IP and pump out semi-regular addons at 50% of full game pricepoint until the market is bored and stops letting you make a fat profit. To be honest, their only innovation here has been to leverage digital distribution into being the primary sales channel.

SIN Episodes was the first real test of the concept. This was not a "simple" game - this was what most people may have called a "AAA" title. A FPS where the developers (and publishers) were banking on sufficient pick-up of the episodic delivery system to recoup their original investment and make continued development viable. But therein lies the problem. First person shooters rarely give you the goodies right off the bat. How many people would have continued to purchase a Half Life episodic game solely based on "Hazardous Materials"? Can you honestly say that the first two missions in Jedi Knight II would have had you pulling out the credit card to purchase the next few levels?

SIN's experiment with truly Episodic First Person Shooters may as well be called what it was, a trial of pay-to-play demos. It not a compelling - or even a good - experience for those involved. You either need balls-to-the-wall action right off the bat (Serious Sam embodies this) or an amazingly gripping narrative and compelling gameplay (Max Payne springs to mind) in order to convince me that I want to keep playing a game that I've just forked over cash to play, what amounts to a demo.

Meanwhile, Valve needs to man-up and deal with their "Episodic Content". Just admit that if it is priced like an expansion pack, plays like and expansion pack and is released like an expansion pack, then its probably an expansion pack.

Adventure games seem to be bucking this unfortunate trend though. Sam and Max: Season 1, has fought through the mire of resistance to Episodic Content (thanks mainly to the previous failures to deliver on the promises of ongoing content). A price that reflects what you are actually getting, regular delivery of the installments and consistent level of polish and enjoyment to content throughout. Penny Arcade's: On the Rain-Slicked Precipice of Darkness will hopefully share this basic and successful business principle.

Imagine for a moment a world where Grey's Anatomy, mid-season is suddenly put on hiatus, then an episode slips out without fanfare, then another plays in a different time slot, then its back on indefinite hiatus. Now, for anyone used to Australian TV, this probably isn't that unusual, but for most mainstream TV audiences (which is why I chose that abomination of a program) that kind of delivery would frustrate them. Leading to many angry phone calls and letters to the TV station. But for the most part, we gamers, used to such abuses of our loyalty will just lie back and think of England.

Now, imagine another scenario. Sitting at home watching a movie, let's say Fight Club on DVD, having found it at a discounted price - you have just watched Edward Norton doing his tour of America tracking the spread of Fight Club. The DVD suddenly stops and David Fincher appears on screen doing an NPR inspired donation drive - apparently, you won't get to know what's going on unless you call now and give your credit card details. And then a DVD containing the final half hour will be sent to you. How can this be? Surely you've already paid for the movie? "No," you are politely informed by the person on the other end of the phone, "under our new policy, we've decided to move episodic release of movies, just to ensure that people who are unsure about paying full price when they don't know if they will like the content aren't obliged to pay full price for a movie they might not watch all the way through."

I get worried that we're going to see Episodic Content and microtransactions meet in some hideous fusion of evil technological money-grubbing collaboration. Imagine playing the next Elder Scrolls game, where each town that you visit, or dungeon you enter, requires a microtransaction to unlock - after all, why should someone pay for the development of a village that they might bypass during their playthrough?

And that's the issue that I think we as gamers may be facing - being forced into a situation where content that was once part and parcel of a game, may be broken down and delivered as separate purchases. And I'm not sure if I don't like the idea. Certainly, episodic delivery of a game is fine by me - as long as the episodes are reasonably priced, paced and delivered on time. Indeed, for gamers like myself who are short of time, but not short on funds, episodic is a good way of allowing us to pace ourselves, enjoying the limited play-time we get and anticipating our next burst. But people need to accept what Episodic Content entails - and more importantly, what it doesn't. In those situations, would it kill Gabe Newell to be honest and just admit that he's releasing expansion packs?