Dispatch studio AdHoc knew it was taking a risk releasing the game in weekly episodic installments, and was actually advised not to do it. However, the studio did it anyway, and the risk paid off.
AdHoc itself has been around for seven years, with its superhero workplace comedy being in full production for three of those. Dispatch is the studio’s first game, so it was understandably a big deal when its first episodes were released back in October of this year.
“Seven years, one game,” AdHoc’s CEO and executive producer Michael Choung reflected in a recent interview with Knowledge, before adding: “But what’s inside that game is basically three feature-length premium animated films and a videogame, all meshing and rubbing up against each other.”
The studio exec noted the team decided it wanted to go with a completely original narrative driven episodic format, and was not simply about making life easy for them. “And part of it was because we weren’t really thinking about feasibility,” Choung said. “We were just thinking in terms of creative and player experience.”
But, while this approach worked for AdHoc and Dispatch, Choung admitted releasing the game in one go would have been “the conventional wisdom”.
“Everyone was telling us not to do it,” Choung said of the game’s episodic format. “We had internal debates about it but the story was always structured that way.” So while other release cadences were floated – such as bringing the game out in two halves or even one episode per week – the studio eventually settled on two episodes, once a week.
“A lot of the reasons for it we’re now seeing the results of,” Choung furthered. “There would just be a longer time period for it to be covered.” The developer remarked that we have been seeing this kind of release schedule with TV series for decades now.
“We knew that it gives a ‘the train is leaving the station, but not just yet – I can still make it’ kind of feeling across weeks, and people catch on. When we look at concurrent user numbers across the drops, it’s exactly that – it just kept doubling every week. Again, conventional wisdom says: whatever you guys do in the first week, the second week is going to be half that number. It was literally the opposite. Those things, we anticipated.
“I don’t think we anticipated the scale of it.”
But while Dispatch has seen immense success with its release schedule, Choung admits this is not something every studio should now attempt, especially if there isn’t the creative backbone to support it. “It’s insane to do,” he said. “From every metric, from a production perspective, no one should do this. If you think episodic alone is going to be the thing that dictates success for you, then good luck!”
The exec continued: “If the creative is strong, you can cut it up however you like, and it probably is going to make it through, even if it’s a poor decision. If we’d said, ‘We’re just going to release the whole thing’, it probably would have done ok. But it probably wouldn’t have been as big as this… If you go episodic with a not-so-great story, you’re flirting with people that aren’t attracted to you whatsoever.”
But while Choung cautioned releasing a game with an episodic format, he said if others did try, AdHoc would of course “be thrilled if it worked out”.
Earlier this year, AdHoc announced Dispatch had sold over 1m copies in just 10 days. Thanks to this success, the studio is now considering a second season (perhaps one with more sex scenes, given the “ravenous” response to the first season).
Meanwhile last month, AdHoc said it has no interest in using AI to replace voice actors or game development. “AI feels like a production solution, not a creative one,” creative director Nick Herman said, before adding: “Maybe it’s a creative one if you aren’t creative.”
