Still, the historical context doesn't pacify Bleszinski. "I'm a fairly successful video game designer who can afford a lot of $50 games," he said. "But there's a psychological barrier that I have there with a game that stinks that I spent $50 on. [It] still stings."

So he doesn't want $60. He doesn't want $50. "I would kill to have a [top-quality] game that's jam-packed with an amazing story and amazing moments and four hours long and costs 20 bucks." He said it's possible, if only the industry cut costs by making games shorter and sweeter, but that too many gamers and publishers demand 20-hour games that are filled with the padding of having gamers repeat the same tasks again and again.

All this leads to the obvious conclusion: if we could make games that were structured in TV season structure, we would be a step closer to the goal of producing episodic content - something many people in the games industry see of something of a grail at the moment. If your core game consists of, say, 3-4 episodes, you can then supply new episodes on (for instance) a monthly schedule (perhaps providing the first one for free). Then you can have the economic model of an MMORPG, but without the insane infrastructure costs. Not to mention you can spread your development costs, and consequently your risk. (You'd want to be using middleware, because you couldn't afford to be developing a custom engine).