Over at Shacknews, Chris Remo has an excellent interview with Valve's Robin Walker and Gabe Newell on Half-Life 2 Episode 1, episodic content, and Doritos. Ok, we lied about the Doritos.

Remo notes of the episodic content: "Having only just released its first piece of episodic content, this type of game creation is still new to Valve. However, the company is fully committed to the method. "We are definitely doing this instead of Half-Life 3 right now," said Valve's Robin Walker." Swines! Do both! But they're right, as Walker notes: "There's a lot of depressing evidence out there indicating that not very many players are finishing out games. As a creator, you want people to see all the cool stuff you've made."

The piece ends on an interesting point: "Early reports indicate that Episode One is doing nicely in retail, not just online; Valve announced today that the retail version of Half-Life 2: Episode One debuted at #1 on the European retail PC sales charts upon its release."

Sure, that's because it's Half-Life 2, but if you can sell episodic/digital content at retail as _well_, then won't the eventual transition be smoothed over a whole lot better for all game companies?