There's this nice idea that episodic content could work in the same way as a TV show like Lost, with cliffhangers that keep a viewers interest. But unlike TV you're not getting regular episodes every week, sometimes you're waiting months to see what happens next. How is this affecting the creative issues surrounding episodic games?

I do think that it'll be interesting to move to shorter and shorter cycle times, that there are products and stories and game mechanics that are best tried out shorter. We think that we're taking our first step, which is to move, you know, away from, a Half Life 2 style development cycle to an Episode 1 style development cycle.

I wish we had the bandwidth to try and do something where we're shipping every week. You know maybe somebody else can try that and we can all learn as an industry from that. But I would totally agree that as a consumer I would totally love it if my favorite games were giving me new content even faster.

Are you incrementally growing the Half Life franchise to the point of a Half Life 3 type level or is the idea of a traditional Half Life 3 on the drawing board?

I think we're just going to wait and see what our customers have to say. We actually want to get these three things. After Episode 1 I got about nine thousand emails from people who'd played through the game and there's a lot of thoughtful feedback on what they liked and what they didn't like and I think we'll be in a much better position to make decisions after we've gone through the three episodes as to what's next.