It feels a little mean to post this, kicking a studio while it’s down, but it’s not like it’s untrue. So here we go, with your ol’ pal Jim Sterling’s thoughts on the company Telltale Games became before it announced its bankruptcy.
Telltale tried to do too much while not doing enough. Let’s take a look at it!
The dumb thing is that everyone should have seen this coming and TTG itself most of all… Because TTG already did the ‘build an engine and then run it straight into the ground’ thing once before. After two Sam & Max episodic games, two short stand-alone Bone games, the Strong Bad fiasco and Tales of Monkey Island, it was pretty clear that their formula was wearing thin…
The only thing that saved Back to the Future from being a complete disaster was them getting in a lot of the actors from the original movies and them working off of various script ideas that couldn’t be worked into the movies for lack of time for the story. The gameplay and engine, at that point, were getting exactly no one excited.
If Telltale hadn’t completely reworked its formula for the original The Walking Dead game (with Jurassic Park as a less than stellar prototype in between), the company would have folded right then and there.
For all the criticisms of Telltale as a company and developer, it’s still a god damn shame that they’re now out of commission
A studio responsible for pushing the boundaries of narrative gaming is no more, and a lot of people are without jobs; that’s something to be sad about even if you’d hated literally everything the company ever put out
It might just be me misinterpreting the conversation, but it kind of feels like centering the discussion around Telltale’s (admittedly receding) game quality tacitly implies that the boots-on-the-ground developers ‘deserved’ to have this happen to them, which just feels like a shitty attitude to hold when a lot of people are suddenly without employment- but then again, maybe I’m taking all of this in a way other than how it was intended
Also, I would be interested in hearing more about the management-side causes of the studio’s shutdown; would anyone be willing to share anything they’ve found regarding that topic, if they’d be so kind?
at first i didn’t like your wrestling bits, but that intro clip got me chuckling lol
I love the tie,nice to see more color on the mega sexy boy
He quoted Undertale. Holy crap, amazing.
Business 101. Dont put all your eggs in one basket.
“I have painful back injuries”
*Jumps up and slams down onto his ass*
Remember Telltale before The Walking Dead? Man. They had puzzles. They had humor. They were great.
Then The Walking Dead happened, and they thought they couldn’t make good games anymore. Then they didn’t make good games anymore.
Then this happened.
I got unlucky, I started seeing through those illusions way back with Mass Effect 2. I’m still sour about how much the industry gushed over its “choice mechanics”. There are 90s games with more advanced choices.
It sucks that some of the best games I’ve ever played studio shut down and yet crap companies like EA and Activision are still kicking
Jim… your tie is glorious.
Also, my first experience with episodic gaming was the Half-Life series. It’s also what killed any interest I might have had in the concept.
The whole *”illusion of choice”* thing was really demonstrated to me in season 2 of this.
Which is why that was the last season i personally played myself.
Quite literally nothing you chose mattered at all.
The game was more of a movie than even the first season.
And a good movie i’ll give it that.
But just a terrible game.
The only way i can get enjoyment out of this series atm is by watching lets plays.
Which it is perfect for honestly.
Its not enough of a game for me to pay for it and play it like one.
Visual novels are an untapped market, but a treacherous one. A game like that relies on the writing to an extent that few others do. Most games actually rely on more visceral action to satisfy players. As long as the shooting/other action is satisfying then mediocre writing will be forgiven. But when your entire game is basically a choose-your-own-adventure book, then the writing is real the primary thing. When it works, like Tales from the Borderlands or WD Season 1 or The Wolf Among Us, it pays off. When it doesn’t? There’s no other mechanic to save it.
[GLASS HIM]
Sterdust quoting Sans is the most bizarrely awesome thing i saw in a while
God, I’m glad I don’t work in the Videogame Industry. That shit is worse than the Mafia.
I’m actually happy Telltale Games existed. My mom got my stepdad an Xbox One to play 4K BluRays on, and he noticed he could play games on it. He wanted to try some video games, but he hadn’t played a game since the 90’s and wasn’t used to the complex controls of other games. We got him the Telltale Walking Dead games since he’s a huge Walking Dead fans, and he had a complete blast with the first two seasons and Final Frontier. These games were excellent for people who didn’t have that much experience with games and didn’t want to learn complex mechanics just to experience a story.
Jim went from a back injury to ass slamming in what 18 months? Damn.
Good video Jim!
I think what we like to watch is rather different to what we like to play. Playing something requires full immersion. It HAS to do something a little different every so often…
Also, I think back to the Boneville games, and that’s around when I burned out on the Telltale storytelling methods. XD Quite a while ago.
Also, I have a brother who’s an engine designer. I love it when you tell stories about how fucked it can be to be a developer, because I feel so incredibly bad for so many of the experiences he had early in his career. =(
He was working 16+ hour days, seven days a week, for a salary that was half that of your average IT professional, in spite of MAKING the damn engine that ran the whole fucking company… Then when they went under, it was just “SEEYA! THANKS FOR THE HARD WORK, GOOD LUCK ON YOUR NEXT JOB!”
I feel bad for Telltale’s developers, but after all the reading I’ve done and listening to the developers? Telltale itself can suck on a fat knob for all I care. Good riddance (except for…you know…the developers who got canned with literally 30 minutes notice they were being fired).