Telltale Games shutting down
09-21-18, 10:55 PM
#26
gamer for life
Re: Telltale Games shutting down
I have played everyone of their games outside the final season of Walking Dead.
1: They spent too much money getting the IP's for games.
2: With 400 people on staff they were bloated.
3: While I enjoyed the games, they always followed some basic rules. Give the player a choice...do everything you can to make the player question their choice...then have characters in the game call out the player for those choices...even if logically they would not know about it. This started to make the games a chore to play at times...(esp game of thrones) I will admit the last Batman game was getting better in this area though...
4: Releasing the games in episodes. What started out as a cool idea just ended up delaying games to the point that it frustrated players. More importantly, they trained heavy consumers like me to not even buy the games until all the episodes came out or at least until it went on sale. It is REALLY frustrating paying 24.99, only to be one or two episodes in and see it go on sale for 10-12 bucks before the final 3-4 episodes even come out. After doing this with every game, my group of friends all stop paying 24.99 for any game, which is the reason I have not started the final season of walking dead yet.
5: Did I mention Game of Thrones????...what a piece of shit game.
1: They spent too much money getting the IP's for games.
2: With 400 people on staff they were bloated.
3: While I enjoyed the games, they always followed some basic rules. Give the player a choice...do everything you can to make the player question their choice...then have characters in the game call out the player for those choices...even if logically they would not know about it. This started to make the games a chore to play at times...(esp game of thrones) I will admit the last Batman game was getting better in this area though...
4: Releasing the games in episodes. What started out as a cool idea just ended up delaying games to the point that it frustrated players. More importantly, they trained heavy consumers like me to not even buy the games until all the episodes came out or at least until it went on sale. It is REALLY frustrating paying 24.99, only to be one or two episodes in and see it go on sale for 10-12 bucks before the final 3-4 episodes even come out. After doing this with every game, my group of friends all stop paying 24.99 for any game, which is the reason I have not started the final season of walking dead yet.
5: Did I mention Game of Thrones????...what a piece of shit game.
09-22-18, 12:17 AM
#27
DVD Talk Hero
Re: Telltale Games shutting down
I'd be disappointed we're not getting a conclusion to their Game of Thrones game, except it's been so long since it was released I can't remember what happened in it anyway.
09-22-18, 12:28 AM
#28
DVD Talk Limited Edition
Re: Telltale Games shutting down
I have played everyone of their games outside the final season of Walking Dead.
1: They spent too much money getting the IP's for games.
2: With 400 people on staff they were bloated.
3: While I enjoyed the games, they always followed some basic rules. Give the player a choice...do everything you can to make the player question their choice...then have characters in the game call out the player for those choices...even if logically they would not know about it. This started to make the games a chore to play at times...(esp game of thrones) I will admit the last Batman game was getting better in this area though...
4: Releasing the games in episodes. What started out as a cool idea just ended up delaying games to the point that it frustrated players. More importantly, they trained heavy consumers like me to not even buy the games until all the episodes came out or at least until it went on sale. It is REALLY frustrating paying 24.99, only to be one or two episodes in and see it go on sale for 10-12 bucks before the final 3-4 episodes even come out. After doing this with every game, my group of friends all stop paying 24.99 for any game, which is the reason I have not started the final season of walking dead yet.
5: Did I mention Game of Thrones????...what a piece of shit game.
1: They spent too much money getting the IP's for games.
2: With 400 people on staff they were bloated.
3: While I enjoyed the games, they always followed some basic rules. Give the player a choice...do everything you can to make the player question their choice...then have characters in the game call out the player for those choices...even if logically they would not know about it. This started to make the games a chore to play at times...(esp game of thrones) I will admit the last Batman game was getting better in this area though...
4: Releasing the games in episodes. What started out as a cool idea just ended up delaying games to the point that it frustrated players. More importantly, they trained heavy consumers like me to not even buy the games until all the episodes came out or at least until it went on sale. It is REALLY frustrating paying 24.99, only to be one or two episodes in and see it go on sale for 10-12 bucks before the final 3-4 episodes even come out. After doing this with every game, my group of friends all stop paying 24.99 for any game, which is the reason I have not started the final season of walking dead yet.
5: Did I mention Game of Thrones????...what a piece of shit game.
09-22-18, 01:38 AM
#29
DVD Talk Godfather
Re: Telltale Games shutting down
I was wondering if someone would want to buy them, or whatevers left. Telltale seems to have been managed poorly, but the name recognition and style is there that it seems like someone out there could potentially fix the wrongs and streamline their productions, and evolve their gameplay a little.
They've been around since 2004 and seemed successful enough to survive making smaller episodic games for awhile before The Walking Dead came out, and it seems like a leaner team that made 1 or 2 projects a year would have made more sense for them.
They've been around since 2004 and seemed successful enough to survive making smaller episodic games for awhile before The Walking Dead came out, and it seems like a leaner team that made 1 or 2 projects a year would have made more sense for them.
09-22-18, 10:12 AM
#31
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Re: Telltale Games shutting down
Despite that, I agree that Clementine might be the best-realized video game character ever. Truly a shame that we won't see a conclusion to her story. And I just recently bought the season pass, too. (Sigh.)
09-22-18, 10:15 AM
#32
Re: Telltale Games shutting down
Didn't they just run a sale too where you could buy the complete Walking Dead games for $20, including the new one coming out? I'm guessing that was a last ditch effort that will fall back on MS and Sony issuing refunds for.
09-22-18, 10:27 AM
#33
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Re: Telltale Games shutting down
09-22-18, 11:39 AM
#34
DVD Talk Legend
Re: Telltale Games shutting down
They’re a lot like those “choose your adventure” books from back in the day where you’d have the option of continuing a story by choosing one chapter over another and there were different outcomes and endings.
09-22-18, 01:15 PM
#36
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Re: Telltale Games shutting down
09-22-18, 05:04 PM
#38
DVD Talk God
Re: Telltale Games shutting down
No guessing about it. Pretty much confirmed they are only staying open to complete the Minecraft stuff.
09-22-18, 06:20 PM
#39
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Re: Telltale Games shutting down
It's really kind of a dick move to not at least publish a synopsis of the final two episodes.
A lot of people on Twitter are suggesting Microsoft should buy them, but that ship has sailed. If Microsoft were interested the deal would have happened before the layoffs. I'm sure the financials just don't make sense with their heavy dependency on licensing agreements.
Telltale's big mistake was not creating any IP of their own. Even THQ had Darksiders, Saints Row, etc.
A lot of people on Twitter are suggesting Microsoft should buy them, but that ship has sailed. If Microsoft were interested the deal would have happened before the layoffs. I'm sure the financials just don't make sense with their heavy dependency on licensing agreements.
Telltale's big mistake was not creating any IP of their own. Even THQ had Darksiders, Saints Row, etc.
09-22-18, 06:51 PM
#40
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Re: Telltale Games shutting down
The staggering overhead of being based out of San Francisco couldn't have helped. Their tools were nightmarishly outdated and underfeatured, and instead of addressing the core issues, they just threw more bodies at the problem to work around those limitations.
Telltale's history of hobbled tech goes back a ways, too. A source told me that even as the company was riding the success of The Walking Dead, their engine didn't have a physics system. (Telltale has their own proprietary technology, it doesn't use Unity, Unreal, or something else off the shelf.) If a designer came up with a scene requiring a ball to roll across the floor, or a book to fall off a shelf, it had to done by hand, an enormous time and resource commitment.
Sources say the culture of the studio never properly adapted from its indie mentality to one more appropriate for its larger size. Tribal knowledge persisted over clearly documented processes, and a lack of communication among employees bred confusion. “Very rarely people were writing things down on a wiki or a confluence page or any sort of documentation,” says a former employee. “People were shifting so often that you would hear a version of a story that was actually weeks old, and the person telling you has no idea because that’s the last thing they heard.”
To keep up with the workload, the company started rotating developers in and out of different games during the development process, sometimes in ways that employees say made little sense. As the developer’s schedule grew more aggressive, management sought to remedy tighter turnarounds by adding more people to the department — a “solution” that did little to help the problem. As one former Telltale developer put it: nine women can’t make a baby in one month. “Focus on quality really started to shift to ‘let’s just get as many episodes out as we can,’” the source says.
09-23-18, 12:03 PM
#41
DVD Talk Legend
Re: Telltale Games shutting down
I never really got into their games. The first Walking Dead was cool, because it was somewhat novel at the time. Back to the Future was sorta cool, mainly due to the property and the actors voicing their characters. Out of the rest I played, they didn't do much for me. The Borderlands one was amusing, but the choices make no difference.
It sucks for the employees, and anyone who enjoyed their games, but this is one that I'm not going to miss.
It sucks for the employees, and anyone who enjoyed their games, but this is one that I'm not going to miss.
09-23-18, 04:35 PM
#42
DVD Talk Godfather
Re: Telltale Games shutting down
^ That's my biggest problem with the Telltale games I've played. They seem to be masters at the illusion of choice, where nothing you choose really matters in the end. It's like reading a Choose Your Own Adventure book where every path leads you to page 200 where it says, "The End."
09-23-18, 06:06 PM
#43
DVD Talk Legend & 2021 TOTY Winner
Re: Telltale Games shutting down
There's like 3 or 4 different endings to Walking Dead Season 2 (I haven't played past that), but all of the choices that get you to those endings are made in the final chapter, so the choices in the rest of the chapters don't really matter. You might get someone to survive a little longer with the right choices, but if they were meant to die, they will probably still die not long after.
Also, the endings of season 2 are negated by starting season 3 in the same place regardless of where you ended season 2, and anyone that was with you besides Alvin Jr. will be missing or dead.
Also, the endings of season 2 are negated by starting season 3 in the same place regardless of where you ended season 2, and anyone that was with you besides Alvin Jr. will be missing or dead.
09-23-18, 07:30 PM
#44
DVD Talk Godfather & 2020 TOTY Winner
Re: Telltale Games shutting down
^ TWD Season 3 was an absolute shitshow. As maybe the biggest fan of the series here, I made my opinions on that title abundantly clear in the TWD game thread.
09-24-18, 07:03 AM
#45
DVD Talk Legend & 2021 TOTY Winner
Re: Telltale Games shutting down
I haven't started Season 3 yet, though I do own it. I just finished Season 2 a couple weeks ago and did some googling because I was curious where it would start with all the different endings of S2.
09-24-18, 08:25 AM
#46
DVD Talk Ultimate Edition
Re: Telltale Games shutting down
This has to be the worst gaming news all year for me. Telltale games was my favorite studio. I love the choose your own adventure type aspect. It was my favorite aspect of Mass Effect which was killed in the last ME game and then that franchise destroyed.
I guess it will get to where online shooters are the only type of game left. Games with no replay value once the crowds move on.
09-24-18, 10:14 AM
#47
Re: Telltale Games shutting down
Half the season? It sounds like they cancelled the whole thing and won't be releasing any of the finished episodes. I think it would piss people off even more if they just released a few, so it's probably for the best.
09-24-18, 10:20 AM
#48
DVD Talk Godfather & 2020 TOTY Winner
Re: Telltale Games shutting down
09-24-18, 12:17 PM
#50
DVD Talk Godfather
Re: Telltale Games shutting down
Want story driven "choice" games like Telltale? Go with Life is Strange, Detroit: Become Human or Until Dawn. All three are phenomenal.