Telltale Games died prematurely because it refused to look to the future

The story of Telltale Games paints a sad picture of a company that found success but suddenly closed. From fame to the moment of sudden falling asleep; when the company has found the formula for success, and they think this formula will make them successful forever.

Unfortunately, that never happened.

LONG HISTORY

Telltale Games was founded in 2004, combining talent from LucasArts with the idea that the future of games should be divided into chapters, digitally released and through copyright. Adventure games became popular again, but the genre needed an update first, and players then wanted characters and worlds they were already familiar with.

This is a powerful vision, but it takes a lot of testing to get to work. Remember the game that featured different copyrighted characters playing Poker together?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5h7Cw7cI5gM

Or the CSI game that Telltale developed for Ubisoft? There is also a distribution contract via GameTap, a paid online service – the Netflix version of the gaming world. Adventure games based on Jurassic Park and Back to the Future didn’t get much praise, but they were profitable at the time of 2011.

In 2012, eight years after the company was founded, the first season of The Walking Dead changed everything. It is a super successful product in terms of sales as well as the quality that Telltale is looking for. The unexpected stories and deaths of characters in the world of The Walking Dead fit perfectly into the chapter adventure game, and Clementine became the favorite of the series.

And then the gold panning began.

ENGINE CANNOT Cope with Trends, LIKE GAME DESIGN

Telltale has always used a proprietary technology called the Telltale Tool for their games, and creating their own engine always has its pros and cons. However, from the player’s perspective, it often feels more negative than positive.

In 2015, Kotaku featured an in-depth analysis of the bugs that plague Telltale’s games, in contrast to the positive signals the game received from critics. The game is often complained about errors as well as problems from players.

“Telltale’s support forums paint the face of a publisher: constantly releasing games that are faulty and damaged right from the start, and different from other companies it competes with – this company lacks resources. resources to help or, sometimes, to recognize the misery of players’ errors,” wrote Kirk Hamillton of Kotaku.

A Waypoint 2017 article explained how Telltale’s outdated engine technology can make simple tasks time-consuming for developers.

“Telltale’s history of buggy technology goes back a long way,” said Patrick Klepek. “A source told me that while the company is having success with The Walking Dead, their engine doesn’t have a physics system… If a designer comes up with an idea that requires the ball to roll on the floor, or the book to fall. off the shelf, it has to be done by hand, which takes a lot of time and effort.”

And the engine in general makes the characters look stiff and lifeless, which can affect the plot and dialogue in the game.

“Often the problems mentioned above take away the quality and humor of a joke in the game, affect both the plot and the voice acting, make it boring because the game can’t change scenes fast enough, creating too long a gap between the jokes back and forth.” Klepek writes, “Silence can be fun to use on purpose, but here it is just deadly silence.”

And when the worst part of a game’s development goes against the best of a game — in this case, the company’s technology often harms a game’s plot — what’s left is a mediocre experience. That’s what causes players to start leaving.

And when the company realized its technology was causing harm. “I have no particular comments on Unity,” Telltale’s Brodie Anderson told Eurogamer at Gamescom, “but for this season, [Telltale Tool] is our only option. I would say that the team has let players down a bit in the past, just in terms of our engine technology.”

There were many sources earlier this year that Telltale would switch to the Unity game engine, but unfortunately, this change never happened. Combined with those problems is the fact that Telltale only repeats its basic formula in the copyrighted products it has, which means that the final products always share the same motif: Every game or chapter there will be several big choices, with a moment of “shocking”; The graphics are also not new and players will definitely encounter errors.

“The Walking Dead has created a breakthrough for Telltale both artistically and financially,” the Verge reported by Mega Farokhmanesh earlier this year. “Unfortunately, it also binds the company to the same idea: that the formula in The Walking Dead is the only thing worth pursuing.”

The entire season of the Batman Telltale series, for example, feels like it’s The Walking Dead game (only the setting is different). The same applies to Guardians of the Galaxy, which is also one of Telltale’s recently concluded products.

In 2018, it was hard to know what was more exhausting: developing Telltale games or playing them.

DO NOT USE ORIGIN

It’s easy to look back and find out what the company did wrong, but Telltale’s dying train began to emerge shortly after The Walking Dead’s first season ended.

The company may invest in pushing the limits of its technology to bring new ideas and structures to its adventure games, but those efforts have never been realized in recent titles. here by Telltale. The studio should have appreciated the creative individuals who worked hard to breathe life into the plot, but given the information they had, they never did.

Re: I got laid off at Telltale

None of my sleepless nights or long hours on weekends trying to ship a game on time got me severance today. Don’t work overtime unless you’re paid for it, y’all. Protect your health. Companies don’t care about you.

— Brandon Cebenka (@Binkysaur) September 21, 2018

“Never sleepless nights or long weekends working to get the game out on time have never been compensated by the company for me. Do not work overtime unless you are paid for that time. Protect your health. Companies don’t care about you.”

“After The Walking Dead, describing a game by Telltale is like describing all of their games: a chapter-by-chapter adventure game, with chapters being released later, forcing players to make tough decisions with emotional consequences,” writes Farokhmanesh of The Verge. “This became the creative pattern at Telltale, as previous members said each new game – to some extent – tries to replicate the success of The Walking Dead.”

Telltale Games was given a great opportunity after the success of The Walking Dead, but the company’s inability to improve its games and its failure to reward new ideas and value its employees may be factors. leading to his untimely death. You can’t keep making the same game with the character being the only difference; everyone will notice.

According to Polygon