General Gaming Update: Telltale/Skybound Games reach agreement to complete The Walking Dead: The Final Season

[SoberChef]

5 hours ago, Mr.Vic20 said:

I'm interested to learn what caused the collapse? I had thought they were doing solid business year on year? 

So did I...until I saw the graph

4 hours ago, Hurdyb1 said:

Not the news I wanted to hear. Damn.

I think those of us who loved Telltale feel the same

4 hours ago, SaysWho? said:

Holy shit.

IKR!

4 hours ago, mo1518 said:

That graph is crazy. After walking dead and tales from the borderlands I just assumed it was all success for them given all the new licenses they announced. 

Fucking devastating to see it laid out like this. I genuinely thought they were one of the preeminent 3rd party devs and possibly the #1 dev of licensed material in the market, this is shocking as all hell!

[SoberChef]

Straight up however, looking back and seeing so many of their titles and so much of their content in those deep discount sales on XBL for instance (of which I took advantage of TBH, even it was only because I was limited on time and wanted something cheap when I had time to get "caught up", nonetheless I'm a part of the problem that caused this) but I genuinely believed that Telltale was in the top tier of 3rd party devs with licensed content behind only TT Games (Lego's game devs) but holy shit this totally breaks my heart for the company, the gamers that enjoyed their titles, and most importantly those that worked there. Fucking tragedy!

[Keyser_Soze]

Personally I felt like they kind of exploded in an undeserving way that made them pump out content that was super niche. Basically what I'm saying is they got bigger than they needed to be. If they kept the profits stayed a bit small and worked on more quality work this probably wouldn't have happened.

[vaxick]

I was really looking forward to the sequel to the Wolf Among Us. Sucks it'll probably never happen now.

[Littleronin]

9 hours ago, Spawn_of_Apathy said:

Wasn't it announced some time ago that Telltale was working on an original IP of their own? I guess that never made it off the conception  phase

THQ was also in the process of going from a heavy use of licensed content to diversifying as they seen that they could survive on licensed games alone. Sadly it was too late for it to make a difference. 

[The def star]

4 hours ago, Keyser_Soze said:

Personally I felt like they kind of exploded in an undeserving way that made them pump out content that was super niche. Basically what I'm saying is they got bigger than they needed to be. If they kept the profits stayed a bit small and worked on more quality work this probably wouldn't have happened.

This was kind of mentioned on the Bombcast a couple of months ago. They said something that they grew pretty fast that they moved out of two different offices to accommodate their growth but they assumed business must have been doing great but I guess not

[Bacon]

IMO, the games sucked at being games. I just really liked the story with TWAU. The TT games were just heavily animated visual novels, and those are hardly games. 

[elbobo]

looking at that graph, wow. I had no idea their later games did so poorly. 

[Mr.Vic20]

1 hour ago, Bacon said:

IMO, the games sucked at being games. I just really liked the story with TWAU. The TT games were just heavily animated visual novels, and those are hardly games. 

I think this is a fair & Accurate criticism but I still love what they were doing. 

[legend]

8 minutes ago, Mr.Vic20 said:

I think this is a fair & Accurate criticism but I still love what they were doing. 

 

Me too. They were just more interactive choose your own adventure stories, and I was totally okay with that. My wife and I would "play" them together the same way we watched a show.

[Paperclyp]

It definitely took me by surprise because of how many games they put out and licenses they acquired. I guess I just assumed the things must have sold really well. 

 

It sounds like the crunch over there was just brutal. I hope the ones wanting to keep working find new jobs. 

[RedSoxFan9]

what a disaster

[Brian]

After the massive success of the TWD S1, clearly management thought it was mainly related to the licensing. A huge mistake. Plus didn’t help that two of the driving forces for TWD left right after. 

[ByWatterson]

Unpopular opinion: Maybe they shouldn't have made the exact same game, with basically zero gameplay, over and over again. 

[Dre801]

I saw some Tweet about a petition for MS to buy them since they've been buying studios lately.

 

As someone who's been laid off twice, I know how bad that sucks, but damn at least in both my cases I got a decent severance package.  These people were basically fucked over.

[Paperclyp]

17 minutes ago, ByWatterson said:

Unpopular opinion: Maybe they shouldn't have made the exact same game, with basically zero gameplay, over and over again. 

Unpopular? 

 

I would say almost everyone is on board with that lol. 

 

We we can talk about how bad the games were, but typically these stories are more about hey here’s a lot of people who are now unemployed through little to no fault of their own. 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

Game Workers Unite (pro-unionization organization) statement on Telltale situation.

[Moa]

It sounds like their problems had more to do with the management of the company than with the quality of their games. I think you can see this from the abrupt shuttering, poor treatment of employees, and disappointment of the gaming community that they're gone and their projects abandoned. 

 

I will admit that I never finished any of their games since none of their IP licenses interest me, but I don't think that games I love, like Life is Strange, which push storytelling in games forward would exist without Telltale having led the way. 

[Brian]

- There are people who started at Telltale as recently as a week ago.
- Some of those people have children.
- At least one of them relocated cross country
- A lot of the Telltale devs have families & children. And now they don't have a paycheck. Not even a severance paycheck.

— Emily Grace Buck plz hire TTG devs! (@emilybuckshot) September 22, 2018

[CastlevaniaNut18]

3 hours ago, Paperclyp said:

Unpopular? 

 

I would say almost everyone is on board with that lol. 

 

We we can talk about how bad the games were, but typically these stories are more about hey here’s a lot of people who are now unemployed through little to no fault of their own. 

What am I missing here? I always thought people really liked their games. I get it if it's not a genre you're into, but for what they were, they were high quality in terms of story telling. Yeah, they had performance issues, but "bad games?" I loved them, because that's a genre I like. Much like Phoenix Wright and all.

[gamer.tv]

It is a massive shame, although I have only played The Walking Dead Season 1 and felt that was enough for their output for me.  Hopefully they'll get picked up by someone, though it is a tricky situation for the above and poses the question: should you work in your preferred industry when it doesn't allow you to actually generate enough income to live?

[Paperclyp]

29 minutes ago, CastlevaniaNut18 said:

What am I missing here? I always thought people really liked their games. I get it if it's not a genre you're into, but for what they were, they were high quality in terms of story telling. Yeah, they had performance issues, but "bad games?" I loved them, because that's a genre I like. Much like Phoenix Wright and all.

I think people were generally fine with the games, but other than the story they have nothing to offer, and I haven’t seen anyone praise the story of one of these in a long ass time. And obviously people weren’t buying them. 

 

But basically my point is “these games all played the same and they should have evolved the formula over time” is hardly a hot take lol. 

[CastlevaniaNut18]

4 minutes ago, Paperclyp said:

I think people were generally fine with the games, but other than the story they have nothing to offer, and I haven’t seen anyone praise the story of one of these in a long ass time. And obviously people weren’t buying them. 

 

But basically my point is “these games all played the same and they should have evolved the formula over time” is hardly a hot take lol. 

I was really surprised by the low sales in the charts, but I guess I still don't get it. I don't really know how you evolve the formula of a story telling game like this. You turn it into an action game and it's no longer the same genre that the fans enjoyed. The Phoenix Wright series hasn't really "evolved" and it still has a solid fanbase. It's a pretty niche genre, but one that's always had a solid set of fans.

 

And as for people not praising the stories in the games, looking at critic and user reviews on Steam and elsewhere, they were quite positive, so I imagine people must have really been enjoying the story, since that's all the games had going for them. I was one of them.

[ALIEN-gunner]

Telltale made games that were barely games. They were made like old style point and click adventures with tacked on gimmicky arcade moments. Worst of all they wouldn't always work properly. The company folding is no big loss to me. If it weren't for some of these games going free with PS+ from time to time I'd have forgotten this company existed. 

[Paperclyp]

26 minutes ago, CastlevaniaNut18 said:

I was really surprised by the low sales in the charts, but I guess I still don't get it. I don't really know how you evolve the formula of a story telling game like this. You turn it into an action game and it's no longer the same genre that the fans enjoyed. The Phoenix Wright series hasn't really "evolved" and it still has a solid fanbase. It's a pretty niche genre, but one that's always had a solid set of fans.

 

And as for people not praising the stories in the games, looking at critic and user reviews on Steam and elsewhere, they were quite positive, so I imagine people must have really been enjoying the story, since that's all the games had going for them. I was one of them.

Getting an engine that runs your very simple game well would be a start. Like evolution for me would have been making characters that don’t look unnatural and made of clay and don’t run with all the herk and jerk that all those games come with. 

 

That alone probably would have been enough for me to buy Game of Thrones and Batman, at least. 

 

But to suggest that they can’t evolve beyond that is kind of odd to me. You can borrow any number of ideas from story driven games to make these a lot more interactive and enjoyable. Life is Strange and Gone Home come to mind of great examples of purely story driven games that are actually enjoyable to explore the world around you. Or invent new ways.

 

I’m guessing the people fired had a lot of good ideas that they could never actually implement because of their insane deadlines and crunch. 

[Paperclyp]

Also, if you’re worried about “risking” losing your fanbase by changing too much, you better have a fanbase to begin with. 

[CastlevaniaNut18]

Of course, I could name ways to make improvements. 

 

But I still enjoyed their games and I'm sad to see them shut down. Like I said, I was really surprised to see the games hadn't sold as well. 

[Paperclyp]

Just now, CastlevaniaNut18 said:

Of course, I could name ways to make improvements. 

 

But I still enjoyed their games and I'm sad to see them shut down. Like I said, I was really surprised to see the games hadn't sold as well. 

I was surprised too. I just assumed they had a lot of people buying their games since they had every franchise on the planet. 

[Brick]

23 hours ago, SFLUFAN said:

Unionize.

 

How there isn't already a union for game developers is a shame. Then you have idiots like analyst Michael Pachter saying there doesn't need to be a union because the developers make a lot of money, and if you're rich you don't need a union. Guess he's never heard of the Screen Actor's Guild, and that not everyone makes millions of dollars. 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

 

[Keyser_Soze]

1 hour ago, Paperclyp said:

Getting an engine that runs your very simple game well would be a start. Like evolution for me would have been making characters that don’t look unnatural and made of clay and don’t run with all the herk and jerk that all those games come with.

 

Did no one look at that video I posted of the new engine?

[SimpleG]

40 minutes ago, Keyser_Soze said:

 

Did no one look at that video I posted of the new engine?

I think thats still the old engine.The new one wasnt suppose to debut until Stranger Things.

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2018/06/25/telltale-retiring-engine-for-unity/

 

https://www.pcgamesn.com/the-walking-dead-final-season/telltale-games-engine-unity

[Paperclyp]

1 hour ago, Keyser_Soze said:

 

Did no one look at that video I posted of the new engine?

Yeah they should have done that 8 years ago lol. 

[Bacon]

13 hours ago, Paperclyp said:

I think people were generally fine with the games, but other than the story they have nothing to offer,

I mean, like, this. The only reason I didn't watch TWAU on youtube was because I liked the story but no one picks the options I wanted. I just wanted to see the story with my choices even if the choices are practically meaningless except for a few key points. Like, I always made Bigby fight people for the most part cuz that was fun. 

 

On another note, I hated almost all of their IP's. TWD, Batman, Borderlands, Minecraft, GOT(I don't hate GOT but no desire to explore GOT outside of the show), and I am sure there were others. TWAU was just a more unique title with something I found interesting. I loved the concept Once Upon a Time, but I did not like the show at all. TWAU had a very similar concept but the story was actually good.  

[Remarkableriots]

On 9/21/2018 at 4:37 PM, SimpleG said:

Its a shame really

Some how they managed to take a game that no one in a million years would have thought to take and make into a an adventure game and it turns out really good and no one buys it 

I think I bought it twice but haven't actually played it yet.