Telltale Games - Announces Shut Down

I would completely agree that their first games were far superior to the products that came out later. That alone is pretty telling these days, and when you take a harder look at some of how the games performed, perhaps this ending isn't such a surprise after all.

you said:

this is the problem with success and stupid people. The desire to 'grow' whether it be greed or ego gets in the way of stability.

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Carnifex said:

I would completely agree that their first games were far superior to the products that came out later. That alone is pretty telling these days, and when you take a harder look at some of how the games performed, perhaps this ending isn't such a surprise after all.

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Last year or so I learned the bussiness stretegy of "if it works, run it into the ground", meaning to use and finally over-use something that generates cash so much until the product cannot be used anymore.

In the article wherein I read it, it appeared as if this was a common and even acceppted bussiness stregety in the U.S. … i think that was one letter written by a reader to the local newspaper.

I think this might have been the cadse here as well : Someone at the top tried to generate as much cash as possible - and his is the result. Maybe that management person even got away from that with - cynically put - thick purses full of money.

Edit : The term "toxic management" says to me that my impression might be right.

To me, TellTale Games was like a light, a spark in the dark. It was the only big U.S. company still producing Adventure Games. everything else went Indoie or just died out. TellTale was my lat hope.

And now, since that's firm gone, PC platform gaming will even more monopolize on action games. It's already a fully degenerated platform dominated by a few big companies and a few, big genres - but apart from that, there's only Indie and Homebrew, cynically put. There is not much hope anymore.

I'm just glad I had bought their games I liked. Unfortunately, none of their recent games were matching my taste, but maybe I'm not the "usual buyer", too.

Edit : I just found this gem :

“I remember hearing one of my bosses say, ‘I love that we can just shout at each other and curse at each other in a meeting. It’s totally great,’” says one former employee.

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Source : https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/20/...s-developer-layoffs-toxic-video-game-industry

Yes, some kinds of people do like that. However, it's not the kind of people I'd like to work with.

Edit : I found a link towards this "article" in the above mentioned article : http://www.oldmanmurray.com/features/77.html

Also not uninteresting liked in above, too) : https://kotaku.com/crunch-time-why-game-developers-work-such-insane-hours-1704744577

Short, a prominent critic of game development crunch, says she believes unpaid overtime is the result of poor planning and bad management, not an inevitable part of game-making. One of the issues, she says, is that the people on top of the food chain view crunch as something standard and inevitable rather than a toxic, avoidable practice.

It can be a self-sustaining cycle, Short argues. Say a designer is able to create a sizable level after working 16 hours a day for three straight weeks. From then on, project managers will equate a level of that size with three weeks of work, and for future schedules they’ll plan accordingly, allotting three weeks of time to tasks that should require six. The designers will again have to crunch to finish those future levels, and the cycle will go on and on.

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There is also one example of how crunch time is evoked :

One day, you get a call from the publisher financing your game: turns out your hero didn’t test well with focus groups, so they want you to completely redo all of his design, art, and voice acting. Also, they need you to hit the same release date—can’t change that fiscal quarter guidance! What do you do?

You could:

1) Tell the publisher you need more time or more money (for extra staff) to do this, at risk of pissing them off and getting your project cancelled.

2) Tell the publisher you need to cut other features to do this, at risk of pissing them off and getting your project cancelled.

3) Tell the publisher you can’t do it, at risk of pissing them off and getting your project cancelled.

4) Crunch.

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So, it's money - and the psychology behind that. People who are dealing with money appear to have a certain way of thinking that's incompatible with … any forms of art, or producing games, I think.

Edit : Tales of layoffs, also liked above : https://kotaku.com/video-game-layoff-stories-1593420342

Alrik Fassbauer said:

“I remember hearing one of my bosses say, ‘I love that we can just shout at each other and curse at each other in a meeting. It’s totally great,’” says one former employee.

Yes, some kinds of people do like that. However, it's not the kind of people I'd like to work with.

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Yes, I don't like shouty people, and I wouldn't have that kind of work environment. I like people that can have a robust discussion without getting over-excited. If someone started shouting and swearing in a meeting, I'd tell them to go outside and pull themselves together.

Not sure I agree that their earlier games were better. It was completely unexpected to me, but Season 3 of the Walking Dead was their best one, I thought. Instead of finding ways to dig up old characters from the comics, they went off and told a new story with Clementine as a 3rd person character. I thought that was brilliant.

I also really enjoyed Tales from the Borderlands more than Game of Thrones, and I'd never played any of the Borderlands games (still haven't).

That said, Guardians of the Galaxy, which I believe was their last game, just didn't do it for me. I'd imagine that license cost a fortune…

Naah! Just those laundered-money Cayman Islands accounts ran dry. Nothing to see here..

I was really surprised when I saw these low sales numbers.

Ripper said:

I always like the analogy used in the article, that because a woman can produce a baby in nine months, that doesn't mean nine women can produce a baby in one month

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That line, "No matter how many doctors you put on it, it still takes 9 months to produce a baby," was made famous by Frederick Brooks classical book, The Mythical Man Month although its an older attribution.

However, I don't fully agree with his "Surgical Technique" to software development because it perpetuates the idea that you have to kowtow to one developer as the almighty coder instead of recognizing all the talents in a development team.

But still, throwing people at something is still done today with management still ignoring the same pitfalls that always comes up: mainly, the coders that know the project have to train the people that don't know which kills the productivity you were hoping to gain. This happened to me all the time at Intel when my manager always took on too much work as an excuse not to approve overtime.

Which sales numbers ?

six said:

I was really surprised when I saw these low sales numbers.

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you said:

Which sales numbers ?

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Well I would say 9 out of those 14 games under-performed. Seems only the original Walking Dead was a major hit that sold millions compared to the rest of them.

Anyway based on the graph things went downhill after Walking Dead S2. They might have made money off the next games, but what they spent ruined the developer.

The last three games are definitely bombs.

Oh. I thought maybe six meant they actually released sale numbers and i missed them.

Couchpotato said:

Well I would say 9 out of those 14 games under-performed. Seems only the original Walking Dead was a major hit that sold millions compared to the rest of them.

Anyway based on the graph things went downhill after Walking Dead S2. They might have made money off the next games, but what they spent ruined the developer.

The last three games are definitely bombs.

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you said:

Oh. I thought maybe six meant they actually released sale numbers and i missed them.

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No companies rarely release official sale numbers.

That graph just represents the number of steam sales.

One more video to add.

Oh, Couch - is there any thread you can't find a place for one of those videos?

Ripper said:

Oh, Couch - is there any thread you can't find a place for one of those videos?

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Meh I don't post them in every thread only a couple of them.

I wonder if they fell victim to the annoying episodic release thing? After their first few games I waited for the entire season to be released before I'd bother buying-- and it also happened to be discounted by then.

Yes, I wonder if that's a factor. I actually think that an episodic approach is not so bad, as a way for small indies to release parts that make a larger whole. But it does seem to be unpopular, and again encourages waiting until it's all finished.

Agreed. Episodic might work well for a smaller studio doing their initial project, but after that it needs to morph into a better system. That whole episodic approach is almost as bad a design as unlimited expansions/extra content!

Alrik Fassbauer said:

To me, TellTale Games was like a light, a spark in the dark. It was the only big U.S. company still producing Adventure Games. everything else went Indoie or just died out. TellTale was my lat hope.

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They ran thanks to franchises and their biggest success corresponded with the survivalist craze.

The crowdfunded scene has been giving a large amount of adventure products and considering that TT had to buy expensive franchises to get their products visibility, it means the crowdfunded scene provides enough money to make adventure products. Just not in expensive licensed universes.

The Drama continues….