Today is a very sad day for fans of Telltale Games. The team behind titles such as “Minecraft: Story Mode” and “The Walking Dead” has announced today that they have “made the difficult decision to begin a majority studio closure following a year marked by insurmountable challenges”. Telltale says that “a majority of the company’s employees were dismissed earlier this morning, with a small group of 25 employees staying on to fulfill the company’s obligations to its board and partners”. Here’s the statement in full:
— Telltale Games (@telltalegames) September 21, 2018
Dang….. never played one of their games but always thought to try The Walking Dead. Good luck to all involved.
The only one I tried, the Game of Thrones game, was very disappointing. The choices were nearly all inconsequential and herded you down the same path. If that’s reflective of their other work in the “choose your own adventure” genre, I can’t say I’m surprised. Sad nonetheless. Best of luck guys.
So long as we’re not willing to pay full price for video games while expecting better and bigger every year, we’ll lose all the mid-sized studios. Although I think they were probably paying way too much for expensive licenses for a niche genre.
You seem to view putting things on sale as an all around bad thing. It’s really not when you consider the fact not everyone can afford to pay 60 bucks for every game they want. Sales are done for those gamers on a small, limited budget.
It’s not that sales are bad. It’s that video games have been devalued below profitability for many studios, which is why we’ve lost so many mid-sized dev teams and smaller publishers in the last decade. App stores, Steam sales, freemium games etc have made people refuse to pay full price at a time when production costs have skyrocketed. So budgets are huge, profit margins are narrowing, and the AAA companies that can move large enough quantities to make money on slim margins are still forced to hedge their investment risk by making sequels and rehashing safe ideas.
Nintendo stays ahead of this some by focusing on lower spec games, simple textures, limited voice acting, and outright refusing to let their games be devalued. So they can take a little more risk and keep experimenting in the industry. Otherwise, most innovation comes out of the indie scene, and anything that gets big there will get borrowed by the AAA’s.
And it’s not like I’m not right there too. I’ve got a Steam wishlist 400 titles deep and like 100 on the Switch just to watch for sales. I’m always on CheapA**Gamer looking for deals.
They did really good with the Walking Dead Series. Maybe they tackled too much? Or the IP was too expensive to use? Either way I hope the best for em!
When they started they were using IPs that were only known to the fans of the genre they were working with, bringing back Sam and Max, Monkey Island, and such. Then suddenly they were getting Back to the Future, Jurassic Park, Boderlands, Guardians of the Galaxy, Game of Thrones, Batman, and all these other big actiony series that I don’t think fit well with the genre. They got away from focusing on making good adventure games to making adventure games for that thing you all like.
It was too much. Unless you were a fan of the specific series they were doing, you really didn’t need to play more than one TT game. They are all incredibly similar as far as being a video game is concerned. Plus, I guess games Life is Strange gave some good competition to the genre
But yeah, I’d say the main problem is that if you’ve played one TT game, you’ve played them all so maybe they should have focused on quality vs quantity… And popular IP appeal. Even that is a bit risky because it’s obviously meant to appeal to that fandom but fans get obsessive over spinoffs and the like and reject anything that doesn’t fit headcanon
Sucks for their fans.
Oh & the guys that work there. Hopefully they can find a new job in the industry if they love what they do.
Shoot they just announced talks to make a stranger things game a few months ago
From what I’ve heard, they’ve been putting out mediocre games in a large quantity for the past couple years. They just started doing much and began oversaturating their own market
I disagree to this. They have been gradually getting better at the games they’ve been doing. I know Batman did very well as well as Walking Dead.
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Honestly, i’m not surprised at all.
Seemed like people lost interest in their games quite a while back.
Personally, I just got bored with it. All of their games felt the exact same.
Hopefully the staff can find new jobs soon.
Telltale tell no tales.
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