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[CJY]

Netflix could nab up some of the previous developers.. if they were inclined to do so. Seems like it would be a sensible investment, heck they could even include the games in their subscription package.

I saw someone mention this somewhere else too...
Is it possible that you could play the game directly through Netflix? Streamed?

I guess that would be nice

 

[#Phonepunk#]

only played the BTTF one for a few minutes, it felt like a brain dead cash grab. a Graphic Adventure in name only that leaned super hard on the license. i've heard good things about them but to me they seemed overrated.

 

[Bryank75]

Terrible, I saw a guy on twitter isn’t even getting redundancy..... it’s pretty heinous. These people deserved better.

 

[nemiroff]

They had a string of games that really under performed. You can only take so many losses in a row before the lights go out.

Looking at that chart it's obvious that my personal perception of their "popularity" basically only came from the buzz around The Walking Dead, its sequel, and the anticipation of The Wolf Among Us. How they justified having up to 400 employees for such a company is beyond me.

 

[Vampire On Titus]

PC GAMER: Following Telltale layoffs, Netflix still wants to make a Stranger Things game

As for Stranger Things, Netflix said in a statement to Variety that it was "in the process of evaluating other options for bringing the Stranger Things universe to life in an interactive medium". Hopefully that just means that it's looking for another studio to take on the project—and I'm sure it won't be short of options.

The statement in full reads:

“We are saddened by news about Telltale Games. They developed many great games in the past and left an indelible mark in the industry. Minecraft: Story Mode is still moving forward as planned. We are in the process of evaluating other options for bringing the Stranger Things universe to life in an interactive medium.”

This is interesting. I wonder if the new project will still be an adventure game. I'm also curious to know who they're considering. There arent too many devs creating games in this space on a level that makes sense for a license like Stranger Things. You could basically count the number of developers on one finger. Quantic Dream, DontNod, SuperMassive... maybe throw Campo Santo in for consideration? BigBadWolf if you're really stretching it.

Honestly anyone on that list would work for me with the exception of SuperMassive. It's also possible they just pull someone random like when The Odd Gentlemen made the Kings Quest reboot in 2015. In any case it's cool to know the game isn't totally dead even if that specific project wont be coming out..

 

[SirKicksalot]

only played the BTTF one for a few minutes, it felt like a brain dead cash grab. a Graphic Adventure in name only that leaned super hard on the license. i've heard good things about them but to me they seemed overrated.

Wasn't their Jurassic Park the game where you have a conversation with yourself?

 

[Vampire On Titus]

only played the BTTF one for a few minutes, it felt like a brain dead cash grab. a Graphic Adventure in name only that leaned super hard on the license. i've heard good things about them but to me they seemed overrated.

lol pretty harsh take for only a few minutes of play. Graphic adventure in name only?

Back To The Future was actually a good game and you could tell they had a lot of respect for the property. I think episode 3 faltered in some pretty significant ways but the series managed to regain it's footing and finish strong. It's definitely something I'd recommend to fans of the movies.

 

[Kadayi]

It's a solid point. Newcomers to the genre basically doing "TellTale's thing" but much better definitely couldn't have helped. Life Is Strange had a better plot, graphics and gameplay than TellTale had managed in years. The only place it lagged behind was dialogue. While TellTale's games were barely cracking 250k with popular licenses, DontNod was announcing 3 million copies sold with their own IP.

However in addition to that I think you can see the intense audience dissatisfaction in specifically how the numbers decline over time. A lot of people were finding the games bad. Look at the sharp decline from each game averaging around ~200k to not even cracking 100k immediately after New Frontier. Similar thing with GoT. I think they were bleeding through good will and really alienated their core fan base with a lot of these releases.

It's also worth mentioning that even if the games were universally of good quality... 6 games within two years is just insane. General fatigue is also something you can look to explaining their downfall in popularity. At a certain point a new TellTale game was just background noise. Whereas when DontNod announces a new game it's an actual event and there's some hype around it.

Yeah. I think there are a wide variety of factors at play here. That tricky second season of TWD really didn't deliver for a lot of people despite the promise shown in 400 days DLC and I think that actually damaged their reputation in many peoples minds. They needed to be building out the formula rather than repeating it and I just don't think they did a good job especially with many of the characters in that season being particularly one note. I think I actually rejoiced when Sarah finally died because she was nothing but a complete liability throughout. Still, I sided with Jane over Kenny so I'm probably in the minority on these matters (she was practical and he was a blowhard).

 

[Blam]

Is it possible that you could play the game directly through Netflix? Streamed?

I mean Onlive ran on 2-3mb/s and netflix runs on a lot less. So it's entirely possible to do so.

 

[Kreydo]

Telltale were employing 250 ppl?? It's a joke right??

 

[Humdinger]

Potential good news about the final season of The Walking Dead:

 

[SonicSleuth]

Hearing all the sniffling on podcasts about how sad this was, and how unexpected, I shake my head. They made decent - not great - very limited games with a low price point, employed way too many people, and this is the kind of thing that happens. Unfortunate but not exactly earth-shattering.

I used to work for a fantastic company that did the special effects for Star Trek and other sci-fi TV shows... the company grew huge, the projects dried up, and the place went bankrupt. That's what happens. Still the best job I ever had... but not a big shocker when the doors closed.

 

[Stuart360]

Only just heard about this, and it sucks, i own and like a lot of their games, even though they are not for everyone. I was always under the assumption that their games sold pretty damn well.
Its so weird how many times a studio will have 1 or 2 games that underperform a bit, and they end up shutting down. Devs really need to get a grip on game budgets.

 

[Nymphae]

Has anyone linked to the Polygon story from a few months back? As much as I dislike those hacks, this was a good read.

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

Edit: Verge not Polygon.

 

[DigitalScrap]

Only just heard about this, and it sucks, i own and like a lot of their games, even though they are not for everyone. I was always under the assumption that their games sold pretty damn well.
Its so weird how many times a studio will have 1 or 2 games that underperform a bit, and they end up shutting down. Devs really need to get a grip on game budgets.

I actually like their games too for what they are (I'm not one to get bogged down in technical details while playing a game, and graphics are not so important to me personally).

But they haven't only had 1 or 2 games that underperformed, they basically have been dying since 2014 based on the sales, especially since I know those licenses had to be expensive. I too was under the impression that they were selling well, but then I see that Minecraft didn't sell well, and GoT was lukewarm at best. And the rest after Minecraft, well, I'm surprised they have been able to stick it out this long looking at those sales figures.

I truly enjoyed their games as something different. I'll actually miss them.

 

[gela94]

I'm sad that there won't be Wolf among us 2.

 

[DeepEnigma]

Potential good news about the final season of The Walking Dead:

Let's just hope it's not an exclusive platform holder.

 

[Stuart360]

I actually like their games too for what they are (I'm not one to get bogged down in technical details while playing a game, and graphics are not so important to me personally).

But they haven't only had 1 or 2 games that underperformed, they basically have been dying since 2014 based on the sales, especially since I know those licenses had to be expensive. I too was under the impression that they were selling well, but then I see that Minecraft didn't sell well, and GoT was lukewarm at best. And the rest after Minecraft, well, I'm surprised they have been able to stick it out this long looking at those sales figures.

I truly enjoyed their games as something different. I'll actually miss them.

I was talking more in general with that second part buddy.

 

[IbizaPocholo]

 

[DigitalScrap]

I was talking more in general with that second part buddy.

Oh, I get it. I was just saying that I'm amazed at how poorly so many of their games have performed since 2014 - I honestly thought that they were selling a ton of games (especially since they seemed to keep getting new licenses).

I wasn't saying you were wrong. I'm not one of the antagonistic posters - I still remember when we could have conversations on forums without everyone trying to prove the other person wrong all the time.

Unfortunately, it seems that lots of asshats like to post on forums now, so conversations are not what they used to be.

 

[donutkirby]

I struggle to feel bad for the company when they had employees and upper management advocating for discrimination based on gender. My pity well is dry for them.

 

[Vampire On Titus]

Potential good news about the final season of The Walking Dead:

A glimmer of light in the darkness. Here's hoping they can finish it and not only that but finish strong for the fans. The start of this season carried so much potential with it.

 

[iorek21]

Potential good news about the final season of The Walking Dead:

I'm wondering which company could be picking up the torch...

I feel like it's Ubisoft, but it's only a hunch...

Campo Santo would be a strong candidate as well

Now... DONTNOD would be a great surprise

 

[Kadayi]

I'm wondering which company could be picking up the torch...

I feel like it's Ubisoft, but it's only a hunch...

Campo Santo would be a strong candidate as well

Now... DONTNOD would be a great surprise

Campo Santo was absorbed by Valve a while back. (http://blog.camposanto.com)

 

[ExpandKong]

I struggle to feel bad for the company when they had employees and upper management advocating for discrimination based on gender. My pity well is dry for them.

Maybe if they hadn’t excluded an entire gender from their employee candidate pool they might’ve been able to hire someone who could keep them from going bankrupt. WHOMP WHOMP.

I know that attitude wasn’t shared by all the employees at Telltale and I feel for those people, at least.

As for the others, #GetWokeGoBroke

 

[TheSHEEEP]

One thing I really don't understand is how you need that many people to produce those kind of games. I mean... they aren't graphically complex, they aren't terribly programming intensive (they should have their engine down since a while), there isn't any real gameplay that would need designing, etc.
And it is not like they were producing a game or episode per month - it was all a very slow progress. For all the irons they could have had in the fire, there were very few actual releases.

What did all those people do? They can't all be writers.

 

[Yoshi]

Maybe if they hadn’t excluded an entire gender from their employee candidate pool they might’ve been able to hire someone who could keep them from going bankrupt. WHOMP WHOMP.

I don't think the issue is on this level. It is a management issue. If one form of game design that you very narrowly focus on is losing attention by customers and you get competitors that innovate on your formula in some key points (Life is Strange) but you neither react on this, nor differentiate your output, then the problem is upper management. It was a completely unsustainable model and I am surprised they made it this far. Sad about all the people who lose their jobs in the process, but this really is a major fuck-up by upper management, not by the recruitment staff.

 

[Yoshi]

One thing I really don't understand is how you need that many people to produce those kind of games. I mean... they aren't graphically complex, they aren't terribly programming intensive (they should have their engine down since a while), there isn't any real gameplay that would need designing, etc.
And it is not like they were producing a game or episode per month - it was all a very slow progress. For all the irons they could have had in the fire, there were very few actual releases.

What did all those people do? They can't all be writers.

I'd assume, graphics, music, voice recording and processing, a couple of programmers, directors and producers, as well as administrative jobs, which might be more work than usually because of many outside contracts for voice talent and for obtaining licenses.

 

[IbizaPocholo]

 

[KonradLaw]

One thing I really don't understand is how you need that many people to produce those kind of games. I mean... they aren't graphically complex, they aren't terribly programming intensive (they should have their engine down since a while), there isn't any real gameplay that would need designing, etc.
And it is not like they were producing a game or episode per month - it was all a very slow progress. For all the irons they could have had in the fire, there were very few actual releases.

What did all those people do? They can't all be writers.

Making such games is very time intensive. They might look simple, but there's no gameplay systems that provide lot of engagement with small involvment. It's not like action game when where you need some more time added to campaign you can just throw bunch of enemies. Here their entire games were bassicaly interactive cutscenes. But in Telltale's case this problem was made ten times worse by the engine. For example..it had no physics. So when you wanted to do something as silly as drop an object to the ground...in other engines it would be one automatically, here they had to animate it by hand and do it every time for everything.
Bassicaly they had utterly terrible engine that made creating content very slow and they coupled it with a genre that required creating content very fast.

 

[Redneckerz]

I struggle to feel bad for the company when they had employees and upper management advocating for discrimination based on gender. My pity well is dry for them.

Not surprised that people only look at the outer layer of things and it gets liked by others with similar views.

As if that completely neglects the amount of effort these folks pushed. Nah, who cares they were in permanent 100 hours a week mode earning a little over 4k a month.

I am actually surprised they managed to tweet still though. That being said, it may very well be that these folks weren't really thinking straight when tweeting it - especially if they do work 100 hours a week shifts. Ideally, you would want to investigate each and every single one of those embedded tweets to find the origins of these.

All that does say though to me is that too many people still believe Twitter is a private outlet when its not.

Really though, i feel that tweet (and you picking up on it) is a little too much in ''Looking for negatives'' territory just so one can hold no remorse to Telltale and say fuck the company as a whole, when you are referring to individual members and you can't verify if the majority of the 250 employees share these sentiments (Most likely not).

Thus, i feel this tweet is too much fishing for negativity. And as always, if you dig everywhere, you will bound to find something that you can use to say fuck em. I don't think doing that is done in good faith, tbh.

One thing I really don't understand is how you need that many people to produce those kind of games. I mean... they aren't graphically complex, they aren't terribly programming intensive (they should have their engine down since a while), there isn't any real gameplay that would need designing, etc.

Gross assumption on your end. You would not know how the TTool is in practice, considering that only at the end Telltale managed to upgrade the tech again speaks out loud that they were far too busy on creating content, to the point where writing and even animation quality was sub-par. Management so often wanted last-minute changes that it was not only terrible for the writers onboard, but even more so for the animators, because animating/creating a scene takes a lot more time than writing a script in general.

They needed this many people to keep up with the amount of content they had to produce - over multiple series, even.

 

[hariseldon]

Devs really need to get a grip on game budgets.

Not up to devs to do that. Games cost a lot to make because these days you need a big team to make them, due to the increased complexity. These big teams then need a lot of management, and the tools to manage that number of people, and the costs just keep going up. You have devs, you then need your voice actors, musicians, graphic artists, animators, etc. A modern game has a lot of moving parts so budgets naturally follow suit.

 

[Kadayi]

I struggle to feel bad for the company when they had employees and upper management advocating for discrimination based on gender. My pity well is dry for them.

Every firm has assholes, just because some people act out you shouldn't assume everyone else does. I mean realistically does everyone you work with align with your values?

 

[hariseldon]

Kadayi - not everyone will share those values, but if that particular value set is being imposed top-down (eg via the recruitment process) it does tend to drive out anyone not fitting that particular culture (I remember at one place I worked, they brought in a 'change management consultant' who spent a day with us discussing the 'change curve' which looked an awful lot like the grief thing - and asking us what kind of animals we thought we were most like - a bunch of us said fuck this and left because we knew that a lot of weird touchy feely shit was coming - best decision any of us ever made as we all went on to much bigger better things). So while not everyone there will align to those values, and many will be there simply because they have bills to pay so they have to be seen to support those values, one can reasonably argue that the values of the company as a whole are likely expressed reasonably well by those tweets.

 

[danielberg]

It is sad but i cant help but think they shoot themselves in the foot with some of the people they hired, i think there is a good chance that ubisoft will pick up most of them imo

 

[sol_bad]

Looking at that sales time line on the previous page. You would think they'd try and change their strategy after 2014, but nope, they kept on with the exact same plan.
What in the world made them think their sales would suddenly spike up????

*EDIT*
Question. The place that Telltale was set up at, it was apparently an expensive area. Is this only within the city itself or does it include the outskirts where it would take an hour to travel to work? If the outskirts are cheaper why aren't developers living there? It's pretty common in Sydney to travel any hour to work by public transport.

 

[DeepEnigma]

Potential good news about the final season of The Walking Dead:

The Barlog has spoken...

 

[TheSHEEEP]

Making such games is very time intensive. They might look simple, but there's no gameplay systems that provide lot of engagement with small involvment. It's not like action game when where you need some more time added to campaign you can just throw bunch of enemies. Here their entire games were bassicaly interactive cutscenes. But in Telltale's case this problem was made ten times worse by the engine. For example..it had no physics. So when you wanted to do something as silly as drop an object to the ground...in other engines it would be one automatically, here they had to animate it by hand and do it every time for everything.
Bassicaly they had utterly terrible engine that made creating content very slow and they coupled it with a genre that required creating content very fast.

Not that I would not believe it, given the amount of incompetence I have witnessed myself as a programmer throughout the years, but do you have any actual citation on that?

Gross assumption on your end. You would not know how the TTool is in practice, considering that only at the end Telltale managed to upgrade the tech again speaks out loud that they were far too busy on creating content, to the point where writing and even animation quality was sub-par. Management so often wanted last-minute changes that it was not only terrible for the writers onboard, but even more so for the animators, because animating/creating a scene takes a lot more time than writing a script in general.

They needed this many people to keep up with the amount of content they had to produce - over multiple series, even.

Well, if you and the one I quoted before are right, the engine indeed was responsible for having to animate waaayyy more manually than should be required.
In that case, I still have to ask why the engine wasn't ditched?
Let's be honest here, I haven't seen anything in any of their games that couldn't have been done in the exact same manner in another engine.

In the end, I don't really doubt that both requiring THAT many people and failing to sell enough to maintain THAT many people is both down to bad management.
Who knows, maybe this will become a textbook example of "how not to...".

 

[hariseldon]

In that case, I still have to ask why the engine wasn't ditched?

I'll speak up here as a developer. I've worked in places where we've had a hell of a lot to do on legacy systems, but not enough staff to keep up with the rate of work required. So you're there, knowing this system is a piece of crap and needs replacing with a modern piece of software. The problem is that the software is so crap and taking up so much of your time that you can't do it, and doing so would involve taking the engine out of a moving racecar that's doing 200mph on a bend. Management won't let you slow down for a pit stop to take the engine out, so in the end you keep on plugging away, and eventually it all blows up and management wonder what happened.

The life of a software (not games in my case btw) developer.

 

[Redneckerz]

Well, if you and the one I quoted before are right, the engine indeed was responsible for having to animate waaayyy more manually than should be required.
In that case, I still have to ask why the engine wasn't ditched?
Let's be honest here, I haven't seen anything in any of their games that couldn't have been done in the exact same manner in another engine.

You are ignoring the fact that engine platforms are always being worked on and consist of many sub-systems, like AI, Pathfinding, Networking, Rendering, Audio, and so on. When you are on a scheldule that requires you to constantly produce new content, there is very little (if any) time to even think on making graphical upgrades. You are just working with what you have, because management does not allow you to introduce anything new. This is why long-standing bugs remain at present in Telltale Games - no doubt the employees are aware, but they simply don't have any time to do anything about it.

In the end, I don't really doubt that both requiring THAT many people and failing to sell enough to maintain THAT many people is both down to bad management. Who knows, maybe this will become a textbook example of "how not to...".

They required that many people to ship that many products, even if that meant that the overall quality of said products went down. If there is hardly any Q&A and just blatant disregard for quality in favor of being pressured into presenting anything shippable, than the onus of blame is on management pressuring its staff to do so.

Also what @hariseldon says. Game/software development is far more complex than the end results one sees on screen.

 

[Yoshi]

In this specific case though, they could have completed their running projects on the old engine and incubation teams could have looked at industry standard engines such as Unity and Unreal for new projects.

 

[hariseldon]

Again, going to my own experience, management don't want to budget time and resource for incubation teams. They want to squeeze every last drop of juice out of the lemon.

 

[klosos]

It's sad about all the folks over there losing jobs , the finger as got to be pointed at the management. i mean they struck gold with the first season of the walking dead and instead of carrying on with just that as there main focus they tried to replicate that success with GOT , Tales of the borderlands and mine craft so on and failed miserably. This should be a lesson to other smallish game developers on how NOT to run a successful game company.

my dad used to say my eyes are bigger then my belly ( when i used to eat to much) well thats what the management did but with money instead of food, they chased and now they have ended up with fuck all.

 

[Yoshi]

Again, going to my own experience, management don't want to budget time and resource for incubation teams. They want to squeeze every last drop of juice out of the lemon.

Yes, this is what is called "bad management", which I think TT was very much at fault for.

 

[hariseldon]

Yes, this is what is called "bad management", which I think TT was very much at fault for.

Pretty much. There's a lot of it out there. Now I'm fortunate to be in a position that while I am, as is always the case, under-resourced, management mostly leave me alone to get on with the job, and I'm getting to build out the new system I've been craving for the last 5 years. When you get a good spot you've gotta really enjoy it.

 

[Vampire On Titus]

Just played episode 2 of The Walking Dead: Final Season. It was fantastic. Easily the best the series has been since season 1.

I really hope they find a way to make the last two episodes happen. This was shaping up to be a great game.

 

[Humdinger]

The Barlog has spoken...

Ouch. Good point, hadn't thought about that angle.

 

[DeepEnigma]

Ouch. Good point, hadn't thought about that angle.

But I also agree with the fact that gamers paid for this content, and are now not getting it (at the moment). So it goes both ways.

 

[OldBoyGamer]

It is sad but i cant help but think they shoot themselves in the foot with some of the people they hired, i think there is a good chance that ubisoft will pick up most of them imo

The next tweet should be 'good for you. Enjoy the dole queue'.

 

[TheSHEEEP]

Management won't let you slow down for a pit stop to take the engine out, so in the end you keep on plugging away, and eventually it all blows up and management wonder what happened.

The life of a software (not games in my case btw) developer.

Yeah, I can confirm that that often happens, too. Might as well have been the case for Telltale. Shame...
I've sence grown VERY wary of CEOs/leads without a technical background - not that former programmers aren't capable of screwups, but usually they are far better at understanding a problem.