Space manatee? Sure, why not. I’m not really feeling generic Han Solo knockoff guy, but WTF at reptile Chinese dude?
Schrier’s work on his book and now this article are great. Really insightful and it shows that there are many reasons to blame for the game’s failure, not just a simple scapegoat.
So screenshots of fake reviews are now a thing to get people riled up.
People getting mad on Twitter about a screenshot of a fake 7/10 review supposedly from a famously incendiary games critic (who notably goes out of his way to say he’s not a reviewer, then does reviews anyway and claims they aren’t reviews) is nowhere near the level of, say, Sony fans making actual death threats to critics every time a new game in one of their exclusive franchises gets anything less than a perfect score on a major site.
90 laid off at Telltale games.
Sucks. Expensive to create linear story based content is a tough road in 2017.
Hard to stuff loot boxes into point and click adventure games. But I believe in you guys, somehow you’ll find a way!
I’m not that surprised - I checked out of their stuff years ago when it started feeling like their development process became “how about we make this game in [insert franchise]”?
This is probably a dumb question that speaks volumes to how little I know about the process of game development, but why are Telltale’s games expensive to create?
-Tom
Large studio, making one-and-done content with no microtransactions, in a genre of games best known for being able to be experienced in full on YouTube for free. It’s mostly amazing this didn’t happen sooner.
Oh nothing specific about TellTale it’s just linear story based content in general is a tough one these days. If you have to deliver, lets say, 50 hours of entertainment then having to write something specifically for each minute is more expensive than for example procedurally generated content or filler content, like travel in open world games or cheap reusbale templates like attacking bases or killing the reskinned same enemies in a combat game.
Really I cant think of a more expensive kind of entertaintment or art to make than interactive linear storytelling. Its like the most expensive of all worlds, you make the art, animations plus dialogue plus then you have to program the minigames or activities all of which is used either once or maybe six times or so, compose each shot, audio landscape and then you have to create the actors and implement the performance (animation).
Its expensive stuff.
Thats not a value judgement, I love these kinds of games, but hooboy are they expensive!
Yeah, the whole game is content you only see one time. Even very high budget games like Assassin’s creed have you doing the same thing for hours and hours, by creating mechanical systems to interact with.
I guess partly because they had around 400 people on their payroll before this layoff.
This is a really good read into the difficulties Telltale has had because of their technology:
So it’s pure speculation on my part, but I wouldn’t be surprised if one of the reasons their games required so many people was because everything needed to be hand-animated due to their technology issues. Brute force to compensate for efficiency issues.
They did lots games in a few years, for that they expanded their workforce. But that abundance, over the years, also can cause tiredness on their buyers, apart from being very dependant on licensing IPs (all their games are from other IPs!) so if they stopped having deals to get new ones or make more games, they have to reduce their numbers.
This is it. I was a die hard Telltale buyer, having loved Walking Dead S1 and Wolf Among Us, but they released so much stuff that it is impossible to keep up with. I only tried Borderlands because of humble bundle (and loved it, consider it their best game), and then I tried Game of Thrones, which I abandoned after first episode…
Their fanbase is just more sated so sales are lower so they have to lower their headcount.
In addition to none of the follow-ups apparently selling as well as The Walking Dead S1 (at least that’s my perception), I’d guess the license costs and potential rev share are notably less favorable in the case of Guardians, Batman or Game of Thrones.
It’s Teiman, so who can know for sure.