What is up next for Telltale games?

This is a great observation. And obviously, the up-front costs of those licenses carry with it sales thresholds just to even get in the ballpark of maybe breaking even.

And what should be frustrating for Telltale fans: people left Telltale and made games like Firewatch and Oxenfree. There was clearly talent within that studio to develop original IP. They could still develop a few big licensed games…but they could’ve scaled back and massaged original IP with different tools and a different look and perhaps found something really successful.

I don’t find that frustrating, quite the opposite. In fact, I’d say that if any good came out of Telltale’s path to where it ended up, it’s that many fruit bearing seeds were dropped along the way. Obviously my preference would have been that Telltale survived to keep givin us games, what what are ya gonna do.

As just gamers/consumers it is awesome. But the fact that talent leaks of that stature took place because Telltale wasn’t agile enough to take advantage – and the possibility that if they had, they might still be making games instead of not – ought to be a little frustrating. A vision of Telltale that allows something like Firewatch to be developed in-house and spurs even more original development with the talented writers and artists there, is tantalizing.

The thing is, people were making this observation plenty with YouTube, where it’s trivial to find stitched-together full-playthrough videos with no commentary and all different choices and endings for pretty much every Telltale game. The argument I kept hearing back then was “it’s not the same as playing it yourself!” I guess the market disagreed.

They actually integrated some tools into some of the more recent games (like Batman) that allowed streamers to hand over some control to viewers, or maybe it allowed for voting? I never tried it, not a streamer myself.

I am not sure I accept that Twitch or YouTube is a major cause of Telltale’s downfall. LiS sold 3,000,000 copies. If you make a compelling product people will buy it.

Yep. The Youtube argument is a bad one. Firewatch sold over a million copies. Gone Home got close. LiS was a runaway hit.

Hell, I hate the entire sub-sub-genre, but the success of FNAF should be enough to fully set the whole “Youtube and Twitch kill linear adventure game sales” argument to rest.

FNAF being?

Google says Five Nights at Freddy’s.

I love Five Nights at Freddy’s! They’re total video game junk food, but perfect for when you want a creepy little time killer.

Now if you want to say that Telltale games got killed by streaming because they don’t have the emotional investment of a Firewatch, LiS, or Gone Home, that is an argument that makes more sense to me…at least to a point. Although there’s clearly some emotional investment that comes into play as you get deeper into TWD and Wolf Among Us especially.

The issue isn’t that these things kill sales completely, but that for a significant sector of the market, a purchase was never even thought of, because these videos are available and “good enough.” You talk about the sales numbers for Life is Strange, but Jacksepticeye’s (commentated, so slightly different, but still relevant) playthrough videos for the first season each have over 4M views, and somehow I don’t think a significant number of those were from people who purchased the game and decided “eh, I’ll watch someone else play this for eleven hours instead of/in addition to my own full playthrough.” That’s on top of sales and bundles, of course, and Life is Strange was involved in a lot of them.

Telltale was even worse off where sales and bundles were concerned, as already mentioned earlier in this thread. I think the only Telltale game I paid full price for was Poker Night on release, and that was a $5 game that also got me a TF2 hat when that was relevant. The only one of their adventure games I specifically bought by itself was The Wolf Among Us…which I paid a bit over $10 for on Xbox LIVE, when only the first episode was out.

I would counterargue a bit by saying that games like FireWatch/Gone Home that are played in a first person view are inherently more subversive than a typical 3rd person game, making it more likely that an interested player will buy the game.

I personally have a much harder time finding watching streams of 1st person perspective games compared to 3rd person.

LiS was infinitely more complex than any game Telltale game that I can recall.

Between this thread and the RDR2 thread, I’ve learned that just about every one but me cares a great deal if the game is played from first or third person perspective.

Also, could you explain this remark? I didn’t find LiS to be terribly complex, do you mean in the time-rewinding capability?

There have been a ton of posts in here since I saw the news yesterday! I hope they find a way to finish the final 2 episodes.

Also if anything people need to realize they MUST have some kind of emergency savings.

Yeah - time-rewinding and a more open map in general, with minor characters w/ their own story arcs.

Telltale games felt much more on rails.

No, I’m with you on this. Outside of VR, it makes zero difference to me in terms of immersion or similar concepts. Some gameplay generally suits one or the other better, but that’s it.

Well, I think it is an interesting option if done well. i wouldn’t say I care a great deal. I liked RDR the way it was just fine.

And lawsuit filled against Telltale for breaking labor laws.

Interesting. I would assume if you run a company of 300 people, you should probably know about stuff like this WARN act?

And if they win the lawsuit, but the company has no funds with which to pay, what then?