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?
Yeah, I think the legal term for a company like Telltale is “turnip.”
This happens a lot in this industry. Usually, stuff like pay owed to ex-employees takes precedence during the bankruptcy sale, but in this case, I’m not sure there’s any value for buyers. I imagine most of the Telltale value was tied up in licensing deals they don’t own.
Well that sounds pretty cut and dried given the definitions laid out by the California law. It also pretty much effectively kills any chance that what remains of Telltale will finish the Walking Dead episodes because no outside investor is going to sink money into a company that’s the target of a lawsuit like that.
Looks like the final season of Walking Dead has been pulled from all digital stores.
Yeah, it’s hard to justify continuing to sell a product that’s likely to remain half what you’re charging for.
Next up: Steam and GOG will probably have to respond to a deluge of refund requests. That’s going to be fun.
There’s some interesting, and pretty angry, responses to this whole debacle on the most recent Waypoint.
I think the most poignant comment of all was how she noted that Telltale seemed to be making games with heart and an eye to the human condition while completely ignoring those values as a company in the real world. Seems indicative of the “late-stage capitalism” phrase that’s taken wing recently.
Ben Kuchera, otoh, blames the engine.