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Telltale Games is shutting down

TheSoul

Scholar
Joined
Jun 15, 2018
Messages
155
We never did get that 2nd season of Back to the Future.

:negative:
 
Joined
Sep 7, 2013
Messages
6,165
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It was hoped that AA and indies would cannibalize AAA, but it looks like AAA has weathered the storm and indies will cannibalize AA (hopefully). Worse case scenario, AA and indies simply cannibalize each other.
 

Raghar

Arcane
Vatnik
Joined
Jul 16, 2009
Messages
22,506
Unbelievable that this happened so sudden. I have only played two of their games, TWD1 and The Wolf Among Us, but those were brilliant in their genre. I hope the devs find new jobs soon.

How can a company let go 250 people from one day to another without severance, without healthcare is beyond me. Oh, wait, they live in the USA, the best country in the world.
It's simple, only idiot would increase number of people so fast without guaranteed jobs for at least few years...

Actually what I consider strange is someone can assume that game development company work could be guaranteed. And that people with university titles should have guaranteed jobs with guaranteed payments after layoffs. (That would border with corruption. Rich wants theirs children to have easy life, humanitarian universities are somehow easy to finish as long as people have money.) Of course if your country is advanced enough to provide such guarantee for elementary school dropouts, it's more welfare state than US.

BTW EU right wing politicians love high risk indebted companies that are likely to file bankruptcy within 5 years. (SW companies don't have physical goods, thus no way to get unpaid salaries from bankrupted company. These bitches at least got theirs salaries.)

(It's not about what happens after lay off, it's what caused the mass lay off.)
 
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Messages
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giphy.gif

Great news! Beamdog next pls!
 

Zer0wing

Cipher
Joined
Mar 22, 2017
Messages
2,607
This should eventually happen to any american game company, TT's business practices are borderline suicidal. Remember how FMV gone down the drain? These news is a recap right here.
 

mwnn85

Savant
Joined
Aug 14, 2017
Messages
210
Never played a single "game" they made and from watching a bit of a footage I don't appear to have missed anything.
I do prefer to play games that involve using more than two keys on a keyboard and ideally more than two brain cells.
Their back catalogue more or less looks like shovelware.
As mentioned animation, film or books would've been much more appropriate - I like the cell shaded artwork at least.

Many years ago when I saw we might be getting more Sam & Max I was initially hopeful, etc.
Lucasarts had more or less stopped making adventure games by the late 90's.
That thought quickly died when I saw it was getting released episodically.
I wonder how Sam & Max Freelance Police would've turned out?

I haven't even gotten around to playing Thimbleweed Park yet.
Converted the Monkey Island enhanced editions using the ultimate talkie scripts to something that ScummVM can handle in Linux; I get best of both worlds.
I wonder how it'll be before Blade Runner is fully working?
 
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Siveon

Bot
Joined
Jul 13, 2013
Messages
4,509
Shadorwun: Hong Kong
We never did get that 2nd season of Back to the Future.

:negative:
I really did enjoy their Back to the Future game. It's a shame they declined so far (which is a feat considering they were simple from the get go). Budget casual adventure games are fine but they went too far and clearly overextended.
 

Flou

Arbiter
Joined
Mar 23, 2016
Messages
869
Location
Hellsinki
TellTale going down is hardly surprising, how fast it happened is though. How did they manage to go from 250 to 25 is mindboggling. It's not just one project that got canned, that did that much damage. Clearly they've taken huge risks and when their sales started failing they ran out of money. Their staff of 250-300 people managed to create very little content to sell each year. Did they end up canceling half of their projects?

If the owners would have had even some sense they would have worked on a new engine a longtime ago, as well as some additions to the gameplay on the old engine. They should have stopped hoarding licences left and right and kept the company in much smaller state. Like pretty much everyone has said already, they oversaturated the market, all alone. No one else was even competing for the same crowd and they still managed to oversaturate by creating the same game over and over again, with just different license.
You can't live off the 10 dollars (minus Steam fees and license fees) that you get from a sale during Steam sales. And honestly, why would anyone buy their game on Day 1. Their method of sellling them relatevily cheap quite soon after full release guaranteed that, not to mention the 5 other games allready on your wishlist/backlog that you hadn't have the time/will to start.

Even if they insisted on growing into a bigger development team they should have had at least 2-3 diffrent types of games. Not just the same one engine and same gameplay over and over again. It's like they didn't see the signs (sales plummeting) and just kept on pushing for more. Like releasing more of the same would suddently bring back those 3,5 million people who bought TWD S1. The sad part is, those owners are probably set for life and won't have to work ever again after selling big with TWD and if they aren't beyond retarded they will get a steady paycheck from TT backlog even after the company is closed down. Employees though are fucked, if they can't find a job fast.
 

Dexter

Arcane
Joined
Mar 31, 2011
Messages
15,655
A TV series has excellent actors with really strong performances and has the money to invest on really good screenwriting talent, something TellTales doesn't have and ever would have. They had a really aging engine, the characters had stiff facial animations, their writing never was that great and their whole schtick was the choice and consequence stuff, after The Walking Dead, people eventually came to realize that even that was a fraud and only an illusion.
Have you watched any of the recent "Walking Dead" TV output? Compared to that, the first Season of Telltales TWD was almost a Masterpiece.

TWD and The Wolf Among Us were good for what they were, TWD: S2 was already major decline in comparison, Game of Thrones was just Meh, I tried the first Batman Episode for free but it was crap and I didn't even finish it, haven't touched any of the others.
hP09vyd.png


One thing that likely did them in like a lot of other studios was the Steam market changing by opening up like it did between 2012-14 and turning them into a mediocre developer among many, another was the general decline in quality and the need to make "games" that people can just as much watch on YouTube.
Also whoever came up with the idea that when people play zombie games about gory and dramatic things happening in the Zombie-apocalypse they want to play as a whiny 13-year old girl should probably have been quartered on the spot at their staff meetings, alas:

UPWlSP9.jpg

LOL:


"With a heavy heart, we watch our friends leave today to spread our brand of storytelling across the games industry."

God, let's hope not.

At least let's hope they end up at already retarded studios and act as a catalyst for their own demise and won't ruin anything good:


 
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lightbane

Arcane
Joined
Dec 27, 2008
Messages
10,158
Why was the thread moved to Adventure gaming subforum?
also, the number of vultures keeps rising!
 

Eyestabber

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jan 15, 2015
Messages
4,733
Location
HUEland
PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015
Yo guise, I'm gonna lay my chips on the table and make a not-so-risky bet: this Telltale fiasco is gonna culminate with some unlucky higher up getting #metoo'ed. At this moment I have zero evidence, not even a rumor to support this prediction, but my gut feeling says that's gonna happen. But here is why I think this is gonna happen:

a) The company has (well, HAD) an unusually large amount of skanks in its payroll
b) 250 people got legit screwed over. No warning, no severance pack, just THE BOOT
c) Most of these skanks are nothing but diversity hires with no real talent they can market to a new company
d) Everyone involved holds (at least in theory) progressive values
e) SOME of them will come to the realization that the "game developer gurl" cow can't be milked anymore, so might as well go for the slaughter
f) "Male feminist soyboy" aka "the perfect victim for rapehoaxing" are probably abundant in Telltale's upper management. So there is no shortage of targets

So, yeah. ONE of these recently unemployed dangerhaired hambeasts WILL eventually figure out that rapehoaxing might just be her ticket out of the poorhouse.

Fasten your seatbealts, boyos, cuz this is gonna be a WILD ride! :positive:
 
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lophiaspis

Arbiter
Joined
Oct 24, 2012
Messages
379
With the virulent anti-male culture on display, you could make a case that feminism sunk Telltale. Would explain why they grew from 125 in 2012 to 400 in 2017 but somehow failed to keep up in both quantity and quality. All those affirmative action females living off of the capital built up by the brilliant work of 3 white (if extremely SJW) males.
 

Archibald

Arcane
Joined
Aug 26, 2010
Messages
7,869
If the owners would have had even some sense they would have worked on a new engine a longtime ago, as well as some additions to the gameplay on the old engine. They should have stopped hoarding licences left and right and kept the company in much smaller state. Like pretty much everyone has said already, they oversaturated the market, all alone. No one else was even competing for the same crowd and they still managed to oversaturate by creating the same game over and over again, with just different license.
You can't live off the 10 dollars (minus Steam fees and license fees) that you get from a sale during Steam sales. And honestly, why would anyone buy their game on Day 1. Their method of sellling them relatevily cheap quite soon after full release guaranteed that, not to mention the 5 other games allready on your wishlist/backlog that you hadn't have the time/will to start.

I think they might have been operating under the idea that they need to continuously produce hits like TWD and their plan was to basically release as many licensed properties as they can to find that next hit. But that next hit never really came because their style of "games" was just a fad that seems to be going away by now.
 

Fedora Master

Arcane
Patron
Edgy
Joined
Jun 28, 2017
Messages
27,819
Rest in piss, hacks.
Knowing the industry however, the major fags will find another company to shit up.
 

Eyestabber

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jan 15, 2015
Messages
4,733
Location
HUEland
PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015
you could make a case that feminism sunk Telltale.

Did it, tho? I'm no Telltale expert, since I only own the first TWD. Yet looking at the charts linked ITT I realize the lion's share of users are on the same boat: TWD1 was their only Telltale product. And here is the thing: I bought their shitty visual novel thingie on a Steam Christmas sale for peanuts, played through ONCE and was like "ahn....yeah, OK. At least now I PLAYED this thing everyone is talking about.". When I heard of new releases by the same company my reaction was an honest "no, thanks". Just like pretty much everyone else.

So basically they came up with a somewhat new shtick that brought in people looking for something different (given how stale the state of the industry was/still is) and got in the good graces of the Gaming Journos, since those are always eager to promote ANY garbage that replaces actual GAMEPLAY with thinly veiled propaganda coupled with juvenile "MUH DEEP EXISTENTIALISM" whining as "THE FUTURE OF GAMING". Eventually the novelty value of their shtick ran off and they reached their rightful place inside the garbage bin.

IMO feminism was a major aspect of their company, but not the cause of its downfall. You COULD say feminism ruined Mad Max or Ghostbusters because those things had actual VALUE before hambeasts got their claws on 'em. Telltale, tho? Nope. Just a one-hit wonder team that was at the right place at the right time, got a license to the right franchise at its peak popularity , managed NOT to screw up too badly and endeared themselves to the right people. That's it. This is NOT an underdog story by ANY stretch of the imagination. And I don't even think "bad management" is to blame, since every sucker singing to a microphone in front of a large audience ALWAYS believes himself to be a legit ROCKSTAR, never considering he MIGHT just be another one-hit-wonder. Yet most of them are...
 

fantadomat

Arcane
Edgy Vatnik Wumao
Joined
Jun 2, 2017
Messages
37,087
Location
Bulgaria
Imagine being the "Telltale Gameplay designer". What is this gameplay you speak of?

And ever so subtle Obsidian is at fast


They should hire them to worn on the fallout 76 dialogue.
:lol:


PS: I am happy that hive of sjw vermin is burning down. Also that bunch of incompetent buffoons deserve nothing from the company,happy to see them jobless.. Here are my condolences.
 

DeepOcean

Arcane
Joined
Nov 8, 2012
Messages
7,394
Yo guise, I'm gonna lay my chips on the table and make a not-so-risky bet: this Telltale fiasco is gonna culminate with some unlucky higher up getting #metoo'ed. At this moment I have zero evidence, not even a rumor to support this prediction, but my gut feeling says that's gonna happen. But here is why I think this is gonna happen:

a) The company has (well, HAD) an unusually large amount of skanks in its payroll
b) 250 people got legit screwed over. No warning, no severance pack, just THE BOOT
c) Most of these skanks are nothing but diversity hires with no real talent they can market to a new company
d) Everyone involved holds (at least in theory) progressive values
e) SOME of them will come to the realization that the "game developer gurl" cow can't be milked anymore, so might as well go for the slaughter
f) "Male feminist soyboy" aka "the perfect victim for rapehoaxing" are probably abundant in Telltale's upper management. So there is no shortage of targets

So, yeah. ONE of these recently unemployed dangerhaired hambeasts WILL eventually figure out that rapehoaxing might just be her ticket out of the poorhouse.

Fasten your seatbealts, boyos, cuz this is gonna be a WILD ride! :positive:
"Hey, I need money to feed Timmy, Bob and Jimmy being a single mom and the goverment checks aren't enough... hummm... Brian always said he liked my work when he got to talk with me... that was strange, quite creepy, the way he was sympathetic and all ... I dunno, he was always so much progressive and let me cry on his shoulder when that insensitive brute Ahemed left me. Now that I think about it, Brian was white and he talked with me too much, a white male talking with a woman too much, this is certainly harassment... my God, I feel so oppressed right now... I will call my lawyer. Don't worry kids, mom will get your milk and that bastard gonna pay."
 

Tramboi

Prophet
Patron
Joined
May 4, 2009
Messages
1,226
Location
Paris by night
Some people don't think that the management higher ups are to blame ?
Are you completely blinded by your anti-sjw crusades ?
This is the perfect example of shitty management of a video game studio (probably by white males but who gives a fuck, dumb management is dumb management).
 

fantadomat

Arcane
Edgy Vatnik Wumao
Joined
Jun 2, 2017
Messages
37,087
Location
Bulgaria
Some people don't think that the management higher ups are to blame ?
Are you completely blinded by your anti-sjw crusades ?
This is the perfect example of shitty management of a video game studio (probably by white males but who gives a fuck, dumb management is dumb management).
Meh,the management is also SJW retards! Everyone should be praised for their skilful execution of the company! Without them we wouldn't have seen this amazing crumble of a shit studio.
I tip my hat to you all,amazing sjw retards,keep up the good work and burn another one to the ground
 

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