MRY
Wormwood Studios
The saddest thing is that even if there were an IP firesale, what IP could anyone want? Did Telltale actually own any of their creations...?
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Telltale Games is shutting down
- Thread starter LESS T_T
- Start date
Morkar Left
Guest
Why would a liquidator prevent the games from selling? It's not like he needs an infrastructure to keep the selling process alive.
Boleskine
Arcane
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https://www.gamedevunchained.com/blog-1/2018/9/11/episode162-5
This is a guest post from a former worker at Telltale Games that wishes to remain anonymous. There are parts of the article that was redacted so that our guest will not be identifiable. This post doesn’t have an associated podcast episode with it and is just an article alone.
I worked QA at Telltale games during Tales from the Borderlands, Game of Thrones, and Minecraft. I was a regular QA tester, and it was my first job in the industry. I had heard a bit about the working conditions in the games industry but was young and eager to make my start in the industry, particularly a former senior level employee I had met at PAX gave me the singular best bit of advice I received in regards to TTG: "At some point they're going to fuck you. Get what you want out of the job and then get out". I didn't particularly want to believe it at the time as I had just scheduled my interview, but the words would encourage me to take leave of the company after some abuses and mismanagement.
After I started there was very little time for training as the work load was substantial for QA: We were responsible for testing on all platforms (PS3 SCEE, PS4 SCEE, PS3 SCEA, PS4 SCEA, Xbox 360, Xbox One, PC, Mac, and Mobile which had roughly 11 different tested skus itself) with a team of 15 people. Generally for 2 simultaneous projects. Plus there was usually one or more testers taken to looking at the early development stages of the next episodes, or for a ratings build. Out team would later grow to around 20 at its height during my tenure, but it was never enough to get all of the work done in a reasonable amount of time. I would say my average week at TTG was around 48 hours, usually a half day was done on Saturday or Sunday, with the occasional peak of over 60 during release weeks. And I tried "not to push myself to hard" by only working that much overtime. The longest day I had was 18 hours, from 10 am to 4 am during the release of one of the episodes of Tales from the Borderlands.
The overtime greatly contributed to a poor quality of life while working at Telltale. It was however an evil shackled to you as the base pay for a tester was 12$/hour in the San Francisco bay area, notoriously expensive even during my time there. So while us in QA were actually paid overtime, this only did enough to offset the cost of living in such an awfully expensive place where only working 40 hours a week might mean slight starvation or missing rent. God forbid if you came down with a sickness and couldn't work because while the rest of the salaried employees were given an unlimited PTO policy, which is in itself a bit of a trap, the QA department got 0 paid time off. No sick days, no vacation, only overtime pay. This would eventually change while I was there when the state of California made it illegal to not provide at least 3 sick days paid for all full-time employees. It still wasn't enough and there were a number of times I went in with a slight cold because I felt like I couldn't afford to take the day off. Thankfully I had a great manager who would let employees who were coming in a bit sick take the day off and mark it as paid so as not to get other testers sick. However that changed after the company restructuring.
In January of 2015 the company restructured. The place had grown and was continuing to grow at an exponential rate. It was around 200 when I started and was growing to 250 within a few months and showed no signs of stopping, which prompted the upper management to rethink its plans and reorganized its structure. This was also the time that Dan Connors "stepped down" from his position as President of Telltale, putting Kevin Brunner in the double President/CEO position. This is where I'd like to take a quick moment to describe Dan and Kevin, the co-founders of Telltale, from my opinions and perspective as someone who interacted very little with them personally; so take it all with a grain of salt. Dan and Kevin were opposite sides of the same coin. Dan was fantastic. He cared, not just about putting out great games but also about the people and opinions of those around him. He would talk to me in the elevator and would come down on occasion to the QA room and ask about the state of the build, the unfiltered truth of the status and my opinions on what needed to be done to get it done quickly and become quality. (I'm going to digress a second to clarify that at my time QA was on the 3rd floor of our building, along with customer service. The rest of the studio was on the 4th floor. QA was almost entirely divested from the development team, with the exception of the leads) Kevin Brunner was a Lovecraftian nightmare; an entity of fear that you seldom saw but could rend your life apart on a whim. The stories were of him being quoted saying that "[Brunner himself] is the only irreplaceable part of this company." as well as reprimanding and firing people seemingly without warrant. He was described to me by a designer that had to show their work to Brunner as "a sociopath". So nobody in my department believed for a second that Dan Connors stepped down of his own volition. Additionally, with this restructuring, our manager also left "of his own volition" Without having further knowledge of the history of the operations of the company, this is the point that I would mark as "The beginning of the end" for Telltale.
My manager's duties were then given to the web department's manager, who didn't have the time, energy, nor the compassion to actually help anyone in QA. Telling someone that works 6 days a week to "Do game jams on the weekend so you can prove you know how to design" to move into another department isn't exactly helpful advice. This would be what drove me to find another job. But on the company level things were picking up. There were more projects being planned and the monthly release schedule was in full force. But it was costing people their lives, the tight deadlines and constant rewrites that were directly because Kevin Brunner had an unwavering and unchallenge-able vision for Telltale games that would eventually spell doom for the company. Everyone at Telltale knew that the fans were stagnating on our formula. Even in QA we organized a small group to talk about how we could change it up in the hopes of presenting it to designers. But all of that would fall on deaf ears. I stayed in the bay area and kept in contact with many former Telltalers and would often hear over drinks how one of them were suggesting changes to a project to improve the game play experience, only to be strung along with ever shifting meeting dates and ultimately having their efforts and ideas ignored. I would hear about the turnover rate of employees 3 months in feeling like war veterans always in combat with the closing deadlines and crunch time, eventually to burn out and leave. Even back then most of us knew it wasn't a question of whether or not Telltale was going to collapse on itself, but when it was going to.
Multi-headed Cow
Arcane
That should be "
Wielder of the Heoglaw"
IHaveHugeNick
Arcane
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So he joins a company despite being warned that they will fuck him, and then complains when it turns out they did in fact fuck him.
Totally makes sense.
Totally makes sense.
Boleskine
Arcane
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Some people have bills to pay. You might figure that out when you are kicked out of your parent's basement.
Mustawd
Guest
The advise was sound for most careers. There is a balance in any job that basically says “what I’m getting out of this arrangement is worth what I’m putting in”
For various reasons sometimes that balances shifts one way or the other. And when it shifts against you (for your own particular and individual threshold) then you should get out. This is not uncommon for most companies.
The Big 4 audit firms, for example, will eventually fuck you out of any semblance of personal life imaginable. The benefits it gives you are career-making. It’s up to you to decide when that moment comes when the cons outweigh the benefits, and leave.
Regardless, he doesn’t seem to be “bitching about being fucked” as much as he’s just describing a clusterfuck of how the company was being managed.
EDIT: Also, a look at his salary should show you why the games industry will never have a union in the Jnited States. $12/hr is laughable if he lives in San Francisco. As a comparison, Taco Bell in San Jose, CA (also an expensive part of the SF bay area, but less than SF) pays at minimum $14/hr. There are just way too many young kids who wanna break into that industry who will work for peanuts to ever organize against the industry.
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fantadomat
Arcane
Because nobody owns the license for the games,it was company owned. Now there is no company therefore the games don't have license.
Morkar Left
Guest
If the company is in the process of liquidation then it would be in the best interest to sell further. Or is the company already completely closed?
fantadomat
Arcane
They don't own the license,they rent it. You can't sell something that is borrowed from another company. All their games are licensed from another IPs. They don't own any IPs.
Morkar Left
Guest
They rent the license on a monthly basis? I thought they license it for a game as a onetime fee or giving some percentages from the sales?
fantadomat
Arcane
Most license is time based in years and for a game. There are a few games that have been pulled from the shelves and steam because the company license ended. The time and the amount of games they can make all depends on the deal they have made. Still they can't sell the games because they kind off don't own them.
Mustawd
Guest
Advice*
IHaveHugeNick
Arcane
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They didn't release a good game in like 4 years. 99% of people interested in this kind of gameplay have already bought everything in Telltale catalogue that was worth bothering with.
fantadomat
Arcane
The same could be told about the hitman,people buy a lot of absolution expecting to be like the older games but better looking and with better controls. They didn't get what they wanted and thus stopped buying it.
Clockwork Knight
Arcane
I am Heog, son of Hoeg, son of Hueg, son of Hugo.
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Boleskine
Arcane
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https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2018-12-19-the-last-year-at-telltale-a-story-cut-short
Telltale's final year: a story cut short
"When we got the news, people cried..."
"No one knew what was happening; there was no warning. When we got the news, people cried, hugged, or stared blankly ahead. In the aftermath, people wondered what they would do without health insurance, what would happen with their work visas, what to tell their families. For me, it was a day of mind-numbing shock. The full weight of what had happened and what it meant going forward - not being in that office, not working with my team, not being on a project I'd spent over a year on - took weeks to sink in."
That's Mary Kenney, a video game writer who worked at Telltale before its closure earlier this year. Her retelling of the events of 21st September 2018 depicts a studio of people in mourning for their work, shocked at the situation that was pushed upon them and worried about their future. Telltale was dead and all of a sudden 250 people had lost their jobs.
It would later come to light that the abrupt departure of a major financial backer was the smoking gun. But what did the passionate creators within Telltale experience during its final year? What was the human cost of Telltale's final act? To find out, I talked to several ex-Telltale employees, some of whom wished to remain anonymous in order to protect their careers, about their experience at Telltale, and the highs and lows of working there in its final months.
While Telltale's closure shocked the video game world, for many staff the writing was on the wall. A myriad of setbacks and pitfalls befell the studio in recent years, ranging from influential members of senior staff departing to mass layoffs back in 2017, all occurring amid consistently lacklustre sales for new releases. "Anyone with access to SteamSpy or App Annie could see that the games weren't selling, never mind hitting the completely ridiculous sales goals the marketing department were hoping for and presented to the board," one person who worked at Telltale said.
Cracks would appear at regular intervals. Telltale held annual meetings where sales numbers and projections were made available to all staff, one source said. But these pep-talks failed to have the desired effect.
"Through these meetings, it was very clear the last truly great game from the studio was Wolf, which reviewed well and moved slightly profitable numbers, or Tales from the Borderlands, which had great reviews but dismal sales," one source said.
While most at Telltale were familiar with the studio's games' diminishing returns, many teams focused on creating rather than dwelling on what disaster might occur down the line. When asked if the sales numbers affected her negatively, Kenney replied: "For some, I'm sure it did, especially people who had been in the industry longer and were considering the long-term effects. For me, creating games has always been about the people playing them, not so much the numbers. Seeing our fans' enthusiasm and love for the project I was on kept my spirits high, and continues to do so even though I'm no longer working on it."
However, some staff were frustrated by what they considered to be unrealistic targets set by higher-ups. "The Board and publishing were always predicting and budgeting for another The Walking Dead: Season One success, but never gave projects the time, money and resources to really make that a reality," said a source. "There was a brief ray of light with the sales of Minecraft: Season One, but the deal Telltale inked with Mojang/Microsoft was so bad, Telltale didn't see a lot of the returns from the game's moderate sales."
The Walking Dead brought Telltale Games great success, which they would attempt to replicate until their closure.
There was also concern raised regarding the sequels Telltale was making, especially after lacking returns from previous instalments. "It was the choices of the projects that ruined my optimism for the studio's future," said one person who worked at Telltale. "If something like The Walking Dead: Season Two did a fraction of sales of the first season, and the Michonne mini-series tanked, what made people think Season Three, let alone Season Four, was a good idea? After The Walking Dead: Season One, very few people from creative had any say about what projects the studio took on. It was all led by the marketing department and that lack of a voice destroyed the creative team's enthusiasm."
This is not to say Telltale was during this time a ship waiting to sink. Throughout the studio's many teams, including Mary Kenney's narrative team, morale remained high. "This might be surprising, but the last year at Telltale was positive, even optimistic," she said. "I can't speak for every team, but on mine, the culture became more collaborative and open to creative risk-taking as the year went on."
This vigorous attitude towards work was put towards some highly-anticipated projects. The Walking Dead's final season, which would conclude the series that brought Telltale the surge of praise back in 2012, fell short of releasing its third episode before the plug was pulled on the studio. While Skybound Games will finish the series, giving both the team who worked on it and the fans some sort of closure, other series were not so fortunate.
The Wolf Among Us 2 was highly anticipated, despite its predecessor not making heaps of cash.
The Wolf Among Us' second season was one such casualty of Telltale's closure. The sequel to the critically-acclaimed adaptation of Bill Willingham's Fables series, Wolf Among Us 2 barely got started, so small and lacking in budget was the team working on it. "[The budget was] shoe-string, even by Telltale standards," said an ex-staff member. "Everybody knew Wolf 1 was a critical success, but not a commercial hit. I think people came into it realising they were making a boutique product. At one point the season was going to be three episodes."
Proper development of The Wolf Among Us' second season started in the summer of 2017. An announcement trailer was released, featuring many key staff on the project recounting what made the first season special. Thanking the fans and declaring a 2018 release date, the team exuded a confident "Wolf is back" attitude in public, but even then there were doubts internally. "Even when the marketing team recorded the Wolf 2 announcement trailer, many people within the studio doubted it would ever see the light of day," said a source.
With these setbacks, The World Among Us' second season was cancelled before it could finish early development. According to an artist assigned to Wolf 2: "It was so early on that we didn't have much apart from some concept art and a bit of white boxing for gameplay prototyping." That's not to say the Wolf 2 development team had nothing to show for their hard work. According to sources familiar with the project, a season overview and even a good amount of the first episode script was completed. The game wasn't going to be a direct sequel. Rather, it would have followed the next adventures of Bigby and Snow some time after the events of the first season.
The Wolf Among Us Season Two's narrative team declined to comment on the record for this report. However, one ex-member did state: "I hope to talk about the project in great detail someday, but now's not the time."
One of Telltale's close-knit teams celebrating the release of Batman: The Enemy Within's finale.
Then there was crunch. Telltale, like so many video game studios, suffered from some brutal working conditions that put enormous strain on staff. In Telltale's final year, crunch only intensified pre-existing pressures. (For more on Telltale's crunch culture, check out this great feature by The Verge.)
"At its worst, this would turn already troublesome writers and designers into hair-trigger monsters that people strategically avoided," said an ex-Telltale member of staff. "This got particularly bad on Batman: S2 and Walking Dead: S4 as the pressure to deliver a successful game increased with each episode. At the end of the day, Telltale's design and creative departments had serious problems with unprofessional cliques and favouritism based on personal friendships over merit. Crunch magnified these issues tenfold and department leadership was either at a loss about to address them or simply didn't care."
The pressures of crunch even ate away at the tight-knit studio culture, bringing out the worst in people and creating tension between the overworked many. Ex-staff have told me about colleagues who'd "take their anger management issues out" on their teammates and verbally abuse them during design reviews, and tales of men gaslighting female writers in brainstorming sessions - a change in behaviour that occurred only after being assigned to a gruelling schedule.
This recounting of the detrimental effects of crunch on relationships within Telltale was echoed by former lead narrative designer Rachel Noel, who saw first-hand how crunch was making people myopic. "Instead of focusing on teamwork and collaboration, or even what lies ahead in the future, people became so focused on what they were creating that it was like they had blinders on. It ruined interpersonal relationships and drove people to be incredibly demanding, and often they lost sight of the impact their work had on others."
However, it also seems like there were clear attempts made by those in charge to both minimise crunch and place emphasis on the mental wellbeing on those working at Telltale in its last year. "While crunch may have been the norm previously, during the last year, teams tried to minimise it and encouraged people to take time off if they'd worked extra hours or a weekend," Mary Kenney said. "There were a lot of good managers at Telltale trying to make it a better place to work".
It's during this short-lived period of relative positivity in the face of uncertainty that the rug was pulled from under Telltale. For some, it was just a matter of time. "My last year at Telltale was a struggle to survive a toxic environment, save up some money, and find a nice place to land when the inevitable happened," a source said. "I feel terrible for younger talent at the studio who didn't see these signs and were legitimately shocked each time studio layoffs hit. For many, Telltale was their first exposure to game development and they either couldn't read those signs for what they were or truly believed management when they said they could push through it with hard work and long hours."
Others didn't see the news coming. While layoffs were nothing new to Telltale, a total closure came as a shock to those like Rachel Noel. "A lot of people felt like Stranger Things might not be profitable, and if it wasn't, there would be more layoffs," she said. "The shutdown seemed to take most people, if not everyone, by surprise. I had been given a heads-up about an hour before they made the announcement with a warning to keep it quiet. I was pretty stunned. It wasn't my first lay-off, so I think I took it a little better than the people who had only ever worked there, or were straight out of college."
Despite the sudden closure, Mary Kenney tells me how support from people inside and outside Telltale helped the newly unemployed deal with the news. "The 'ex-Telltalers' headed out to bars and restaurants en masse," she said. "We shared our grief, advice from people who'd gone through this before, anecdotes about what we'd miss. As we all comforted each other, the industry showed up with tweets, emails, even interviews that outlined their support for us. It was overwhelming and humbling to know we were surrounded by so many kind, hardworking, considerate people. It still is.
"Many of us were looking forward to what Telltale hoped to do going forward, things we'd talked about in company meetings for over a year: new plans, new projects, new technology. We weren't anticipating the end. We had a future sketched out, one we were excited about even though we knew it would take a lot of hard work to make it happen."
Telltale's is a story cut short, then. In-development projects were discarded, teams were broken up and developers were cast adrift. But while we may never know what might have come from these plans and projects, we do know the people who made Telltale's much-loved games built them even as they faced brutal crunch and a toxic work culture. The passion Telltale staff had for their work is something I, alongside many others, will miss dearly.
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LESS T_T
Arcane
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TWD The Final Season is now Epic Store exclusive (unless you already own it on Steam and GOG): https://www.skybound.com/games/telltales-walking-dead-steam-epic/
I like how that post-mortem ends with the absolute anti-thesis of everything it’s just detailed; “Telltale’s is a story cut short”, my ass.
Boleskine
Arcane
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https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2019-02-14-an-epilogue-for-the-staff-of-telltale
An epilogue for the staff of Telltale
Where has the talent gone?
Connor Makar
Contributor
At the tail end of last year, I wrote an article on Telltale's closure. I talked to those who had worked there about what it was like at the company when roughly 274 people suddenly lost their jobs. With this many writers, artists, testers and others left stranded without severance more than four months ago, I wanted to find out how those affected are doing in 2019.
Following the closure, there was a huge push by fans of Telltale's games and the industry as a whole to help those in need however they could. On the industry side this led to a careers fair for those recently made unemployed, while the community of gamers supporting Telltale employees used the Telltalejobs hashtag to spread word of employment opportunities.
Emily Grace Buck - a former narrative designer at Telltale and current lead writer at Gato Salvaje Studio - has been a major voice for those left jobless since September, going so far as to talk about her experience at the Sweden Game Conference 2018. At the talk she mentioned only 20 per cent of those let go had been employed, but since then that figure has improved significantly. "It's been almost three months since I gave that talk and the percentage of people who have landed jobs has steadily grown since then, with a number of people accepting positions just as the year started which isn't much of a surprise. I gave that talk less than a month after the layoff, so even then 20 per cent wasn't a bad figure really."
However, the're a long way to go, with many still out of work or surviving on temporary contract work. "I think the issue is there are still way too many people who don't have new jobs and there are a number of former Telltale employees who are on contract work that is unreliable, unstable or set to expire," Emily says. "So it's kind of shifting, that number doesn't stay the same." While an accurate figure would be incredibly hard to determine, Emily estimates the amount of people still looking for a stable job would be roughly around 25 per cent (69 people).
Thankfully Emily - among many others from Telltale - found a new job as a result of the influx of support coming from social media. This is true also for Steven Moore, formerly the lead character artist on The Walking Dead at Telltale, who attained a new job at Ubisoft due to the industry lending a hand. "I can't take all the credit," he says. "No, I got my job through connections I would say, a lot of it had to do with connections who I sent my portfolio to. It was people in the industry just reaching out across the board, just helping us out."
A situation many found themselves in following the closure of Telltale was the frustration of not finishing their respective games. For some like Steven, this hurt more than losing their job. "In all honesty I wanted to finish up the project I was on," he says. "That was the big frustration for me, not finishing that project. It wasn't being laid off, because I was smart enough to have savings, because stuff happens. But it was definitely brutal."
Instead, the torch was passed to Skybound Entertainment, which saved the The Walking Dead's final season from evaporating half-finished. Nicki Rap, the voice actor for Lily in the first season of The Walking Dead, recalls her relief when Skybound announced it would finish the game. "When I found out [Lily] was coming back I was like, 'Oh my god this is the greatest thing ever,' and then... it wasn't. I thought, wow this happened, but then it didn't really happen, and now it's done. Thank goodness Skybound saved the day."
Nicki and her peers were welcomed with open arms by Skybound, she says. From what she told me over the phone, there was a sense of relief from the team that they'd get to finish what they started. "I really enjoyed being there and there's excitement this happened," she says. "You can feel it. I felt like I was really a part of things. And that's a good feeling, when you've been away from something and you think it's not gonna happen. So I felt really fortunate that despite everything that happened I was able to be a part of it."
Some, however, did not join Skybound. Having picked up the rights to finish The Walking Dead's final season, Skybound CEO Ian Howe said in a Reddit Q&A the company wanted to have the as much of the team working on the game to be made up of former Telltale developers as possible. But for Steven, the offer came too late. "I was keen to come along and finish it, so I was interested in that," he says. "But the negotiations took so long it didn't work out."
While people like Steven are of course happy the season is being continued by Skybound, there is an understandable concern about whether or not they'll do it "right", according to Steven. "On a personal front we were planning some really cool stuff for episode three and four. We had some flashbacks with Lee and Clem on the train, and we had made new models for them. I was pretty close to finishing them. Of course, Telltale's gone and so have all the assets. So there's that frustration of not quite finishing. So the narcissistic side of me is like, 'oh I hope whoever took over does it right'."
In the recently-released episode from Skybound, a scene with Lee and Clementine on the train does occur. "I'm not sure if I want to see it or not!" Steven says. "I kinda want to see it but I'm not sure. I hope it came out good!" (Steven would later email me that he had given the scene a gander and was happy with how it turned out).
Left: the model for Lee that Steven worked on. Right: Lee's appearance in The Walking Dead's final season.
When it comes to those who found jobs after Telltale, things seem positive. For some, it's been an opportunity to move to a new role. "I have one friend who I was trying to mentor at Telltale, she was in QA but she was an artist. She got a job just around the corner from me doing 3D work. So that's an example of somebody who its worked out better for. I was really happy about that," says Steven.
Despite all this good news regarding those who have found work, ranging from people who have moved onto new jobs or have been picked up by Skybound, there is still a significant number in need of work. While the industry push following the closure helped many, it didn't result in new opportunities for others. According to Emily: "For a few weeks there was a party or mixer thrown for us by a different company almost every single night at some bar or meeting place in the San Rafael area, which was absolutely incredible. Some of those lead to great jobs for people, but there were companies that threw parties for us but didn't end up hiring anybody. There were a number of companies that shared our hashtag who didn't pick anyone up. A few of those companies even ended up having layoffs themselves just a few months later. So in some ways the vocal and excited response to us losing our jobs was very heartening and helped place some people, but a lot of it didn't actually come through with change for the people who needed it most."
That's not to put other companies in some sort of antagonistic light, as one problem with the Telltale layoffs is the sheer number of staff with the same role. "Telltale employed far more writers, narrative designers and cinematic artists than most game companies due to the nature of the games," Emily explains. "So we were focused on story and cinematic presentation. The cinematic department at Telltale was the largest department. I know in its hayday before the first layoff there were 50 people in that department. That's enormous. Game studios, even large ones, have a couple cinematic artists. So that has made it pretty hard for a lot of people in that department to find new work. On top of that, for many people in the cinematic department that was their first or one of their first few jobs in the game industry, because TT did a lot of training in that department. So you have people who are skilled cinematic artists who that's their only type of credit, which is tricky!"
For those unable to find work in the video game industry, they've had to turn elsewhere - be it temporarily or for good. "I have seen some of my former colleagues turning to other forms of tech, turning to film, turning to animation, getting other types of jobs," Emily says. "I know some people who have retail jobs or are driving ubers right now as they're searching for concrete work. Some of that is voluntary. I know some people who have left the games industry since this layoff because it was a sign for them that they didn't want to work in games, or games weren't necessarily their first pick anyway, or they were disenchanted, or that's just the kind of job they found."
Then there's the mental toll long-term unemployment has on those still looking for stable work. Whereas the push on social media to get these people hired was highly encouraged months ago, there's the inevitable self-doubt that comes with being 'left behind'. "For people who are still looking there is a desire of course to put yourself out there, but there's also to deal with when you realise you're one of the people who haven't found work yet," Emily says. "That's something I've heard expressed to me by some of my former colleagues, that you have been out of work for a couple of months now and that's scary, and that's something, especially in the US, that is sometimes looked upon with scorn or derision. Which it shouldn't be! And it's completely wrong, but I get why people are cautious about continuing to blast they need work."
The Walking Dead: The Final Season concludes with the release of episode four in March 2019.
With all this taken into account, the situation surrounding those affected by Telltale's closure is positive, yet far from perfect. While the majority of those left unemployed have moved on, the road ahead for the rest looks tough.
"It does seem a lot of people have forgotten about us now," Emily says. "Many of the people who are still out of work are starting to feel pretty hopeless about the situation. A lot of the companies still trying to hire more people have not been able to fast track them or get them through quickly. I'm hoping now it's the new year, and we're approaching the end of the financial year, companies will be able to pick more people up. Layoffs in Q4 are extremely hard. I get that. But it's difficult to feel optimistic about it right now seeing how many people are still struggling."
Yet despite the deck being stacked against them, there's an optimistic attitude from those who worked at Telltale that their peers are more than capable of finding a place in the industry. That it's only a matter of time before everyone who worked there will make games again. As Nicki puts it: "Everyone's so talented and what they had to work through, and the detail of these games, when you finish one you have to go to the next chapter y'know. It was kind of relentless. So I know they have skills to survive anything. I believe in Telltale people."
Wizfall
Cipher
- Joined
- Oct 3, 2012
- Messages
- 816
Got a blast watching no comment walkthrough of both Wolf among us and tales of borderland.
While i would have 0 interest in "playing" these games, as movies i would have gladly pay full prices !
Awesome stories/characters/voice acting in very original setting (did not know noting about the comics and PC games).
While i would have 0 interest in "playing" these games, as movies i would have gladly pay full prices !
Awesome stories/characters/voice acting in very original setting (did not know noting about the comics and PC games).
fantadomat
Arcane
Nobody cares!
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