Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The tragic end of Telltale Games

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 202 posts

Re: The tragic end of Telltale Games

#51

Post by prithee »

gassed wrote: post #37
Fragoel2 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently making the same game over and over (with different intellectual property to tie it up) does not pay off.

Can someone explain more about "making the same game over and over"? I don't know anything about these games. Were they all similar, despite being different franchises?

They all shared the same narrative focus and gameplay mechanics of titles in the "adventure" game genre (inspect environment, walk around, quick time events, make decisions in conversation or events that at least promised branches in storyline.) Typically the engine and graphics styles were roughly the same, though improved as time progressed (to the point where you often felt they were battling the old engine).

I understand the limitations to this style and the problems became pronounced as time progressed but to have a "Telltale take" on a property, I roughly knew what kind of experience I was getting and at least for a while made me cautiously optimistic for the release (though I may be a minority.)

Re: The tragic end of Telltale Games

#52

Post by Celarnor »

gerardnll wrote: post #36

I can not understand how it is legal to dismiss a worker with less than 14 days notice. Those are great workers rights! Thanks god we still have some of them here in Spain (although some have already been diminished).

In most states, no notice (or even a reason) is required. We call it 'at-will employment'.

Re: The tragic end of Telltale Games

#53

Post by GarrisonPrime »

criley2 wrote: post #16
k__ wrote: post #4

"years of nonstop crunch culture, toxic management, and frustration from developers who believed the company’s refusal to diversify gameplay had led to creative stagnation" I don't understand why the people who were let go didn't leave in the first place...

Reading "who believed the company’s refusal to diversify gameplay had led to creative stagnation" makes me laugh. That would be like a Call of Duty developer or Assassin's Creed developer complaining that the company not diversifying the gameplay leads to stagnation. I can see from an artists perspective why that's annoying. But from an investors standpoint, if you have a profitable, winning formula, you use that for…

A successful formula? They had 1 big hit, followed by a neigh collapse of interest that only got worse every game. They then kept at this “successful” model for half a dozen games. Sounds bull headed to me.

Re: The tragic end of Telltale Games

#54

Post by Entalpi »

“/../ hundreds still tumbled into unemployment with no safety net from their company.“

To be honest a company that can “barely keep its head above water” wont be in shape to provide a lot of support. That is kind of the point, if they could do that then maybe they could keep the company afloat which is a bit paradoxical.

It would be nice situations like these to have some form of safety net in form of financial aid or something. I have no idea what they do in the US but in Sweden you can get a lot of help since these things happen with companies from time to time.

Re: The tragic end of Telltale Games

#55

Post by plopz »

everyone wrote: post #40
Fragoel2 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently making the same game over and over (with different intellectual property to tie it up) does not pay off.

It seems to work for most AAA games.. In fact they usually dont even bother changing IP eg. assassins creed series, farcry series, call of duty series, madden series, etc. etc. Look at the ridiculously popular battle-royale games like fortnight.. They are pretty much clones of each other, and that gameplay has been done (better) decades ago.

Battle royale games were done better decades ago? I can't even think of a battle royale game from the 90s.

Re: The tragic end of Telltale Games

#56

Post by nottorp »

everyone wrote: post #40
Fragoel2 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently making the same game over and over (with different intellectual property to tie it up) does not pay off.

It seems to work for most AAA games.. In fact they usually dont even bother changing IP eg. assassins creed series, farcry series, call of duty series, madden series, etc. etc. Look at the ridiculously popular battle-royale games like fortnight.. They are pretty much clones of each other, and that gameplay has been done (better) decades ago.

Yeah but in those you have some mechanics to use. Telltalle took the adventure game formula, which is mostly exploration and puzzles, and dumbed it down until you were left with linear exploration and kindergarten puzzles. I stopped looking at their titles ages ago because while I grew up with adventure games, the Telltale titles ain't that any more.

Edit: also, games made after a movie license (or a game license, Minecraft Story, wtf?) tend to be crap. Especially when they're story based so basically you're replaying the movie that you've already seen.

Re: The tragic end of Telltale Games

#57

Post by screye »

lmm wrote: post #38
aikah wrote: post #15

Sometimes you simply got to let the data speak for themselves: https://imgur.com/a/2tR4WVX It's so strange how the prestige around the brand was not correlated to the sells numbers. It so strange how their demise was so unexpected by the press and gaming communities when the writing was on the wall long ago.

The gaming press is more press than gaming; they're often people with writing degrees who are disproportionately fond of "literary" games compared to the buying public.

This is very true.

Gaming journos have very little influence inside the gaming community. Many of them do not quite get that "fun" is the most central reason for playing a game. Their articles often read like someone who is hoping for a regular media house to notice and hire them, rather than a gamer writing for other gamers.

Gaming's biggest personalities are on YouTube and Twitch. ACG, Angry Joe, TB (rip), Dunkey have a significantly better say on whether a game gets played or not. Brothers a tale of sons, is one such game whose success can be in part attributed to TB pushing it very hard, on his YT channel.

Among the younger generation, let's play and streamers are the bigger influencers. At least that is what I feel like looking at my younger cousins.

There are a few good gaming review websites, but the likes of IGN, Polygon and GameSpot feel like surrogate marketting agencies at this point.

Re: The tragic end of Telltale Games

#58

Post by xirdstl »

7000skeletons wrote: post #39
kevingadd wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's similar to how (in general) an industry-wide theme is that episodic titles have significant sales drop-off in later episodes. Sequels do too, albeit less so and less consistently. This is part of why companies selling episodic games (telltale included) try to sell you a whole season up front. A big notable example is Square Enix's Final Fantasy 13 trilogy (3 games, FF13, FF13-2, and Lightning Returns), where IIR…

I can't help but think there's some truth to all the talk about people growing tired of the same mechanics being used in essentially every Telltale game after the first series of The Walking Dead. Going from personal experience, it was a hell of a ride the first outing but it grew pretty samey even when new settings and stories were applied to it.

It wasn't just the gameplay for me, but the episodic format. I grew tired of that, and I would wait until all episodes were released to buy. By then, I might have either forgotten about the game, or could get it for a substantial discount.

Re: The tragic end of Telltale Games

#59

Post by jamesrcole »

aikah wrote: post #15

Sometimes you simply got to let the data speak for themselves: https://imgur.com/a/2tR4WVX It's so strange how the prestige around the brand was not correlated to the sells numbers. It so strange how their demise was so unexpected by the press and gaming communities when the writing was on the wall long ago.

Worth noting that this data is from steamspy (http://steamspy.com/about) so only covers Steam, and is also not fully accurate.

How representative it is of the overall picture I can't say. I would imagine that Telltale's style of games sell more on phones/tablets and on consoles, but of course the sales on those platforms may well show the same trends over time.

Re: The tragic end of Telltale Games

#60

Post by Thaxll »

aikah wrote: post #15

Sometimes you simply got to let the data speak for themselves: https://imgur.com/a/2tR4WVX It's so strange how the prestige around the brand was not correlated to the sells numbers. It so strange how their demise was so unexpected by the press and gaming communities when the writing was on the wall long ago.

That's one of the reason why big studio don't create new IPs very often, it's very expensive / risky, a false move and you can lay off hundred of people.
Post reply on HN