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The tragic end of Telltale Games

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Re: The tragic end of Telltale Games

#101

Post by jccalhoun »

Razengan wrote: post #70
screye wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 h…

I have been gaming literally my entire life save for the first couple years, spending thousands of dollars on games every year, and I have never watched any of those “gaming personalities.”

Agreed. I have heard of a couple of them but it seems like many of the younger generation is turning to video for their reviews and opinions and not text. I would much rather skim through an article than a video. I see tons of links to opinion videos on reddit but I rarely ever click on them because I don't want to sit through some ad, an opening credit, "Hi Guy! Welcome to my channel. Today I want to talk about..." and other garbage to see if I care about what this person has to say. Even if I skip ahead there is a good chance that I will have to back it up because it seems to skip ahead to the middle of an idea.

And I wish these kids would get off my lawn!

Re: The tragic end of Telltale Games

#102

Post by SmellyGeekBoy »

taneq wrote: post #81
prithee wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 un…

Sounds like those Sierra games. Those hacks.

Yup. LucasArts too obviously. It doesn't really matter if the gameplay is identical and the puzzles similar and formulaic if the story is interesting and the game is fun. Perhaps there's just no appetite for the adventure genre anymore?

Re: The tragic end of Telltale Games

#103

Post by Insanity »

kevingadd wrote: post #35
k__ wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Call of Duty" and "Assassin's Creed" are made by different studios and owned by big publishers I think. Activision and Ubisoft offer different games.

CoD and AC are actually good examples because they are two of very, very few franchises that ship a game every 1-2 years like clockwork, and to do this they have multiple studios working on games at the same time. Assassin's Creed Origins and Assassin's Creed Odyssey shipped roughly 1 year apart and this required separate studios working on them, basically in parallel. At various points in time Call of Duty has been…

CoD games after COD4 are all similar enough that if you can play well on one of them, you can do the others quite good.

With the exception of BO3 perhaps, because it actually added some more fun gameplay elements. (The running along walls / double jumping).

But in general, the games are all quite similar.

Then again, the days the COD games were actually good games are long gone (in my opinion). CoD2 remains my favourite by far, and CoD4 is a close second. Both of which are over a decade old now.

Re: The tragic end of Telltale Games

#104

Post by SmellyGeekBoy »

nottorp wrote: post #72
Sean1708 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Especially when they're story based so basically you're replaying the movie that you've already seen. Weren't most of Telltale's stories original? I didn't play any of the others, but I know the Borderlands and Batman ones were.

Maybe, if you mean as original as they can be within the restrictions of the franchise. Personally, I played Borderlands but I never stopped and thought "oh gee, it would be nice to find out more about their background story". I just looked for the next thing to shoot. As for Batman... saturation anyone?

Are you saying that Batman games in general don't sell well?

Re: The tragic end of Telltale Games

#105

Post by SmellyGeekBoy »

plopz wrote: post #91
everyone wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

quake, unreal tournament, tribes, battlefield, planetside.. Deathmatch with many players. Same thing pretty much, but with more action.

The fundamental difference between all of those games and what I would consider a battle royale game is you only get 1 life. As an aside, I loved Tribes 2 construction mod.

Networked DOOM would like a word.

Re: The tragic end of Telltale Games

#106

Post by jccalhoun »

pwaivers wrote: post #94

> "These sources, who were granted anonymity in order to speak freely and without fear of retribution,..." What retribution? They were fired with no severance or time to prepare. Why don't they just speak out against the company that doesn't exist anymore and left them on the street?

Because then you seem like a complainer or a troublemaker. You get an interview at another company (where there are dozens if not hundreds of other people applying) and they google you. Would they hire the person who complained about terrible work conditions or one of the other people who hasn't?

Re: The tragic end of Telltale Games

#107

Post by izacus »

fsloth wrote: post #43
JohnStrangeII wrote: post #2

I feel sorry for the employees and apologize in advance if what I'm going to say sounds too negative or blunt, but anyway here is one opinion. Telltale games wasn't a very innovative company. It shouldn't surprise anyone when a company goes bankrupt that primarily produces bad game adoptions of blockbuster movies as a franchise. Correct me if I'm wrong, I'm only a gamer and not an industry expert, but it seems to me…

"bad game adoptions" At least their "Wolf among us" was an extremely enjoyable adaptation of an existing comic book franchise with a novel story.

Batman series was also excellent and it surprised me how far it went away from canon Batman representations.

Not to mention Tales from the Borderlands being one of the funniest games I've ever played.

On the other hand, the new Walking Dead seasons and Game of Thrones were exceedingly dull.

Re: The tragic end of Telltale Games

#108

Post by Insanity »

gaius wrote: post #67
falcolas wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The company didn't cease to exist; they still had (have?) employees finishing existing contracts. They also tried to raise money to staff back up and finish off the Walking Dead games.

It sucks but if there is literally no money left then the company is simply not able to fulfill its obligations. Like if pay is owed where will that money come from? I don’t excuse management for a second; they must have known the coffers were bare while they were still hiring.

If I'm not mistaken, here in Belgium first the assets of the company are sold off and from that money, first the employees are paid out their contracts.

After that the money goes to other instances (like the loan by the bank etc).

EDIT: They are paid out their outstanding wage for their performed work, not to the end of their contracts

Re: The tragic end of Telltale Games

#109

Post by gassed »

SmellyGeekBoy wrote: post #99
gassed wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Sad that an adventure game studio could die off for this reason when "Call of Duty" is pretty much the same game every year and somehow manages to be one of the best selling franchises of all time.

Just because they make adventure games they aren't superior.

Also your argument is flawed. After all, all football matches are the same.

Re: The tragic end of Telltale Games

#110

Post by izacus »

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.

> 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.

How does that differ from movie and music press? It's pretty much the same situation - you have big blockbusters which are polished and ground down to be as widely appealing and as mildly offensive as possible. These blockbusters then get ridicoulous marketing spending which shoves them down the throat of as many average people as possible.

But studios like Telltale have no hope of even coming close to competing for that attention - they have nowhere near the marketing budget of Ubisoft, EA, Activision. They need to appeal to smaller niche audiences to not get just eaten by large publishers doing the same thing better and with more pomp.

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