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The tragic end of Telltale Games

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Re: The tragic end of Telltale Games

#171

Post by vvanders »

corysama wrote: post #156
vvanders wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Congrats, you've found the 2% of the industry that isn't insane. For many of us who fell into the other 98% the statistics aren't in your favor and some of the bigger publishers(EA, Microsoft) tend to go in ~6 year cycles. Had a friend who worked on Dead Space, which should have been a stable thing. Alas, Visceral isn't around either.

I’ve worked in games for 20 years. The way I make it work is to accept that it is insane. Have a savings cushion. Network so that finding a new job is easy. Generally, make sure you are OK if you find chains on the door tomorrow morning. Also helps to not be a morning person. Everyone but management knows that overtime is anti-productive. But, they usually only count heads after 6. Working from 10-7 keeps us both hap…

> Working from 10-7 keeps us both happy.

I'm sorry but: fuck that shit.

When I was in that industry I worked 8am-6pm because I was able to be more productive when the office was empty than being some night owl who stayed in the office till 2am.

I caught no end of shit because I was "walking out the door at 6pm". People weren't blocked, I wasn't leaving anyone in a state where they couldn't do work.

God forbid I wanted to spend a bit of time with my wife(then GF, I can't believe she put up with it). There's some interesting technical problems in that industry but it's not worth the hell you go through for the rest of it. Saw 3 divorces on my last team before I got out and that was all I needed to know that it wasn't a healthy industry to be in.

Re: The tragic end of Telltale Games

#173

Post by beerlord »

Ultimately most of these game studios are working for Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, Google, Apple and Valve.

More pressure should be put on those mega-corporations to reduce the commissions they charge developers who release games on their platforms - currently 30%.

The consoles are not supercomputers anymore like the PS3, they mostly use off the shelf (AMD) hardware and x86 architecture. Soon they will just stream the game directly to a thin client which will only handle time-sensitive calculations like input and collision. On PC this 30% commission is even less justifiable since the platform is open and there is no hardware for Valve to get involved with.

Cutting this commission would immediately put money into the hands of games studios and improve conditions for workers, whilst still leaving the platform holders ridiculously profitable. Its a shame no one has been first to move on this - Microsoft with Xbox would seem a good candidate given their desperation to attract devs to the platform and away from PS4/Sony.

I think Telltale is just classic bad management. Not much different from other industries. I think the industry can make for a good career - find a small-ish studio with a string of successful releases and low overhead (no crappy legacy engine to maintain, cheap location).

Re: The tragic end of Telltale Games

#174

Post by ggggtez »

na412 wrote: post #113
bliblah wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the games followed the same basic gameplay roadmap. Event happens -> Talk to other characters -> Another event happens Usually the events were cutscenes or QTEs (timed button presses) that you either pass or get a gameover if you fail too many. Now this wouldn't be an issue if the games were marketed as such but instead they tried to present them with the taglines "Your choices have consequences" while it was cle…

I haven't played any of these games either, and the kinds of "press a button in time to make stuff happen" events you describe are something I really hate in games, so I don't think I will. That said, your description of the illusion of choice in the story... sounds like every story-based videogame ever. I've been playing games since the 90s, and I can't really think of any such games off the top of my head where you…

I played The Wolf Among Us twice through. I thought the story was very interesting, and wanted to see what happened if you did everything different. Obviously you know a lot of content is going to be re-used, but by and large probably 95% of it was unchanged. It lowered my opinion substancially, though I still liked it more as a movie/TV show, than a game.

While story based games do have to fight combinatorial explosion of possibilities, games like Planescape Tormet deal with that by having actual gameplay: random encounters, item drops, side quests, leveling up. All the traditional RPG mechanics.

Life is Strange was also panned for having the illusion of choice, but I think was able to resist some of that criticism due to the strength of the story, and the different environment: most of the game is peaceful and sullen, not thrilling, so the limited gameplay isn't necessarily a problem.

Re: The tragic end of Telltale Games

#175

Post by breakbread »

aikah wrote: post #82
lmm wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. The real question is how influential are they today? I think they might not be that influential when it comes to AAA titles, however, some outlets are extremely influential when it comes to indie gaming, since it's a small scene where "knowing the r…

I gotta say, though, that the Digital Foundry crew at Eurogamer consistently put out excellent technical analyses of current and (usually every Sunday)retro games. I love it. No politics, no drama, just an in depth look at the tech under the hood.

https://www.youtube.com/user/DigitalFoundry

Re: The tragic end of Telltale Games

#176

Post by user5994461 »

plopz wrote: post #55
everyone wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

unreal tournament and counter strike for sure. Unreal tournament had an option to limit the number of life, not that is was common to use.

Unreal and Fortnight are made by the same company by the way. It's really a reskin with adjusted gameplay settings.

Re: The tragic end of Telltale Games

#177

Post by tscherno »

na412 wrote: post #113
bliblah wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the games followed the same basic gameplay roadmap. Event happens -> Talk to other characters -> Another event happens Usually the events were cutscenes or QTEs (timed button presses) that you either pass or get a gameover if you fail too many. Now this wouldn't be an issue if the games were marketed as such but instead they tried to present them with the taglines "Your choices have consequences" while it was cle…

I haven't played any of these games either, and the kinds of "press a button in time to make stuff happen" events you describe are something I really hate in games, so I don't think I will. That said, your description of the illusion of choice in the story... sounds like every story-based videogame ever. I've been playing games since the 90s, and I can't really think of any such games off the top of my head where you…

Farenheit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit_(2005_video_game)

Re: The tragic end of Telltale Games

#178

Post by user5994461 »

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.

Last I recall from playing unreal 2004, there is a slider to select how many life players have when starting a death match.

Battle royale was available, long before battle royale was cool.

There were also a lot of other gameplay available on top of death match, all built in: team death match, assault, onslaught, capture the flags, domination, etc...

Re: The tragic end of Telltale Games

#179

Post by sizzle »

bliblah wrote: post #84
tablethnuser wrote: post #71

Don't work in the games industry. This is the par story for game companies. Every little detail of this story I saw repeating on loop in a decade of working in games. The artists grabbing assets to stuff into their portfolios before two years of professional work disappears into a black hole, the ppl moving families across country to be laid off months later, the crunch, the over promising, it is all text book. The g…

I honestly wish I could disagree but it's probably the most soul sucking industry out there. Yeah there are great companies but considering that just this year alone there were over 1,000 layoffs [1] in an industry that there are just a handful of large developers / publishers it's hard to get a position where you aren't just churning out gambling apps or one off VR projects for a Big Media Company trying to make a q…

I heard doing 3D cgi stuff for movies is a pretty similar situation but worse tend to be worse as they are contract positions out here in LA/Hollywood area.

Re: The tragic end of Telltale Games

#180

Post by sizzle »

HBlix wrote: post #155
bitL wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are young, single and healthy, and can work on important parts of a game (engine), do it for 1-2 years, have a blast, ship an AAA game, then escape to more stable FAANG, where you will be a highly paid guru. You can even write a book or two then, documenting your tricks and achievements.

Why? You’ll come out older, less healthy, poorer, and full of regret that you spent your time building casinos for children and people with gambling issues. If you’re going to work for a FAANG anyway, at least you can sell your integrity for a much higher price and better conditions.

"building casinos for children and people with gambling issues"

Ouch. That really puts things into perspective said like that.

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