Now confirmed Telltale Studios closing down

[Neon Ignition]

You'd think TWD would be an existing commitment by default rather than trying to help out fans. It's really hard to see Telltale surviving past the Minecraft project in every eventuality

[Dogg Thang]

Well that’s it exactly. They clearly fear the repercussions of not delivering to Netflix more than they do the obligations to staff or Walking Dead customers. But I can’t see how they can continue to operate on one while avoiding dealing with the other two.

[Digfox]

The latest The Walking Dead game had been removed from digital storefronts now. As [MENTION=3144]Dogg Thang[/MENTION] so eloquently replied they don't care about the customers or former employees. It may be that they literally just need a very short amount of time to complete the Netflix work and then get out of dodge. Any legal wrangles will be way behind them by that point.

[Neon Ignition]

So they left TWD up just long enough to throw Ep2 out the door it seems

[Sketcz]

Been reading comments on this closure from pearl-clutching fanboys across social media.

Am I the only one who disliked literally every single game the company put out? The company's entire output is basically nothing but dog**** bad adventure games. Back to the Future was unplayable ****ing bad. Just wretchedly awful and stupid. I paid $1 on a sale for the entire BttF series, and couldn't finish the first episode. Pure crapulence.

I also preferred the FPS Walking Dead game to their adventure version, and the 3rd person RPG of Game of Thrones to their adventure. They were basically a one trick pony, regurgitating the same low-interaction copycat games that were functionally all the same - as in, very little "game" interaction - but with a different skin. I suppose if you have like the biggest ****ing boner ever for whatever license they were crapping out next, you'd enjoy the story, maybe. But every one of their games was just wretched to actually sit through pushing the buttons yourself.

I sometimes wonder if the hardcore fanboys weren't all just watching YouTube let's play videos, because I somehow accumulated half their catalogue through sales, due to people insisting it was the bestest best thing ever in bestland, and I hated every second of it when actually trying to play any of them.

Sucks that people are losing jobs, but meh. I saw no value in their output whatsoever. I am not surprised they're going bankrupt. Six years ago I branded this company as hot garbage, and time proved me right.

[Family Fry]

Six year ago Sketcz I branded you hot garbage and your post has finally proven me right.

[Sketcz]

Really? I missed that. You should have said so I could put you my ignore list. Now you're there.

Anyway, I'm just saying it how I see it because no one else seems to be saying it. Nothing the studio produced had any gaming / playing value to it. Fans seem to praise it more because of this, because of its linearity when it comes to conveying the story. You want that, go watch the TV series and films they based their "games" on. The finest example is the Walking Dead games, and Game of Thrones. I've seen the series of both - I don't need digital polygon cutscenes of the series. I want to play the series.

The alternate proper games of these two series were great - and yet, for example the Walking Dead FPS, fans of the series crapped all over it before release even, because the setting was being recontextualised within a game framework. I loved it. I loved the way refuelling your car worked. It made me feel like I was living the series, rather than watching a group of other people living it.

Pretty much every one of TT's games have been on sale on PS3 for rock bottom prices, and I always step up and buy them hoping to eventually see what others feel. I never do. And I am angry that other games, better games, which used the same source materials, were overlooked or criticised because they were not Telltale games. When a new IP comes up, I've seen people on forums say: "Oh god I hope telltale gets it, I don't want other studios trying to make a game out of it."

Those people irritate me. Because studios and publishers look at comments, and sales, and magazine reviews, and you know what the licensing people say? "Let's not have an innovative and rich RPG like Game of Thrones, with multiple choices, and gear, and the ability to freely explore the world as two diverging characters. Let's just let Telltale sort of recreate the formula of the TV show."

This is fantastic, despite what critics wrongly say. Proper RPG mechanics, with skill trees, weapons, armour, buying and selling, exploring, and real combat. Brilliant, I felt like I was living the books / show:


This, on the other hand, is utterly redundant. There's no point in playing it, evidenced by the fact there are several YouTube channels which have provided an entire playthrough you can simply watch. It's basically like watching the show, but with the burden of quick time events:


The mere existence of Telltale has prevented other better studios from making better adaptations of the source material Telltale kept hoovering up. Now that they are gone, maybe we will see more of the first video I posted, and less of the second.

All I see with this studio closure is a group of people either incapable or unable or simply were not interested in making functionally interesting games. They found a niche, fanboys loved the copycat identikit prefabricated guff they churned out, so good on them finding a means to make money. That's about the only good thing I can say about them. They're not "talent" - Telltale Studios is the game company equivalent of a Xerox machine which attained mass popularity by riding the coat tails of content created by film and TV studios.

If no one else wants to acknowledge, meh... I'm not sure I even care that much, beyond making these few forum posts.

[Neon Ignition]

From what I can gather, many at Telltale would agree with you, they seemed to have real issues with the recently departed Management who fuelled most of this.

I didn't mind The Walking Dead: Season One. I take issue with Telltale games on how each episode will only have 4-5 decisions that are actually measured and they never made any real change to the story, it was always very lazy token gestures to justify that you were playing a game instead of watching a cutscene. But for what it was, the first TWD was entertaining enough and a lot of that came down to it being something different. The second they started knocking them out like Lego games the wheels came off. There should have been some ambition to the games, they should have naturally introduced other mechanics long before the likes of Life is Strange came along and they should never have stayed rigidly devoted to a game type that clearly wasn't working well for them.
Any enjoyment I got from them post TWD came mostly from what the franchise was. Wolf Amongst Us was... ooookayish, Batman was barely passable but didn't completely fall apart.

It's more early Telltale I mourn before they got distracted by the Walking Dead model. The three Sam and Max games, those I enjoyed and the final run of that was a lovely send off.

[Paddy]

Reading other posts I hear what's being said about Telltale Games not innovating enough and allowing other devs to gain attention but doing something different with the format (Jim Stirling in a recent video has drawn my attention to the game The Council. Despite its shortcomings it sounds interesting and is perhaps something Telltale should have strived to incorporate into one of its own titles. I might check it out when it appears in a sale).

[gunrock]

It seemed to me that some of Sketcz's assessment has merit: the games were barely interactive, storytelling efforts that could, in fact be watched on YouTube long plays with little loss. Where TWD worked then, was in (the first two, at least) focusing on characters outside of the TV show, thus providing fans and gamers with something new in the comic/show universe.

I feel the same way about The Wolf Among Us, because without the game, I would have probably not encountered the source material. However, Guardians and Batman are so well known that those stories (haven't played these two) probably could have been told in comics or animation, or other non-interactive media.

[Brad]

Yep. Scetcz can be quite abrasive in his delivery but he's not wrong IMO. The interactive parts and decision making had no effect on anything so were utterly pointless, the games were bugged to hell and the people running the show got greedy basically, at the expense of both their customers and (much, much worse) their employees. A real shame as the people with the talent could have been off doing something better during this time.

[eastyy]

Last 25 people have been laid off https://twitter.com/anameformyself/s...30803634630657 I think the management shut down completely due to being sued and the WARN act, if company is still operating it would be harder to justify it, that is only a guess though

[Dogg Thang]

Yeah, that makes sense. Not surprised.

[Paddy]

Maybe its just the thoughts of Youtubers but its been suggested that the existing properties might go to other developers that may be interested in continuing the likes of The Wolf Among Us, Batman, etc.

If it happens then fair enough. Personally I think The Wolf Among Us was fine as one season and it should be left that way. I understand though that companies want to make money so there's always the possibility of more being made.

Hopefully those laid off will actually get their appropriate severance if the recent WARN-related case goes to court and the it ends in their favour.

[Dogg Thang]

It feels unlikely that anyone would want to continue doing the same thing when this happened to Telltale. And if it is possible to finish The Walking Dead and not lose a load of money doing it, why couldn't Telltale retain a chunk of their team and do that? If any studio can step in and do that, it would be a damning indictment on how Telltale were running things and it would feel terribly insulting to the staff who were let go.