8/3/2023 0 Comments Telltale games storywriting![]() Heavy rewrites often accounted for as much as “80 percent” of a game’s development.” team leadership would push through anyway for one of many reasons - time, prestige, actual belief in subpar ideas,” one person told USgamer. The dependence of licensed IP from comic book publishers and film and TV studios also proved to be a “hindrance,” one source said. “The mentality was work harder, faster, and for as long as you can to hit your milestones,” a source told USgamer at the time. An earlier round of big layoffs in November 2017 led to an investigation by USgamer, where anonymous sources from within the company revealed a culture of “crunch” that led to employee burnout. And its distribution model, which behaved like actual television with a set number of “episodes” for “season,” was at once a revelation and perfect for the binge-era.īut what made Telltale unique also contributed to its downfall. While branching storylines based on player choices were not new when the studio’s breakout hit The Walking Dead (based on Robert Kirkman’s graphic novel series) first released in 2012, Telltale immediately developed an enviable reputation for prestige-grade narrative games. The hashtag #TelltaleJobs is allowing former Telltale employees to promote their credentials. Kotaku reported on Monday that former employees will not receive severance pay, which sparked anger on social media. The closure of Telltale Games has rocked the games industry, kicking off larger questions about the absence of unions for video game employees and corporate responsibility. Existence of that project was first reported by TechRadar in June 2018. A “skeleton crew” of over 20 are left behind to complete work on Minecraft: Story Mode for Netflix. Hundreds of employees were let go from the San Rafael, California-based offices, effectively canceling nearly all the studio’s still-in-development titles, including one based on Netflix’s Stranger Things and a second installment of Game of Thrones, based on the HBO juggernaut. One can only imagine what might have happened had the game been allowed to come to fruition.On September 21, USgamer reported massive layoffs within Telltale Games, the award-winning video game studio that revolutionized storytelling for the entire medium. And, it would have taken influence from games such as Fallen London, which is fitting since Kennedy created that game.Įven though Telltale Games’ recent closure effectively cancelled all of the studio’s future games, this particular experiment stopped development earlier this year. Moreover, the game would have revolved around base/survivor management and resource gathering, possibly similar to State of Decay or This War of Mine. It’s really hard to do two kinds of things.”īy all accounts, the game would have been based on a popular zombie-centric property, albeit not The Walking Dead. But given their brutal dev cycle, they could never focus attention on it. It’s a hard problem and my strong impression is that there was a significant, long term effort by Telltale to try find another way to do things. Above all, it was something that didn’t require hand-tuned content but allowed room for stuff that emerged naturally from procedural generation. “It was a project that had been ongoing for years, with a variety of different people coming and going, to try to find a way to do something different to the usual Telltale approach. “While I was at BioWare, this was early 2017 I think, Telltale approached me because they wanted some consultancy on a specific narrative, procedurally generated thing,” explained Kennedy. And the company asked Alexis Kennedy, the creator of games such as Sunless Sea and Cultist Simulator, for help. ![]() ![]() Gamers would no longer be barraged with messages of “Character X will remember that” and instead would experience actual, tangible consequences that weaved new, unique narratives for each playthrough. Granted, most of these concerns revolve around the unfinished final season of The Walking Dead and the highly anticipated The Wolf Among Us Season 2, but we don’t know what else the studio had up its sleeves, especially since it recently tried (and failed) to completely change how it told stories.Īccording to VG247, last year, Telltale Games was in the middle of a grand experiment: telling an engrossing tale that doesn’t rely on the studio’s visual novel-style of storytelling. However, many are less concerned with the whys and hows of its bankruptcy and more with the studio’s cancelled projects. Telltale Games’ majority studio closure announcement came as a surprise to most gamers. ![]()
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