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DRAMA: Toxic Management and Development Hell at Telltale Games

Boleskine

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Sep 12, 2013
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https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/20/...s-developer-layoffs-toxic-video-game-industry

Toxic management cost an award-winning game studio its best developers
How the $36 billion video game industry burns out its best employees
By Megan Farokhmanesh@Megan_Nicolett Mar 20, 2018, 9:00am EDT

It's a long article but most of us are probably not surprised by some of the accounts from former Telltale employees.

We went from a small and scrappy team to kind of a giant studio full of 300-plus people,” says former Telltale programmer and designer Andrew Langley, who worked at the studio from 2008 to 2015. “You walk around the office, and you don’t really recognize anybody anymore.”

Sources say the culture of the studio never properly adapted from its indie mentality to one more appropriate for its larger size. Tribal knowledge persisted over clearly documented processes, and a lack of communication among employees bred confusion. “Very rarely people were writing things down on a wiki or a confluence page or any sort of documentation,” says a former employee. “People were shifting so often that you would hear a version of a story that was actually weeks old, and the person telling you has no idea because that’s the last thing they heard.”
To keep up with the workload, the company started rotating developers in and out of different games during the development process, sometimes in ways that employees say made little sense. As the developer’s schedule grew more aggressive, management sought to remedy tighter turnarounds by adding more people to the department — a “solution” that did little to help the problem. As one former Telltale developer put it: nine women can’t make a baby in one month. “Focus on quality really started to shift to ‘let’s just get as many episodes out as we can,’” the source says.

Time management was a major issue. Release dates would often slip after games underwent multiple, extensive reviews that came with a great deal of feedback, but failed to budget enough time to make the changes. “The pace at which the studio operated was both an amazing feat and its biggest problem,” says a former employee. “Executives would often ask teams to rewrite, redesign, recast, and reanimate up until the very last minute without properly adjusting the schedule. The demands on production only became more intense with each successful release, and at some point, you just don’t have anything left to give.”
More than half a dozen sources across the company also talked about a perceived culture of underpayment, citing salaries below industry standards that also required living in the notoriously expensive Bay Area. Issues of crunch and underpayment were particularly pervasive for the cinematics team, which was staffed by many junior members who had come straight from college.

“You’d get a lot of people coming right out of school, going, ‘Oh I really want to prove myself, and I really want to make sure that they see that I’m contributing,’” says a source familiar with the company. “The thing that broke my heart the most was seeing new team members that were just so gung-ho and optimistic and excited to be at Telltale get overused and abused because they did not feel comfortable drawing the line in the sand to say, ‘This is my limit.’ They either worked themselves out and would get sick or would become bitter.”
Multiple sources say the some of the studio’s most troubling dynamics originated from one person: co-founder Kevin Bruner.

Bruner worked primarily as a programmer prior to Telltale, including during his stint at LucasArts. But he wore many hats during his time at Telltale: first as the company’s CTO and later as a director and CEO. According to numerous current and former employees, Bruner’s behavior became significantly more abrasive and inflexible after the success of The Walking Dead. Thanks to his background in programming, he had been a strong force in creating game development tools for Telltale. As the studio’s popularity exploded, some employees felt he wanted to step into the role of a design auteur, which sources say made him resistant to give the spotlight to other employees at the company.

“That’s when things got really bad,” says a former employee. “I think a lot of the insecurity came from The Walking Dead.” The game’s success had significantly raised the profiles of Rodkin and Vanaman and earned them widespread praise. “I think that that really irked [Bruner] a lot,” says the source. “He felt that… he deserved that. It was his project, or it was his company. He should have gotten all that love.”
Former employees and sources with direct knowledge of Telltale’s inner workings consistently describe Bruner as a creative bottleneck who micromanaged every part of the development process, from pitch to final product — even going so far as to personally rewrite tutorial text. “He wanted to be consulted on everything from the color of the walls to who they’ve hired to write specific dialogue,” a former employee says.

Bruner took over as CEO of Telltale in 2015 from Connors, who former employees described as a far less imposing figure. Numerous employees describe Bruner as cultivating a culture of fear, and a running joke at the company compared Bruner’s attention to the Eye of Sauron, the fiery gaze of the villain in The Lord of the Rings. “Inevitably, the Eye of Sauron looks at you, and that beam of light just blows everything up and makes it a hellscape where you don’t believe in a thing you’re building anymore,” says a former employee. “A lot of times at Telltale, you don’t feel like you’re wanted there.”

Executive review meetings with higher-ups like Bruner became infamous within the company as brutal, hours-long arguments where Bruner would belittle and question the choices of those involved with the studio’s projects, according to half a dozen sources. “When [Bruner] saw something he decided he didn’t like — which very often was exactly what he had asked for — [that] were really undeserved and often really difficult for teams to deal with,” the source says.
According to about half a dozen sources familiar with Telltale, however, the problem for most employees wasn’t new ideas, but the lack of them. The Walking Dead had broken new ground for Telltale, both artistically and financially. Unfortunately, it also chained those running the company to an immovable idea: that the template of The Walking Dead was the only one worth pursuing.

As the company continued to expand, former employees say, its growth came at the expense of the creativity and originality that inspired their success in the first place. “They just wanted to put butts in seats,” one former employee says. “The folks at the very top never really understood what made Walking Dead work. They were given a recipe book, and they just followed the recipe because they don’t really understand why the recipe tastes good.”
 
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Boleskine

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https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news...ofounder_Kevin_Bruner_is_suing_the_studio.php


Former Telltale CEO and co-founder Kevin Bruner is suing the studio
June 15, 2018 | By Chris Kerr

Former Telltale CEO and co-founder Kevin Bruner is suing the studio over his expulsion in March last year, according to a report in the Marin Independent Journal.

Bruner helped launch the company, known for episodic game series like The Walking Dead and Tales from the Borderlands, in 2004 alongside Dan Connors and Troy Molander. He initially served as president, CTO, and director, before taking on the role of CEO in 2015.

Fast-forward to March 2017, and Bruner stepped down seemingly of his own accord, although the former CEO now alleges he was pushed out after board members sought to change the company's business model.

He also claims he wasn't given the necessary assistance as he attempted to sell his holdings in common and preferred stock, and was eventually purged from the Telltale board of directors via illegitimate means.

Telltale, meanwhile, has called the lawsuit "meritless," and suggests it has been filed "as an apparent means of extracting revenge on a company already under financial strain."

"The company is now working to turn around the decline that it experienced under Plaintiff’s stewardship," continues the developer's response.

Judge Roy Chernus has rejected studio's initial attempt to defeat the lawsuit outright, and believes "there are issues that appear to deserve further examination." With that in mind, a case management conference has been set for July 17.

:martini:
 

SerratedBiz

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on a company already under financial strain.

9bd.png
 

JarlFrank

I like Thief THIS much
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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
I lost all interest in Telltale when they stopped making games and made barely interactive movies instead. Don't give a single fuck what happens to the company, although overall I'd say the popularity of their style of game does the industry more harm than good.
 

jfrisby

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Grab the Codex by the pussy Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Shadorwun: Hong Kong
They should've continued making uninspired episodic p&c's, some of them were quite amusing (Hector for instance).
Hector was developed by Straandlooper Animation in Ireland, which seems to have stopped existing too.
 

Baron Dupek

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1,870,765
Already heard about their problems like year or two back. What was their reason to stay with that terrible engine? Something like "one of their VIPs (those who get fired last) made it and we can't dump it despite it's awfulness and bugs".
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2018-08-23-telltale-games-we-have-let-players-down-in-the-past

Telltale Games: "We have let players down in the past"
The Walking Dead producer on the studio's future and its much needed improvements.

Telltale Games feels midway through a transition period. Last year saw it gain a new CEO and shed a huge percentage of its workforce, as it slimmed down its ever-running factory line of episodic games.

There are changes afoot, too, with Telltale's own technology. A report back in June claimed The Walking Dead's final season would be the last built on the studio's own aging Telltale Tool engine, with future products built in Unity instead.

At Gamescom today I sat down with The Walking Dead's executive producer Brodie Andersen to ask about this transition period and why it was so important for Telltale to change.

"I don't have anything specific to comment on Unity," Andersen began when I asked him about the earlier report, "but for this season the Tool was the only option for us. I will say we certainly, I think, have let players down in the past a little bit, just in terms of our engine's technology.

"It was really important this season to build some time in to make some improvements to the Tool to add polish and quality of life experience. Rendering was one of the big ones, we now have fully dynamic lighting, we're using a different art style we call Graphic Black which is tailored to look like a living comic book. Animation as well, specifically facial movements, an over the shoulder camera and unscripted combat where in the past we've relied on QTE experiences.

"We're always pleased to innovate and maybe in the previous season we didn't do enough of that."

The expected move to Unity for upcoming projects like The Wolf Among Us' second season and the in-development Stranger Things game will likely bring further changes - though Andersen would not be drawn on those.

Other changes at the studio are evident in the amount of its output this year - far less than previous. 2017 saw nearly 20 episodes launch across five game series. In 2018, the only new season Telltale has launched is The Walking Dead's final run.

"There hasn't been as many products in the marketplace this year compared to previous which has allowed us to focus more and move to more of working on one game at a time with a dedicated team," Andersen explained. "We do have other irons in the fire but it's safe to say we're the biggest iron right now.

"We know we ran a little hot in previous years and weren't able to fully deliver the experiences we may have wanted to, so that was important to focus in on a polished quality experience players love. We took that to heart before the development of this season and this team is excited about it."

What is coming instead - just four episodes, each released just six weeks apart - feels much leaner and more focused in comparison. For Clementine's swansong, Andersen says Telltale wanted to avoid any excess fat on the season's bones. The studio has also dated the entire season in advance - a first for the developer.

"We were delighted we were able to do that. In the past there's been some fair criticism about some gaps between episodes - maybe not with The Walking Dead but with some other Telltale series - so it was important for us to do that for fans so they know when the next episode was going to be.

"Every six weeks is going to be our plan. Development sometimes has some unforseen circumstances but right now we're going to be fully out before the end of the year. I can't speak for the other projects but anything I work on that's episodic - we've seen the incredible response to that so far - we'd like to have that."

And how will it end? "We started with the ending and we decided it would take four episodes to get to that," Andersen teased. "There's going to be a variety of avenues throughout the season... [but we] won't ever make the player feel like they got the bad ending to the story, it's your ending."
 

Kev Inkline

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A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Fucking I hate zombies.

also this:
consistently describe Bruner as a creative bottleneck who micromanaged every part of the development process,
Once had a boss like that, it's absolutely horrible.
 

agris

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Once you experience the gloves of thralldom, you never forget.
 

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