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Telltale Games is shutting down

J_C

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How can a company let go 250 people from one day to another without severance, without healthcare is beyond me. Oh, wait, they live in the USA, the best country in the world.
Of course, blame the company, not the incompetence of the people involved. They knew what they were in, knew the conditions they have, they decided it suits them. Cry me a river now.
What? :lol: Of course it is the company's fault (and I mean the management). Who the hell's fault this would be? You are dumb.
 

Sizzle

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I didn't see anything of value in this. Instead, The Wolf Among Us was rather nice, too bad it was only one season.
Was the wolf among us nice because of telltale or because of the source material? (I have not read the comics)

It was a nice basis upon which a good computer game could be made. In fact, they curtailed some of the worse excesses of the comic.

But don't get me wrong, the game was still bogged down with their signature style - no puzzles (going around and looking at stuff isn't a puzzle) and crap QTE's masquerading as gameplay.

That and Tales From the Borderlands gave me some hope they could make something good, but you can't keep producing the exact same shit for over half a decade (if you're not making some sort of sports franchise) and expect the people to have the same positive reaction to it.
 

taxalot

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A company shutting down is always sad, but it is known to be often inevitable. There is absolutely no shame in that.

Treating your employees like shit and keeping them in the dark should not, however, even be a thing that is possible. I am _so_ glad that I live in a so-called socialist country. So much for "freedom".
I am not sad for Telltale, but still sorry for all these people. If there is any leisure industry in the world that absolutely needs the support of unions right now, it is the video game industry. This should never be allowed to fly easily.
 

Rahdulan

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But don't get me wrong, the game was still bogged down with their signature style - no puzzles (going around and looking at stuff isn't a puzzle) and crap QTE's masquerading as gameplay.

TWAU was a good game but I think the biggest problem also stems from what you said, it being a Telltale game - it's a detective game where you don't actually solve anything because you're experiencing a narrative and not actually resolving a mystery with your deduction skills. It's why I always recommend Discworld Noir to anyone who liked TWAU because it's kinda the other side of that same coin.
 
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I've never played a TT game but I understand the old school adventurer games' complaints. But one thing being overlooked is that TT probably served as a gateway for mainstream gamers to get into more retro style adventures. And I'll always feel movie games deserve a place, and I hope more are made in the future by someone else.
 

Mortmal

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So i was scammed of 22 euros , nice...I guess there's no hope on them finishing the last 3 episodes of walking dead.If the situation was that critical they certainly knew about it before.
Never a good news when a studio is closing, the guys in suits will probably conclude that adventure games is a genre not selling anymore and not worth producing.
 

Cross

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I've never played a TT game but I understand the old school adventurer games' complaints. But one thing being overlooked is that TT probably served as a gateway for mainstream gamers to get into more retro style adventures.
Why would it? Telltale was (initially) succesful because they borrowed the 'game' design and storytelling techniques of triple-A games, specifically QTE's and emotionally engaging cutscenes (peppered with mostly superficial dialogue choices), and therefore appealed to an audience that normally wouldn't play adventure games.
 
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Sizzle

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But one thing being overlooked is that TT probably served as a gateway for mainstream gamers to get into more retro style adventures.

It's not so much overlooked, more like never even brought up - since it doesn't make a lick of sense.

That would be like saying that sales of Wizardry IV have rocketed ever since BioWare started releasing Mass Effect.
 

Bocian

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it's a detective game where you don't actually solve anything because you're experiencing a narrative and not actually resolving a mystery with your deduction skills.

An example of "detective" part of the game (timestamped).
 

DeepOcean

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But this model hits the same problem as the other ones, which is that there's an immediate awe with game 1, but the awe is mostly gone by game 1 + n. Eventually, people would rather not play games on rails and have their interactions limited to picking which FMV plays next. Once the awe wears off, you're left with something that is simply less fun to play. But because the goal is always a "cinematic experience," you need the audiovisuals to be quite good, which is expensive. And to keep the awe alive, you need to keep one-upping those audiovisuals. The result is more buck for less bang, until eventually the cinematic genre disappears for a while. And then x years pass, and the soil is refreshed for a new period of awe-inspiring games to grow.
There is one thing to consider too, TellTale Games failed completely at creating games, think about it, what makes the experience of TellTale games any different than watching a tv series? A TV series has excellent actors with really strong performances and has the money to invest on really good screenwriting talent, something TellTales doesn't have and ever would have. They had a really aging engine, the characters had stiff facial animations, their writing never was that great and their whole schtick was the choice and consequence stuff, after The Walking Dead, people eventually came to realize that even that was a fraud and only an illusion.

You were buying low production values series with pretend gameplay that was just a waste of time and, the main attraction, the choice and consequence was just a fraud.
 

Infinitron

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There is one thing to consider too, TellTale Games failed completely at creating games, think about it, what makes the experience of TellTale games any different than watching a tv series? A TV series has excellent actors with really strong performances and has the money to invest on really good screenwriting talent, something TellTales doesn't have and ever would have. They had a really aging engine, the characters had stiff facial animations, their writing never was that great and their whole schtick was the choice and consequence stuff, after The Walking Dead, people eventually came to realize that even that was a fraud and only an illusion.

You were buying low production values series with pretend gameplay that was just a waste of time and, the main attraction, the choice and consequence was just a fraud.

Interesting to consider the possibility that the current "Golden Age of Television" is part of what killed Telltale - and perhaps other studios as well. You don't need video games to tell you weird and fantastic long-form genre stories anymore - HBO, Netflix, Showtime, etc are filling that role just fine.
 

Modron

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Feel kind of ambivalent about this news, I liked their darker narrative games like A Wolf Among Us and the Batman series even if I never bothered to finish the Walking Dead series.
 

taxalot

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Sooo...

TWD has at least another episode coming out, and yet it's unlikely to be completed.

One could say that at this very moment, it's walking, but also dead.
 

taxalot

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Feel kind of ambivalent about this news, I liked their darker narrative games like A Wolf Among Us and the Batman series even if I never bothered to finish the Walking Dead series.


Yeah it's alright they didn't bother finishing it either .
 

GrainWetski

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And nothing was lost. They promoted one of the most damaging gaming trends of the last decade, the interactive tv episode game with barely any gameplay involved beyond QTE's... fuck those guys and everything they represent.
Maybe I'm confusing you with somebody else, but aren't you the local console popamole trash? The complete and utter gamepad focus has done far more damage to gaming(well, certain genres of games that might as well be dead because of it) than a few shitty interactive movies.
 

mbv123

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Good news, they haven't made a decent game movie since TWD S1
 

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