How Telltale Went Broke
How a reliance on investment funding, a fruitless formula, and leaks to the press precipitated one catastrophic week in Telltale's 14-year history.
Reliance on investment funding: 3:30
The internal adoption of The Walking Dead's "formula:" 9:09
Leaks to the press: 12:45
Massive thanks to those who chose to reach out, and for them making so many great games over the years.
Music by the Raddest, Daddest, Ace Waters:
/ @amiewaters
Productivity & "crunch time" studies:
wol.iza.org/up...
bmcpublichealt...
arxiv.org/pdf/...
BAFTA Awards interviews: • Story Winner in 2013: ...
Spike Awards interviews: • Video
The only damn footage I could find of the actual Spike awards speech: • The Walking Dead: Wins...
That IGN interview where that hilarious Warren Spector quote comes from: www.ign.com/ar...
Пікірлер: 4 700
The fact that firewatch was made by the people who left telltale makes me wonder how many more amazing talented people they hid in there
@snoookie456
5 жыл бұрын
oh shit, firewatch was a great game
@kinokochan
5 жыл бұрын
You see this a lot in the industry. Folks who love working together will want to work together again, so not only do you get people leaving together to start something new, others who remember them may want to join them down the road. Though you have to be extremely careful about not violating non-compete clauses in contracts. Normally, you aren't allowed to reach out to current employees of your former job directly for X number of months, but they are always welcome to reach out to you.
@aryore2411
5 жыл бұрын
@@enlighteneddoggo5803 It's not for everyone. The people who enjoy it did enjoy it a lot, which to me is a success
@danny90099
5 жыл бұрын
the walking simulation great ? The story not even that good compared to" life is strange "
@gabrielantunez7642
5 жыл бұрын
@@danny90099 life is strange is still a really bad game
It's amazing how they got Guardians of the Galaxy, which might be one of the most popular marvel movies, and turned into a game that nobody remembers it exists
@leonardbaker3252
5 жыл бұрын
Kishibe Rohan Daga kotowaru
@Esh4n.04
5 жыл бұрын
It was actually a good game thooo
@RickReasonnz
5 жыл бұрын
Gotta be honest, this video introduced me to the notion that it even exists.
@Tb55555
5 жыл бұрын
Kishibe Rohan I honestly enjoyed the game greatly.
@thatakwardlatinguy8773
5 жыл бұрын
The marketing for that was piss poor. I remember watching it first trailer after the game got released 😂
*Telltale shuts down* Netflix : It’s free real estate
@ernaljum3803
5 жыл бұрын
UpBeatz Gamz *_netflix adaptation_*
@xplosionslite6439
5 жыл бұрын
Jeff Bezos: Not if I have anything to say about it, and I do.
@pizzacrumbles
5 жыл бұрын
@@xplosionslite6439 because I am black hahahahahaha I you do I will say the n word
@bowlinbowlinbowlin
5 жыл бұрын
@Edwin Cheesecake I played the Netflix version of Minecraft: Story Mode, and it was ok. Just wish they kept the quick time events, without them the game felt lackluster.
@baccaismemebob2603
5 жыл бұрын
Skybound: hold my axe *buys TWD and releases the final 2 episodes and plans to make more content outside of Clem's story*
TellTale: makes basically the same game *Consumers will remember that*
@raunak509
4 жыл бұрын
But the games were good except some mainly wolf among us was best
@RageUnchained
4 жыл бұрын
@Crow the difference is EA Activision and Ubisoft have a formula that appeals to a wide audience, telltale didn't realize that their formula was very niche
@beedubree2550
4 жыл бұрын
*Consumers will not remember that
@fica1137
4 жыл бұрын
@Crow EA has dozen of franchises that aren't just the same game formula done for 7 years
@OSDisco
4 жыл бұрын
It doesn't work because we actually remembered it.
Looks like they pushed the wrong button in the quick time event
@poker8086
5 жыл бұрын
Oopsies
@saber-seathearn82
5 жыл бұрын
They pushed f instead of p
@oldnosoul4183
5 жыл бұрын
You have a furry PFP
@goldentoparican788
5 жыл бұрын
@@oldnosoul4183 You have a stupid dead unfunny meme PFP
@oldnosoul4183
5 жыл бұрын
@@goldentoparican788 it isn't a meme and never was it was a movement.
Telltale won't remember this
@mariokarter13
5 жыл бұрын
I'm reminded of a scene in the first season of The Walking Dead. A character has the signature "I will remember this," then 10 seconds later they're shot dead.
@R3GARnator
5 жыл бұрын
And in game of thrones, 30 seconds before they die.
@SwedginSanFrancisco
5 жыл бұрын
Yep, Lord Forrester, right? For me the game's audio chose to glitch out at that moment as well so for about 6 seconds you could only hear the Frey soldiers shouting "Kill, kill, kill, kill!" I remember thinking to myself "Yep, those 30 seconds right there are peak Telltale."
@InvertedWIng
5 жыл бұрын
And in those ten seconds, he remembered it VERY vividly!
@viewtiful1doubleokamihand253
5 жыл бұрын
And thank god. They were making trash.
You and 99% of players saw that coming.
@Huge-orge
3 жыл бұрын
Lol
@Crackawiz
3 жыл бұрын
Lol
@piano-topia9971
3 жыл бұрын
Lol
@christopherlowery3797
3 жыл бұрын
777
Their problem was that their games aren't very buyable. Most people would much rather just watch the story than buy it themselves
@KantiDono
5 жыл бұрын
If you can get the full experience of a game just by watching it, then it's not a game, it's a movie.
@KantiDono
5 жыл бұрын
@Fa Mulan And then realize that making all the 'right' choices resulted in the exact same outcome with barely a few lines of dialogue different to acknowledge it? Clementine Will Remember That. (And never mention it again.)
@rfmerrill
5 жыл бұрын
@@KantiDono I think whether that's true depends on what you consider "the full experience". I watch lets plays of JRPGs because I've found I just don't like most JRPG battle systems or minigames, but I do like their stories. However, other people *do* enjoy JRPG battle systems and minigames
@rfmerrill
5 жыл бұрын
So there are probably plenty of "walking simulators" or "interactive fiction" where there are some people who do get more out of playing them than watching someone play them, even if a lot of people don't.
@KantiDono
5 жыл бұрын
@@rfmerrill Sure. Not every game is going to be for everyone, and there's nothing wrong with that. Look at it this way: If KZread didn't exist, would you have bought all of those JRPGs you watched? Probably not from the sounds of it, because even if you were interested in the stories, the gameplay would have been too much of a slog for you to complete them yourself, right? Just because you watch a Let's Play doesn't mean that's a lost sale on the part of the developers.
So in short: telltale accidentally replicated, on a much smaller scale, the video game crash of the 80’s. Putting out the same product over and over again as a cash grab doesn’t work folks!
@killersalmon4359
5 жыл бұрын
Bingo. The problem is, I don't think a lot of people remember or even know about the crash of the 80's. Plus, unhealthy and unsustainable work environments just seem to perpetuate themselves, mainly due to machismo. And high turnover is bad because all that experience that worker accumulated has just walked out the door, never to return.
@RatusMax
5 жыл бұрын
Yet it works for call of duty...hmmm...
@anibalrodriguez2626
5 жыл бұрын
EA: Hold my beer
@Arcimbosco
5 жыл бұрын
The last TWD was shit. Maybe that helped.
@bluedragon8762
5 жыл бұрын
Making false promises will also get you cut by your target audience
"the employees will remember this"
@swift_sam
5 жыл бұрын
Management: "Oh, ok" (Fires everyone and gets new employees to bleed dry)
@avatareternal3204
5 жыл бұрын
NaZtRdAmUs And gamers will too.
@TheCookiezPlz
5 жыл бұрын
*Employees die ten minutes later* "All according to plan"
@doublespinkid2093
5 жыл бұрын
but this time it will matter
@RalphH007
5 жыл бұрын
And it will have no consequences at all.
To be honest I don’t feel bad for the company however I feel bad for the people who lost their jobs due to this companies poor decisions...
@ugurkaraarslan25
4 жыл бұрын
Nah, talented people always find jobs with ease. Also this might actually give some of the programmers to chase after their dreams.
@paolomagtuto4390
4 жыл бұрын
Uğur Karaarslan thats not always the case
@natebit7167
4 жыл бұрын
Then you are a smart and thoughtful person
@Keithustus
4 жыл бұрын
*company’s poor decisions
@ChangedNames
4 жыл бұрын
Uğur Karaarslan Talented people create things, greedy cooperations get involved, original creators get kicked out and replaced with lawyers, company bank money and leave. Rinse repeat and GG welcome to our “Advanced” society
R.I.P Wolf among us season 2
@JS-wp4gs
5 жыл бұрын
and nothing of value was lost
@gemmal2271
5 жыл бұрын
If only they spent time putting there effort into the wolf amoung season 2, putting more effort in the walking dead games they would still be here!
@YaowBucketHEAD
5 жыл бұрын
@@gemmal2271 nope. They'd still be gone. Even if they released Wolf Among Us 2, they'd still be financially fucked. Damn shame, I've been wanting to see what happens with Bigby Wolf for years dammit.
@gemmal2271
5 жыл бұрын
@@YaowBucketHEAD People maybe have respect them more if they put more effort into their games instead of getting licenses from popular franchises.
@mikeymillbank5173
5 жыл бұрын
@@JS-wp4gs it's a very good game wdym
As someone who works in the games industry, I can tell you that bosses know all about this but it is incredibly easy to replace us with eager and willing dopes.
@Roler42
5 жыл бұрын
That's the grim reality of every work field, period, no matter how many years of your life you pour into a business, you and every last member of your staff are expendable. Preety much why management, higher ups and corporates get away with all the abuse despite unions and many attempts to protect workers...
@SianaGearz
5 жыл бұрын
Oh there's a video I could give you on the topic, I'd love to really, but... How good is your German?
@calebfox782
5 жыл бұрын
Seeing one of my favorite KZreadrs on another one of my favorites? Heck yeah, man! :D Keep up the good work!
@ElDaumo
5 жыл бұрын
@@SianaGearz what Video would that be? Can you link it?
@SianaGearz
5 жыл бұрын
As far as i know links aren't allowed around these quarters, but treat yourself to "Die Feinde der Innovation - Prof. Dr. Gunter Dueck" somewhere on the tubes.
Basically, Telltale had a one-hit wonder and assumed that all they had to do was copy that one-hit wonder over and over again to achieve success. They're not the first group of people to fall into that trap.
@fizzpeakgamer1318
5 жыл бұрын
But tftb was amazing
@firstcooommment3675
5 жыл бұрын
The Wolf Among Us was another great game, really not a "One-hit Wonder" scenario.
@zingy1811
5 жыл бұрын
Might have been a great game and I agree with you on that but it wasn't that great when it came to profits. TWD earned several times what TWAU did
@taylorking460
5 жыл бұрын
I'm assuming you mean TWD game. That was only successful because everyone and their entire family was obsessed with the show at the time. All their games were horrible and hardly games if you ask me. Might as well read the comics, it would have been cheaper.
@pricelesspaladin352
5 жыл бұрын
@@taylorking460 a whole volume of comics would cost more than a telltale game. Just a few issues would cost about the same. And a movie costs, let's say, around $15 and lasts, let's say, an hour and a half. A full telltale game that lasts at least a few hours costs, on the Microsoft store, $15. You're going to tell me that for the time and the storytelling a telltale game isn't worth the money?
Why do i feel like everything that happened in the last 4-5 years happened just yesterday ? I know this is random but does anyone else have that ?
@barbarianjk2355
5 жыл бұрын
BxPanda7 I've felt the same. I think in my case it started since I became more focused on youtube, social media e tc. Now that I'm slowly getting away from it I feel time has expanded and is getting back to normal again. Weird uh? I mean I haven't even been able to complete a single game in years, and I'm not even married or have kids :P
@BxPanda7
5 жыл бұрын
@@barbarianjk2355 Interesting, i had people tell me it's because of growing older, but i kind of don't see how that would work and i feel like people would have noticed much sooner if that was the case, also when asking my parents they said it's only the last couple of years that feel this fast to them, everything that came before seemed pretty consistent to them. That lines up perfectly with what you said, maybe it's because of the incredible amount of information we get via the internet that we perceive time differently? But that kind of still leaves one problem, if more stuff is happening and we know about more than ever, then why do some events feel like they just happened even though we already had a multitude of other events happening since ?
@barbarianjk2355
5 жыл бұрын
@@BxPanda7 well, one more thing I can mention is that I haven't read any book in 2 years, and I used to read a lot! I even used to read the whole Silmarillion at least once a year (which is my favourite book). But back to what you said, I think that it may have the opposite effect: that having too many memories to work with (specially small, unimportant ones) can make your brain feel confused about time. Our mind doesn't work like a computer, it treats information in ways that are convenient for our biology, and it completely doesn't work like a computer where each piece has a different file size, or where you can see the files ordered by date and so on. I'm sure that if there aren't studies on this matter already, there will be some in the near future, but the best method I've found is to organize the things I follow, like and comment on, and stay mostly with both the relevant people and stuff in my life. It's even helping me with stress :)
@BxPanda7
5 жыл бұрын
@@barbarianjk2355 Interesting, i know memories of events are directly tied to language and our capacity to put things into words. It's not the same as places, faces, etc... In the case of events, their chronology, location and details are all remembered by telling yourself the story, generally with vague images that show key moments you remember. Most of it is literally a story that was put into words inside your mind, and every time you remember the story the exact words you used to describe the situation at the moments come back to you. Which means that the way you define every moment you live is so very important, as it literally becomes your life story in the form of memories. (I actually just figured this out while writing this comment :o) So knowing that, i think what's happening is that since we spend so much time gathering information, most of which is useless and forgotten about once it leaves our short term memory, and we barely give ourselves any downtime, our brain doesn't have much time to process everything that's happening. For instance, i remember that when i was a kid i had allot of "downtime" where i would just sit around and think about stuff, and during that time everything that happened recently was being revisited, and that i think gives us allot more perspective on what happened and when. Now compare this to nowadays, where i am constantly doing something, whatever it may be, i'm just always doing something, and i barely give myself the time to just sit around and think. And because of that, i think that when you do remember something that happened some time ago, but you didn't give yourself the time to think about it and process it further, you will remember it sort of as if it had just happened yesterday ! You sort of "resume where you left off" in your thought process ! Now this is just me theorizing stuff, but i think it makes sense and would perfectly explain why our sense of time is so completely distorted ?
@gemmal2271
5 жыл бұрын
yes I can remember vividly waiting for the twd season 2 episodes to come out and being so happy Kenny was alive. I'm so glad I'm not the only one that feels this way! I think the reason why is because i had been collecting and taking photos of my activites these past 2 years. Which makes them feel like yesterday.
Awwww poor TellTale, getting killed in a 2 minute flashback
@roarrrist
5 жыл бұрын
fucked up what they did to kenny
@asfmankey3672
5 жыл бұрын
I'll never forgive them for doing that to Kenny
@harnessedcomic4381
3 жыл бұрын
@@asfmankey3672 season 2 should’ve never happened there I said it
Days before they went bankrupt, the Vice President of Telltale, along with a whole team of recruiters came to our college, gave a whole 3 hour talk on storytelling and was doing a recruitment drive. It was on the Wednesday or Thursday right before they declared bankruptcy. Funny how most of them didn't really realize or were hiding it.
@GuyOnAChair
5 жыл бұрын
Anything interesting said?
@simonghoul3602
5 жыл бұрын
.
@jayit6851
5 жыл бұрын
The vice president certainly knew, and worse yet was he was trying to recruit people onto a failing company.
@JakeAustriaco
5 жыл бұрын
I'll be honest, I didn't attend it myself because I had no interest. I strongly dislike telltale and was laughing when I found out they were shut down. My roommate and good friend attended and met a few people to schedule interviews for an internship. Apparently they were going on and on about why they'd want to hire students "like us" from our university, because our art school emphasizes story and etc etc.
@JakeAustriaco
5 жыл бұрын
gyazo.com/ecd1ce479886d602d59b7c6a43812f32
Why couldn’t it be EA
@bryanenty8385
5 жыл бұрын
In an alternate universe
@oldmanjinkinsskyrim737
5 жыл бұрын
Do not fret, EA is also under fire.
@welltypedwitch
5 жыл бұрын
Because EA is a publisher and Telltale is a developer.
@user-wo2zd5im4y
5 жыл бұрын
@@welltypedwitch then why not dice
@welltypedwitch
5 жыл бұрын
@@user-wo2zd5im4y because Dice makes decent games, that people keep buying
The problem with the Walking Dead Series is that after the first season, people learned that the in-game choices don't really make a difference in the story. So there's no real reason for people to buy the game since they might as well just watch a Let's Play on KZread and consume the exact same content as the people who *did* buy the game... 😅
@greedyturtle5025
4 жыл бұрын
I gave up on playing the walking dead games after the walking dead 1 and 2,after that they announced twd 3 and it was awfull
@tyrannicfool2503
4 жыл бұрын
The game of thrones game also kind of made your choices matter, at least when it came to the ending
@TheKozzee
4 жыл бұрын
Idk I played thru s1 a few times and played thru s2 twice will say that there are little additions that make the game feel more alive unique and personal to the player.
@pian-0g445
4 жыл бұрын
The biggest problem was the fact there were sequels. Not that the story was bad and all, but for the type of game they were, to make compelling reason to get a sequel which mostly makes anything you did before invalid, most didn’t bother actually getting it. An idea they could’ve done is how for season 2, they just basically make a movie for it since the ending of that season was something very important and climatic, so having a set thing happen would be nice, instead of getting an ending and have that ending not even matter as the next season has mostly new cast and is a few years in the future.
@Calibree
4 жыл бұрын
i like telltale and their games and all. but quantic dreams did it better
The Walking Dead was released in 2012? Jesus I feel old.
@gemmal2271
5 жыл бұрын
same here wtf happened to the time?
@cavejohnson4306
5 жыл бұрын
Gemma L most people seem to forget 2016 was 3 years ago
@Joel-gu9vv
5 жыл бұрын
Ive been playing that game since I was...5 and I'm now 10...I think I have issues
@casucasueq4479
5 жыл бұрын
Hush grampa.
@measured.kadence
5 жыл бұрын
Yeah I remember the memes about the world ending and watching pewdiepie cry at the end of the game
He "works at Valve" because Valve BOUGHT Campo Santo
@TheProfessor529
4 жыл бұрын
And are basically sitting on them. I was so looking forward to 'Valley of Gods'.
@mixererunio1757
4 жыл бұрын
@@TheProfessor529 It's going to come out. One day
@woah5546
4 жыл бұрын
@@TheProfessor529 hey, valve has a flat command structure. It's likely Campo could be keeping quiet about something cool for valve. But I digress, I could be wrong
@JaelinBezel
4 жыл бұрын
Do they still have the receipt?
@satriadicky3732
4 жыл бұрын
I bought a valve yesterday
You're one of the only people that makes super informative and well researched videos about subjects like these instead of just jumping to conclusions to make sure you get your video out first
@MrAskmannen
5 жыл бұрын
Telltle games didnt just die ... IT WAS MURDERED?!?
@Jordan-Ramses
5 жыл бұрын
That 'leak' clause is crazy. What is to stop a company from putting a leak clause in and then leaking the information themselves and taking the money? That the company would accept such a deal shows how desperate they were.
@CountlessPWNZ
5 жыл бұрын
first video ive seen of this channel, this is an easy sub if that is the case.
@sethblue6555
5 жыл бұрын
Syrmor can’t forget footaferret
@ultimatecharge
5 жыл бұрын
Yes, one of them.
As a vg dev, I really like that you are putting a spotlight on a very real problem of the industry in general, not just telltalegames. I hope managements will get the memo one day...
@Lucas-dx4hz
5 жыл бұрын
Good beard dude
I read the title as "How telltale's water broke"
@topsdaily_productions
4 жыл бұрын
Well Telltale could be a girl
@estellaruiz3125
4 жыл бұрын
Happy birthday
A Super Bunnyhop notification is almost a jumpscare
@LoliconSamalik
5 жыл бұрын
spoooooooopy...
@Veto2090
5 жыл бұрын
No, he bluescreened himself, which is why you can see blue in his hair
@iWillWakeYouUp
5 жыл бұрын
A bunnyhop-scare?
Can we also agree that the episodic formula doesn't work, nobody like to play a game for 1.5h then wait 2 month to play 1h then repeat the cycle for almost half a year
@atomknight8361
5 жыл бұрын
CaptainYoul yeah its a work in progress. The answer isn't simply "it doesn't work" its how many episodes before people quit. Its a profitable model and keeps the dev companies more relevant since there are smaller gaps between game releases
@MaJuV
5 жыл бұрын
Yeah, it was popular for a while during that small window where Telltale had success. But I'm glad not that many games copied it, or that the ones that did didn't turn out to be a huge success (*cough*Hitman*cough*)
@Noder
5 жыл бұрын
+FireB4llz. Yeah, that's my strategy too, I'm pretty patient so it's easy to wait. +Mr Fred. You have a point. It needs to be used tactfully, you don't just chop a feature-length movie into pieces and release the bits over a year. That's essentially what most of these episodic games are doing.
@amcghie7
5 жыл бұрын
You are right, its just another annoying video game marketing ploy that's trying to make it copy television, to the expense of the consumer (I assume its better to build that company's capital through development also?). Frankly though, I would rather have episodic games than have the current fixture of AAA gamblethons of lootboxes and 'live services'. The industry as a whole is just out to scam the consumer out of money.
@madMARTYNmarsh1981
5 жыл бұрын
@@atomknight8361 it's obviously not a profitable model, it may be profitable for a while but if you're trying to build a lasting company it won't work, at east for games.
"The Wolf Among Us" was easily my favorite title
@Nemo7The7Pirate7
5 жыл бұрын
yeah, i didn't mind that my choices meant shit. The setting was so unique that i was there for the slideshow.
@amberbaum4079
5 жыл бұрын
@@Nemo7The7Pirate7 That was their only product I bought. Everything else from them looked so boring and stale. Not even their Borderlands titles got me interested and I really love Borderlands.
@DaSquareful
5 жыл бұрын
I think the premise was more interesting than the actual game.
@catchall2874
4 жыл бұрын
Well mine was Batman Enemy Within i legit completed the game on my phone and not on xbox
@rizkyanandita8227
4 жыл бұрын
The good thing that came out of it is, I'm interested to read Fables.
i love telltale but i have never played a Telltale game just watched them like a movie on youtube
@bbuggediffy
5 жыл бұрын
Try it!!!
@jojojojo-yi6wb
5 жыл бұрын
@@bbuggediffy no
@yarpen26
4 жыл бұрын
Played only two of their games in full, just one Batman episode on PS3 (God, what a piece of insulting garbage...), all the rest I watched on YT. Would still need to think before saying which ones I watched and which ones I played. Feels the same and most people on YT playthroughs make exactly the same choices you would make anyway (be kind to good guys, try romancing chicks etc.).
@chinii_eej
4 жыл бұрын
Alexis Eronmwon The only good game worth playing is Sam and Max titles. That’s it. Their humor is the only good feature and the point and click is nice.
@definitelynotyou7
4 жыл бұрын
Exactly the same here
Wait... Did you greenscreen yourself onto a slightly different shade of green?
@km099
5 жыл бұрын
It looks like he bluescreened himself in front of a greenscreen. Next level stuff
@VashdaCrash
5 жыл бұрын
Seriously, what is he doing with that? It's like an inside joke or something?
@anxdmeme4208
5 жыл бұрын
@@km099 Nah its a greenscreen. You can the green reflected in the table.
@blitzes3177
5 жыл бұрын
It might just be his wall? I’m not sure.
@narfelchen7712
5 жыл бұрын
Now i'm curious what could possibly look so bad that greenscreening it with blue halo hair and neo avantgarde green shadow casting seemed preferable.
"We're not making money with the product we make right now. We need more workers to produce more of this very product so we finally turn a profit." Wot.
@vitorgas1
5 жыл бұрын
relevant OOTS: www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0135.html
@SianaGearz
5 жыл бұрын
Sometimes, that works, when the company actually understands why the product isn't popular and how to get there. Their position was wrongly "it's just dumb luck, if we release things more often, we will have luck more often". It's not entirely wrong as long as you maintain a baseline high level of quality and appeal and are just a tiny bit short of a success, and painfully wrong when every release erodes customer trust by being slightly worse than the previous one.
@vitaliybakal7356
5 жыл бұрын
have you played starcraft
@SianaGearz
5 жыл бұрын
Because they were one of the 3 guys who started the company, that's how. Their CTO. The rest have departed with time, so that's who was left to take over the business operation as CEO. Granted you'll see some insanity on management level in almost every company. At the lowest level of the management, it's the guy who says "yes" to everything, even if he can't deliver, and then whips his subordinates into delivering a crooked version of what he promised - he has nothing to lose, he can't be demoted to engineer, he has to go higher or perish. On the second higher up, it's the one who says "no" to everything, that is outside his direct sphere of influence and interferes actively with the work of everyone in the whole company, to pump more money to the "yes" guys under him. On the very top, it's the guy who ignores everyone. Sounds stupid, but look around you, you'll find exactly that. They often work against their own better judgement, just because that's what they have to do to survive in each respective position or move higher up the ranks. Every level is marked by either wild gambling or shifting the blame to others, rather than working towards a common goal of better more competitive product, higher customer satisfaction, higher return on inevitable spending, etc. Every level is progressively more innovation averse than the one below, because people get fired for innovating wrong, they can always talk their way out of responsibility for choosing the path that can be described as "safe" once you completely discount customer response and competition. While the mechanism of failure is different with Telltale, you can see a lot of the same pattern, you can see the mode of failure that is very common, they underinnovated and overproduced, and devalued their brand in the process. In their own vague genre of story-driven gameplay-light titles, everyone else who took a stab at it consistently outdid them on innovation, quality, and customer response.
@VashdaCrash
5 жыл бұрын
So, they basically have to forget everything they learnt on their management degrees, right?
They bet a lot on just turning [Insert Popular Movie/Story] into a telltale game. They did it so often you know exactly what I mean when I say "turned into a telltale game"
@AvidEscaper
4 жыл бұрын
@Equity ok i would probably acutally pay for that just for the sake of it if telltale wasn't financially ruined
Detroit become human is what everybody thought Telltale’s games was like before the truth.
@nanand.r
4 жыл бұрын
lol yeah.. Imagine if twd series was like detroit become human...
@VertSecretStash
4 жыл бұрын
Lol imagine thinking Detroit become human is a good game. Watch Westworld and find out how much of a hack Quantic dreams is
@swaggerdagger8976
4 жыл бұрын
@@VertSecretStash I mean it's fine in my opinion but whatever you say I guess.
@Ev_box
4 жыл бұрын
Verte knight imagine thinking your opinion is better than others
@neverforgetwhoyouare7814
3 жыл бұрын
Well to be honest all the choice is matter in Detroit become human
This is the first time I’ve ever seen gameplay of the Guardians of the Galaxy game, so that must say a lot about the quality.
@SianaGearz
5 жыл бұрын
This one is not bad. I mean it has every single Telltale flaw in the book, but it ends up hurting it less and it manages to be humorous. But it's also a symptom of an issue because it's basically Tales from the Borderlands but 10 times less memorable.
@mjc0961
5 жыл бұрын
I'd rate GotG as their third worst game, with second being Michonne and first being Game of Thrones. They put Thanos in as the big villain, but kill him off halfway through the first episode, the the other 4 and a half episodes are spent basically jerking off. And all the characters are portrayed so poorly. They're all whiny brats, because the gimmick of the game is that oh no you gotta keep the team together! So no matter what you do, somebody is always whining about how you make terrible decisions. And it's completely pointless, because no matter who ends up leaving, you get them all back at the start of the final episode anyway. Imagine the end of Episode 4 of The Walking Dead Season 1, where it shows you who is going to stay with you and help you look for Clem in the final episode. Now imagine that instead of sticking with those choices in Episode 5, it just brought everyone back together so everyone helps you out anyway. That's Guardians of the Galaxy. Actually, the more I think about it, the more I wonder if maybe GotG is the worst. At least in Game of Thrones, I eventually found some fun in trying to pick choices that get as many of the Forresters killed as possible. Can't even do that in Guardians, those unlikable fuckers are always coming back. 🤔
@magicmanscott40k
5 жыл бұрын
My 5 yr old nephew got it. He only played it twice I think. He is only 5 tho. He prefers the lego games even though they all feel the same with some different mechanics here and there
@busterthebear6756
5 жыл бұрын
mjc0961 Halfway? Try in the first 20 minutes
@NathanCassidy721
5 жыл бұрын
Most people went reacted to its announcement the way most react to a new CoD game: With absolute apathy and no interest whatsoever. Which is what really killed TellTale in the end.
The problem is when you over saturate the market with your own games, you end up competing with yourself. It would be impossible to remain lucrative when your releases are forcing consumers to chose between your games.
@JohnnyEscopeta
5 жыл бұрын
It’s funny how a random KZread comment makes more sense than the entire head management of a company.
@ShadowWolfRising
5 жыл бұрын
Most CEOs and Heads of Companies don't really know what the fuck they are doing anymore.
@MrStronglime
5 жыл бұрын
Anymore? Nobody ever knew what the fuck they were doing, ever.
@NathanCassidy721
5 жыл бұрын
While I don't disagree, they weren't the only ones out there. They have competition out there that did what they did better, like Life is Strange and The Council. The main issue they had was they did so much of it that it burned the audience out on that kind of game and episodic games are ripe for abandonware.
@MrBassem95
5 жыл бұрын
@@NathanCassidy721 if they had normal competition it would still be better than making too many games because they didnt spend money on developing games
I'll always have a soft spot for Telltale because my friend was the voice actor for Ben Paul in 'The Walking Dead' It will never not be surreal to hear his voice in that game
@ceecie5776
4 жыл бұрын
Oh hell yeah I loved Ben.
@mikshin9825
3 жыл бұрын
Fascinating character really because he shows our own inhumanity when we fail to forgive his failures. When we think of Ben as a 'lost cause' and forget that he is just a teenager scared out of his mind. Great acting work by your friend.
@katbird2699
3 жыл бұрын
@@mikshin9825 That's very true. It's funny though, because he actually hates the character himself
@someasiankid6323
2 жыл бұрын
really ? that's crazy good thing I saved him
@andrewjames7438
2 жыл бұрын
@@katbird2699 no need to lie to seem cool to internet strangers. Being yourself, now that’s cool.
*t h a t w a s n ' t v e r y c a s h m o n e y o f y o u*
Love your research and reasonable approach on things. In the age of clickbait and "WHY X DIED AND THE INDUSTRY IS DOOMED" videos, I can always expect a reasoned and nuanced approach from you, George. Thank you!
@bordje123
5 жыл бұрын
GEORGE DIDN'T JUST DIE, HE WAS MURDERED
@pauldank3453
5 жыл бұрын
very interesting and very informative as he Always is i love this channel
@Kurai1
5 жыл бұрын
The thumbnail was a giant clickbait. 'How it went down in a week'. It wasn't some overnight Bankruptcy.
@sterlingbirks9101
5 жыл бұрын
TELLTALE WAS MURDERED
@Taylor-mb7sj
5 жыл бұрын
Rip X
*the economy will remember that
@Olodus
5 жыл бұрын
Fake advertisement. At the end none of the choices mattered at all! I chose to "hope for game developers to get together and fight for better employment contracts" but that didn't do anything at all. Really hope they acknowledge that one in the sequel atleast!
@Huddy52
5 жыл бұрын
I just called the chief he said this is it
@mario167100
5 жыл бұрын
And this time, it's actually remember it
"Video games require teams of handfuls, or tens, or hundreds of developers" *STARDEW VALLEY INTENSIFIES* edit: don't try to make games alone, its a lot of work according to Eric Barone.
@brandonbooze3599
5 жыл бұрын
Stardew valley is the shit
@maximillianlylat1589
5 жыл бұрын
Undertale too.
@maximillianlylat1589
5 жыл бұрын
@Erykaldo 120 its still an impressive game made by one person.
@surprisesdaedra2863
5 жыл бұрын
@@maximillianlylat1589 One person who worked on various things with other people. While he touched on everything, he did have a few other people helping him out.
@Shadowrose54321
5 жыл бұрын
I wouldn't call it bad. There's plenty of examples of bad games and its pushing it to simply just call it bad. Some opinions need more elaboration to be considered a good one.
Wait... it's been 6 years since TWD? Jesus
@blax140
4 жыл бұрын
Wait its been 4 billion years since the world was created Jesus
@blax140
4 жыл бұрын
Wait its been 50 years since the first pc was made Jesus
@te1327
4 жыл бұрын
@tek O it's been 2020 years since Jesus died Jesus
@squarehead6452
4 жыл бұрын
Wait this comment is 1 year old Jesus
@estellaruiz3125
4 жыл бұрын
SquareHead64 wait this reply is 2 hours old? Jesus.
Wow, Telltale contacted me looking to interview me a year ago, and I had to inform them that they were probably too far north for me to commute daily, and we both passed on each other. Looking at what happened to them now, that passed chance was probably a good thing.
@Cynicayke
5 жыл бұрын
Unless you were the guy who could've saved the whole company, man!
@gamereviewer104
5 жыл бұрын
GamerGod12 has joined the company
@DavidRomigJr
5 жыл бұрын
Nice sentiment, but, no, I am just a software engineer.
@smonkk8556
5 жыл бұрын
David Romig considering how soon to their shutdown they took on new people before suddenly throwing them into the wind, it was probably for the best. hopefully you got / will get a more stable job opportunity than that now though
@KingRumar
5 жыл бұрын
Probably?
How did Telltale go broke? Well, here is a video explaining some of the Telltale signs!
@ocularorb4021
5 жыл бұрын
thank you, very cool!
@TalosAcephalos
5 жыл бұрын
Oh god the puns
@a2l4y7
5 жыл бұрын
Go home comments, your drunk...
@williamgroves3134
5 жыл бұрын
You had to make the pun,didn't you?
@TF2Fan101
5 жыл бұрын
mraaronhd GOSH DARN IT, BARB!!!!!!!!!!!!
"...more people meant more time wasted training them on their unweildy proprietary engine..." THIS is the essence of why we have the old saying "Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later."
@Elenrai
Жыл бұрын
Imagine working in a kitchen. Now imagine struggling due to bad equipment. Your management hires two more cooks. Management surprised when staff continues to struggle because the oven cannot be turned on.....
@Master_Fortune
11 ай бұрын
"Too many cooks spoil the broth." This idiom fits Telltale games perfectly.
That happens to them for killing Lee.
@dillonyoung5502
4 жыл бұрын
Lee got did very dirty
Whats funny is that original walking dead game was only good cause its story. The engine and "formula", was never good, as all the criticisms for their later games existed in the first TWD game.
@aNerdNamedJames
5 жыл бұрын
Nah, the first Walking Dead game did actually change shit through C&C more than the other Telltale titles would (specifically with the variations of the Crawford segments), or just didn't have radical changes to its final end scene.
@tydendurler9574
5 жыл бұрын
@@aNerdNamedJames so? All of what you said goes out the window once you start Season 2. So he is totally correct by what he said.
@aNerdNamedJames
5 жыл бұрын
How does Season 2 factor in to a comment about "the first TWD game"?
@kombuchas4684
5 жыл бұрын
You can tell that the writers of the first walking dead left. The second and third seasons' writing and characters are so forgettable and bland.
@mjc0961
5 жыл бұрын
@Drizzt Do'urden TWD Season 2 has absolutely no bearing on how good Season 1 was. Oh no, Season 2 didn't have as many variations? Okay. Season 1 still did, so please stop talking out of your ass.
So essentially, Telltale should've done the following to stay alive: 1. Maintain the employee size or slightly increase it (+10 or so, but no more). 2. Work on an entirely new IP instead of just continuing the 'formula'. 3. Keep that 'formula' as a side-hustle for some quick plug'n'produce garbage while working on the new IP. 4. DON'T buy into other IPs, especially not expensive ones. 5. Spend the money that would've gone toward buying into other IPs on marketing the new IP instead. 6. Release the new IP before any more copypasta formula vomit. 7. Reap the rewards of the new IP. 8. Start funding another game (possibly under the last IP, possibly another new IP, based on success/critique). 9. Slightly increase employee size (+20 or so, but no more). 10. Continue being a successful, living game development studio.
@Nisshoku
5 жыл бұрын
Basically what BioWare did, after KOTOR, use their tech for a new original IP (Mass Effect), reap the rewards with game and merch. Too bad that didn't last either. :(
@hauntedshadowslegacy2826
5 жыл бұрын
@Dan Nguyen They may not grow things explosively, but they will grow things healthily. If management prefers an unhealthy explosion, management needs an overhaul. Steady growth and NOT squandering the riches of the initial explosion of profit is important. Unless they're willing to hire someone entirely different to help run the company, you're gonna have an under-qualified noob in the lead chair at a rapidly expanding company. S' like giving someone who completed a two-hour flight sim a 737. Step by step, or it's gonna go down in flames.
@adorenu1338
5 жыл бұрын
Or just be EA
@hauntedshadowslegacy2826
5 жыл бұрын
@@adorenu1338 (EA isn't the only living game company out there. No one should try to be EA, honestly. At least not current-gen EA.)
@adorenu1338
5 жыл бұрын
@@hauntedshadowslegacy2826 try to be pre 2000s EA then. Everything from EA was awesome back then if you were old enough back then.
R.I.P. Tales From The Borderlands season 2.
@granmastersword
4 жыл бұрын
There was going to be a season 2?
@wanderinwolf3804
4 жыл бұрын
@@granmastersword there was, yes....
@NeostormXLMAX
3 жыл бұрын
@@wanderinwolf3804 why? Borderlands 3 continued the story directly
Nice analysis. Thank you 🙏🏻 I really enjoyed TWD and Wolf Among Us - the rest I wasn't interested in
@rawvid9065
4 жыл бұрын
Didn't expect to see you here Karl rock. Anyway love your vlogs
@cal5750
4 жыл бұрын
Tales from the Borderlands is arguably their best one behind TWD. I recommend it if you want a laugh. The writing was great.
@gowthamkrishna1568
3 жыл бұрын
Well hello there Karl
@Reze000
3 жыл бұрын
minecraft story mode?
@unnamedgoon6196
3 жыл бұрын
Sorry, the Wolf what?
I played a lot of their games on KZread.
@husheddesert1725
5 жыл бұрын
Horrigan Frank I think that was an issue that damaged sales of games for Telltale
@ontologicallysteve7765
5 жыл бұрын
Yeah, if you toggle between the like and dislike button (while watching a gameplay video) it's basically the equivalent of playing a TellTale game. Never understood the hype for these "games". The fact the TWD was so chronically popular (when the game came out) fully explains the fluke of their short lived success.
@The_Custos
5 жыл бұрын
Ha!
@Possi_ball
5 жыл бұрын
Yap, this line sums up pretty much the whole company.
@ontologicallysteve7765
5 жыл бұрын
@Grym You hit the nail on the head in regard to the story telling aspect. That's so true.
Telltale went broke because of *ILLUSION OF CHOICE*
@sirprize275
5 жыл бұрын
I only played Batman and I really loved the story but when I replayed it and made different choices only to pretty much have the same things happen killed the game for me. The only thing I felt like I was actually changing was how much Harvey Dent got burned
@Jeramiahstool
5 жыл бұрын
You have no idea what you’re talking about
@FiresideBoomer
5 жыл бұрын
@@sirprize275 I noticed that when I played the walking dead, replaying the game changed some dialogue but thats about i. Then when season 2 came out all the choices from season one had even less effect. "Your choices matter" is pretty much the lie telltale sold games on
@JoshuaJadeMcCoskrie
5 жыл бұрын
@@sirprize275 I feel sorry for you. Nowdays I always watch someone play at least the first 10-30 minutes of gameplay (depending on the type of game and it's scope) and then watch another person play the same game to get an idea about the variation it'll bring to the table. With EVERY person playing a telltale game I always saw the same old watered down "choose your own adventure" scenario. Sometimes it's fun to jump into an unknown game but I'd rather not take the risk nowdays.
@ProductionJournal
5 жыл бұрын
You got that right Black Lung (Said in a Micah voice)
Telltale Games: The POP Figures of video games
I noped out of Telltale when I figured out that my choices in their games barely changed anything in the actual story
@podroznikzpustkowi4805
4 жыл бұрын
Same
We live in an economy.
@TribuneAquila
5 жыл бұрын
Or we think we live in an economy, goddamn ai putting caps on our natural recources in this digital world.
@JorgetePanete
5 жыл бұрын
@@TribuneAquila resources*
@levvy3006
5 жыл бұрын
A capitalist economy that doesn't work
@christianknuchel
5 жыл бұрын
Bronze : In an economy with decision makers who think short term, and little else.
@gregoriysharapov1936
5 жыл бұрын
@@christianknuchel Dammit. God help us.
the game industry seriously needs a shake up. My friend is a programmer at Ubisoft and he tells me about the long work weeks near launch sleeping at his workstation and more he is glad his job is stable as he knows other studios like EA and others dump people after a project quite often. He says he wishes he did not have to crunch or work the long hours at times. And sometimes the higher ups demands are unreasonable like with Assassins creed unity it was shipped earlier than the team wanted due to that it was a mess and still is not exactly great. Like looking at rockstar atm i am excited to play red dead 2 but at the same time i worry and feel bad that people worked themselves to near breaking point to ship this game. For me i think programmers artists and more game devs etc need to unionize and demand better working conditions job security and bonuses considering how much money the ceo and companies make off these games.
@jenniw9999
5 жыл бұрын
*YES*
@lordofentropy
5 жыл бұрын
Heh, this is why whenever I see all these kids saying "I want to be a game developer, it would be so awesome" I'm like "no you don't." I've worked in software for about 20 years and even in applications, back-end systems, and more "traditional" development shops, it can be a brutal crunch. Game development is notoriously worse with tighter budgets, immovable deadlines "has to be out for Xmas season and there's no way we're delaying until Xmas next year", marketing having way too much say in the development design, and the "do it for the passion of games" attitude that pervades management. As a life long gamer it sounds awesome, but in the industry, games development is known as pretty much the shittiest job out there. Of course there are always exceptions and there may be a decent shop here and there, but for the most part, stay away from game development.
@havcola6983
5 жыл бұрын
lordofentropy Yeah, the video games industry is a horrible mashup of software development and the entertainment industry. It has gotten better than it used to be, but it's a far cry from being a nice industry to work in.
@BrokenGodEnt
5 жыл бұрын
@@lordofentropy I coded for a small mobile game "company" in highschool, if you can even call them that. Even doing simple games is more difficult than I think most people understand. I couldn't imagine working on any of these huge projects like Fallout, Red Dead, Spider-Man, God of War, etc. That must be unimaginable stress.
@havcola6983
5 жыл бұрын
This is unfortunately not something that is just happening in the US, in large part since it's a global industry. You'll find the same kinds of stories everywhere, even in countries that are pretty keen on worker protection.
One of the things I love about Nintendo is that when they've made insufficient progress at the time of rapidly approaching release window, they don't push employees harder or sacrifice product quality. Their CEO makes a video personally apologizing to fans for the delay and promises to ship the game only when it's ready, thanking them for their patience. The CEO will even take pay cuts to be able to pay employees. And the wait is always worth it. It's just too bad they only adopt that strategy for their main IPs and not their spin-off/side titles (like Paper Mario).
@benjamincooper358
4 жыл бұрын
On the other hand, I don't think the Game Freak developers get to see their families unless there's a new Pokemon game every year around the Christmas season.
@autumn_breeze616
4 жыл бұрын
@@benjamincooper358 i feel like game freak developers are bred in house and live, work, and die in the office, only seeing the light of day for their scheduled "Vitamin D Break" every day and at the end of their shift they all huddle in the basement for warmth. That is until the morning bell sounds 30 mins later and they have to get up and do it all over again.
@lukasbjornendermann9944
3 жыл бұрын
@@autumn_breeze616 sounds like a black mirror episode
damn when you showed that 300 person staff picture I noticed my city’s civic center in the background. Looked it up and yup, turns out they’re based in my hometown, which I never even knew. Still not a fan of them.
Watch well researched video. Read youtube comments: "No they went bankrupt because I didn't enjoy playing their games". Thanks YT commenters.
@ineednochannelyoutube5384
5 жыл бұрын
Its sort of true though. Their foemula wore out.
@majabuu
5 жыл бұрын
@@ineednochannelyoutube5384 I totally agree. But I'm talking about people who said they went bankrupt because that youtube commenter and his friends do not like these types of games. That's like saying diablo 3 isnt doing well because I dont like arpgs.
@nanika2566
5 жыл бұрын
Ahh, KZread comments, that place where I can feel smarter than I am (^^;;;
@Somocho
4 жыл бұрын
I liked game of thrones. I thought it was a pretty good game but thats just me
@Delta_2209
4 жыл бұрын
The youtube comments usually are like the subreddits that no one knows
Apart from the real journalism in 2018, I love the little background gag where you clearly used a bluescreen just to chroma key it to a different color of screen.
@citrusblast4372
5 жыл бұрын
Literally and figuratively a background gag
@x3n068
5 жыл бұрын
It’s a green screen. You can see the green on the reflection of the table
@l4nd3r
5 жыл бұрын
It's blue, you can see the blue screen on his head.
@liamburke4406
5 жыл бұрын
@@x3n068 at 11:49 you can see blue screen flash around him
Wow... it is refreshing to see actual journalism on a youtube channel. I'm subscribed to a lot of channels but it is mostly subjective criticism and opinions. Well done!
So, it's either you evolve or dissolve.....If they had their own innovative IPs, took some risk with gameplay, and perhaps just concentrated on TWD & The Wolf Amongst Us, then they would be fine....
@garbagereviews3236
5 жыл бұрын
It's more complicated than that
@DarshD
5 жыл бұрын
@@garbagereviews3236 Yes, I agree..... In these times... Innovation alone cannot guarantee success. Planning, strategy and delivering what is demanded can help. I also hear that there were some employee problem too... Very uncertain times indeed.
@TheProfessor529
4 жыл бұрын
Yeah, the closest they got to originals was licensing out indie comics from the folks in their art team ('Sam & Max', 'Puzzle Agent').
@granmastersword
4 жыл бұрын
@@DarshD They could have focused on their best IPs and try making small changes to improve the quality and freshness rather than going on the ideal that selling on quantity is the better choice
I have a teacher that work at Telltale for the earlier 10 years. He talked to us about how they were very explicit about the "golden formula" they had found and had "streamlined" it for the production and multiple episodes at a time. This was around the time Telltale started promising multiple seasons at a time and, as things always go, the execs were muddling up the production too much. So a 3 episode cyclical dev cycle ended up a 2.5 episode one, then a 1.5 episode one, then barely a single episode. He also had major complaints about the engine which goes without saying and wasn't afraid to say the company was not managed well. One last note of interest was a popular tweet that went around from one of the devs that said "Dont work unpaid overtime, companies dont care about you and are only concerned about their product" and unsuprisingly he sympathized with the sentiment. Anyways, awesome video as always!
Warren Spector "the guy who made Deus Ex" said: "for 1 person to get credit for making a game is ridiculous." whoops.
@winterflan
5 жыл бұрын
That's the joke.
@CuteLittleLily
5 жыл бұрын
Cough in Kojima
@JustOneGuy
5 жыл бұрын
by kojima, with kojima
@voldlifilm
5 жыл бұрын
Extra Credits made the exact same joke. It's a good joke. Everybody laughs. Curtains.
@HaohmaruHL
5 жыл бұрын
Grant Parker especially funny considering all deus ex games sucked
Tbh batman season 2 seemed like telltale finally going in the right direction. Then they broke halfway through the walking dead the final season.....
Game Companies: **going broke** Square Enix: **holds all final fantsay games and laughs in japanese**
@granmastersword
4 жыл бұрын
When SE almost went bankrupt twice and were able to save themselves triumphantly and get back on top (the first Final Fantasy game and FFXIV: A Realm Reborn)
@prefersdocile9688
4 жыл бұрын
@@granmastersword yes that is what the joke is about
@asikaltube9882
3 жыл бұрын
... the only thing i hv left from SE .. is sleeping dogs...
That is some fine investigative journalism right there.
Why telltale actually went bankrupt. You have 2 important choices, this decision matters. Option A gives result 1 Option B gives result 1 Oh no you got result 1 you're a terrible person I bet you feel bad, you bad you guy.
@turtleanton6539
5 жыл бұрын
Yeah this and deleting saves
@logicaltips4107
5 жыл бұрын
Worst part is when what you pick isn't what the character does.
@AtlisDe
5 жыл бұрын
yea, this was my core issue with the games. I've had so many people tell me that these games have multiple outcomes and endings, you get to choose what happens. At first glance it might seem that way, until you see other peoples play throughs. Game of thrones one is basically picking which characters die, that is it. everything is the same. Illusion of choice.
@JorgetePanete
5 жыл бұрын
you bad you guy????
@JorgetePanete
5 жыл бұрын
@@turtleanton6539 Yeah,*
Even though it was their less profitable period, I miss Telltale's older, more lighthearted games. Of the newer ones, I think only Tales from the Borderlands tapped into that style.
@highadmiraljt5853
4 жыл бұрын
Steely And I’m pretty sure tftb was made like that due to borderlands humor, and less that they wanted to go back to that style
@rizkyanandita8227
4 жыл бұрын
Poker at the Inventory is a good game to play now and then.
@backlogbuddies
4 жыл бұрын
Everyone said that but I hate borderlands. So I never bought it
@granmastersword
4 жыл бұрын
@@backlogbuddies If the game isn't your cup of tea, then that's understandable. Especially with the first entry
@backlogbuddies
4 жыл бұрын
@@granmastersword yeah but it also shows how a bad license can affect what's supposed to be a good game. Sword art online fatal bullet is a fun game but the sao part makes me not enjoy it. Because by the time sao gets introduced it becomes the main focus and kills the story I don't like bl1&2 or the writing style in any of the games. Tt tends to emulate the writing styles.
With telltale shutting down, now we won't be getting TWAU s2 :((
@SonofKalas22
4 жыл бұрын
Good thing it already exists. It's called fables.
@theworldoverheavan560
4 жыл бұрын
@@SonofKalas22 what? a short story?
@SonofKalas22
4 жыл бұрын
@@theworldoverheavan560 it's based on a comic series. It's a prequel
@ArcherDrake287
4 жыл бұрын
Have some Faith. LCG Entertainment, then company that bought Telltale, just said they are announcing a big game this year, and it will be big for Telltale fans. The Telltale FB page just teased a photo of Bigby Wolf back in September so, you can guess what's next, right?
@yusukeniggameshi
4 жыл бұрын
TWAU s2.... was announced!!!
I still can't understand the warped mindsets of people who aren't rich CEO's and might be overworked and underappreciated employees themselves condemning unions as a bad thing. NO other industry is able to get away with half of what the AAA game industry gets away with and unions are one of the reasons why. What's so wrong about holding companies accountable for mistreating their workers?
@vitorgas1
5 жыл бұрын
it's easier to outsource digital jobs that to outsource jobs that require some phisicality in that sense someone who works modelling houses in the next assassins creed or GTA is in a much more fragile position than someone who is building houses IRL, one can simply stsrt hiring cheap labour from Brazil or Eastern Europe
@Crowbar
5 жыл бұрын
in reality though this is mostly USA's employee laws, which are incredibly shitty compared to most european countries.
@Farore36
5 жыл бұрын
Industrial construction is even worse in America.
@Ralathar44
5 жыл бұрын
@ Vitorgas1 Outsourced country quality is typically lower. Even in country outsourcing takes a quality/time hit because of the limitations. Outsorucing does not come without it's own associated costs...
@Lyoko1309
5 жыл бұрын
Because unions are for commies, obviously. You don't want to be a commie, do you? - Rich idiot who's forgotten how hard he struggled to get there
I was complaining for years about the game sins in telltale titles that were always kept. I didn't mind that they sticked to a single formula but not improving that formula at all was just lazy. Simple things like unskippable cutscenes, unskippable spoilers for next episodes, etc.. Even when they made improvements like dividing episodes into chapters they actually dropped that and reverted back. Hearing about the management I can actually imagine a CEO or some head designer going like "Chapters? We didn't have chapters in walking dead 1. Delete that useful and convenient feature right now!"
@jaymounes9473
5 жыл бұрын
That's what I was thinking. You had the rights to the WALK DEAD, why didn't they do more with that?????
@turtleanton6539
5 жыл бұрын
@@jaymounes9473 lazy or/and stupid
@Kalenz1234
5 жыл бұрын
@Crow Telltale went down because idiots like you worked there.
@BuzzabeelYT
5 жыл бұрын
@Crow A Telltale game has no replayability. What if you buy into the whole 'choices matter' aspect and want to play the game over again with different choices to see if you get a different ending? Who is going to do that when you have to sit through all the unchanging cutscenes, and the 'next time such and such will happen' segments? A Telltale game can only be played once, then forgotten about.
God dam I really wanted tales from borderlands 2
jesus your videos are so well-researched and high-quality. you rock
This video should be titled “best example of everything wrong with the video game industry”
It's ironic Taletell had a Borderlands license. A franchise that it's 1st game was raw, brown, full of potential, etc. And then it's 2nds game was amazing, colorful, fully realized. Point is Taletell screwed its self by not innovating and pushing the status quo.
@TrustTheShooters
5 жыл бұрын
@Jay M cool story bro
These journalism pieces you put out week after week are so entertaining and so informative, well written and edited that I find myself re-watching them over and over, as I would a good movie or a favorite tale. Congratulations for outstanding skills Super Bunnyhop, and for taking KZread game journalism to a respectable and reliable level. Well done, sir.
Another huge thing that doomed them was game streaming, these games are perfect watch games rather than play games.
@14TND88
4 жыл бұрын
Exactly, even as a trophy hunter I can barely push through these games. Why finish Minecraft story mode when I’ve already seen the ending. The only one I’d actually play is Batman, because batman is fucking cool.
@eamonndeane587
4 жыл бұрын
@@14TND88 I would have liked to see Telltale do a Superman game.
@14TND88
4 жыл бұрын
Eamonn Deane that would be great
@eamonndeane587
4 жыл бұрын
@@14TND88 I feel the Overpowered nature of Telltale Games' combat scenes would have worked well with the Man of Steel and with the choice based nature of the main gameplay fits with the character's struggle on either how much he should help people.....
@nanand.r
4 жыл бұрын
The game for content creator lol
TellTale is essentially a warning to companies and consumers about what’s gonna happen if you try and base your entire business strategy around a “formula”. Rather than, oh I don’t know, something different with every iteration of your product. A lesson nobody is gonna remember or learn anytime soon.
@Shaeress
5 жыл бұрын
I think formulas work for some games. In particular I'd say that some multiplayer games have been all about perfecting a formula, where every iteration is just a very slight improvement on the established way of doing things. For story games I also think there can be formulas (that can, and should, be expanded and improved) but TellTale didn't have a great formula. It had some significant flaws, there were little to no improvements on it and there were some very important pieces missing. We've seen formulas reign supreme in genres for many years at a time, like how both point n' click, FPS and third person action adventures have all been very formulaic yet the dominant forms of storytelling in videogames. Doom established a formula that reigned for several years, then later the MMS formulas, point and click have had several standard models that have been followed almost dogmatically at times, platformers have been equally dogmatic at times and so on and so on. The thing is that even at the most dogmatic of times all of those genres have admitted that every game needs a Thing; a twist on the standard formula. TellTale thought that that twist could just be a new setting and decent writing, I guess.
@FromPlsNerf
5 жыл бұрын
Dark Souls best formula
@MasterXenin
5 жыл бұрын
I'm on my 5th Souls game and I'm very thirsty for more of the same!
@NathanCassidy721
5 жыл бұрын
I agree that having a "formula" that works is not necessarily an negative all the time. As a Pokemon and Zelda fan, having something familiar and fun is welcome. Especially when they are willing to shake things up. BUT this is the "AAA" gaming industry we're talking about here. For every "Dark Souls", there are triple the amount of "Assassin's Creed" games. For every "Metal Gear Solid", there are quadruple the amount of "Call of Duty" wannabes. The lesson TellTale tells us here is to not rest on your damn laurels just because you found something that works.
@dickcheesehead9714
5 жыл бұрын
Getting woke isn't helping either.
"History won't remember this (because, like the choices in the games, nothing they made really matters)"
@OriginalKasym
5 жыл бұрын
William Poole Eh. It's good to know so corporations (both gaming and non gaming) won't be an idiot and do the same thing.
@traplover6357
5 жыл бұрын
@@OriginalKasym based on EA and Ubisoft's output, investors are out of touch with the gaming consumers.
@zaarongaming8174
5 жыл бұрын
Nah, history remembers some really unimportant stuff.
"doing is unproductive" - Max CEO
I've been playing too much multiplayer games and became burnt out on them. So the walking dead game was a nice change of pace for me. But all the other telltale games look boring and seem to be a waste of time.
The reason you don't get the pre holiday strike in game development as you do in other fields is because games can cut corners and still be "functional", and invariably sell well. If your makeup artist goes on strike in a film, you are out an entire character. If nobody is there to operate a camera, you are out the camera. A game can be made essentially finished without really needing finishing touches. Once the engine is made it's not like the devs can take that with them, for example. Basically what I'm saying is that game dev teams are going to have a hard time going on strike because asshole companies can and WILL ship unfinished games if it means protecting their profits.
@dugpet2916
5 жыл бұрын
True
@VivaToddVegas
5 жыл бұрын
If the programmers strike, everything stops.
@verybarebones
5 жыл бұрын
But they'll lose said profits if there's also a consumer boycott, it's worked before. The only ones winning this game are the companies, so everyone who isn't a company should step up.
@christianknuchel
5 жыл бұрын
@@verybarebones There's always been an EA boycott upheld for various time frames by various people. It's never gotten anywhere.
@verybarebones
5 жыл бұрын
@@christianknuchel amp.businessinsider.com/star-wars-battlefront-2-drops-loot-boxes-2018-3 The problem is that usually people think "talking shit about it on the internet while spending money in a game" Is boycott. You have to hit them in the wallet.
Heh. Telltale was like the Funko Pop of vidyagames. Snap up every IP in sight and pump out the same product.
@MrGhosta5
5 жыл бұрын
funko pop puts out some pretty good quality figures for a not very high price. The detail work on the bob ross figure is amazing. they perfectly recreated bob's painting on a 1 square centimeter canvas.
@ThatBum42
5 жыл бұрын
Okay. But _personally_ I find Funkos pretty fugly, and there's alternatives out there like Nendoroids or Figmas.
@MattKendell
5 жыл бұрын
You're then missing out on the "not very high price" factor, sadly.
@theweredragon9887
5 жыл бұрын
Can we not fight and just say Ea is worse?
@WarlordShinkouhyou
5 жыл бұрын
@@ThatBum42 total agreement. Funkos are hideous. It irritates me that they have their fingers in every IP because I want better figures than what they offer, but they often end up being the only figure available of more obscure characters.
"disappointing Back to the Future game..." Now, wait a minute here. Back to the Future was awesome! The gameplay was pretty much like The Walking Dead, but the story is actually good and compelling. A little douchy at the end, but at the same time pretty touching. Also, it's great BACK TO THE FUTURE game. Aside from some questionable decisions like how it considers last BttF film not canon (I guess...)... Still, the spirit of those movies is here
@ledzeppelinfan1001
4 жыл бұрын
Back to the Future is shit. Take off the nostalgia glasses.
@estellaruiz3125
4 жыл бұрын
Ledzeppelinfan1001 so how is back to the future bad then?
@Manuel-ek2cf
4 жыл бұрын
@@ledzeppelinfan1001 the game right?
@sleepingonyourroof
4 жыл бұрын
Ledzeppelinfan1001 i was born in the 2000s a like it to each there own
@slimymeteor
4 жыл бұрын
I love the Back to the Future game. Still loved it after a recent revisit. To me it feels like the Back to the Future 4 story that we never got.
And people are still sleeping on Tales from the Borderlands.
@fellowtemplar5679
5 жыл бұрын
It is a great game.
@Alex_IHateHandles
5 жыл бұрын
Fellow Templar Bro
@pareesgillard
5 жыл бұрын
@@fellowtemplar5679 uh...
@Miro_1325
5 жыл бұрын
It’s being canonically continued in Borderlands 3
@SellingSouls
5 жыл бұрын
It's a great "game". I loved the story.
Calling it "Interactive" story feels more appropriate than "game", but whatever.
@gregoriysharapov1936
5 жыл бұрын
Agreed.
@ineednochannelyoutube5384
5 жыл бұрын
Choose Your Own Adventure, or Visual Novel are the best descriptions.
@leonardodominguezlobos2769
5 жыл бұрын
@@ineednochannelyoutube5384 I think visual novel is more of an adaptation of a pre-existent story in which you cannot choose the way it plays out, and I would not use the word adventure since the ways of interaction are very limited, that is hardly an adventure. Interactive novel maybe....?
@ineednochannelyoutube5384
5 жыл бұрын
+Leonardo Domínguez Lobos Visual novel is a genre of game most prevalent in japan, with an explicit focus on branching storyline and multiple endings. Chose your own adventure is the game given to the late sixties paperbacks in the vein of 'Fighting Fantasy'. The firsttext adventures explicitly attempted to digitalise these.
@leonardodominguezlobos2769
5 жыл бұрын
@@ineednochannelyoutube5384 Visual novel is too broad of a concept to define this very specific type of product (not a fan of these by the way), hell, even films are visual novels to some extent. I would still use other name to categorize them, like Interactive stories.
why did you greenscreen yourself to appear as though you are sitting in front of a greenscreen?
@mifphilip
5 жыл бұрын
it is a bluescreen. but still why?
@AdobadoFantastico
5 жыл бұрын
Want green. Have blue. Make do.
@niccy266
5 жыл бұрын
l,mao
@falseshepherd-490
5 жыл бұрын
yeah, use colors everyone else uses. don't be unique
@jamesp5644
5 жыл бұрын
@@falseshepherd-490 you're missing the point. Why use a blue screen to change the background to a solid color. That's just extra editing time, and in this case it was wasted time because it's not done very well. The video and the content is all good, but the blue screen looks bad, it would be better to just film in front of a wall in your house than go through the effort of doing blue screen effects
When you make a decision and you see the prompt saying “this choice will effect the future” but think nothing of it
11:51 okay, is that a green screen, are you breaking reality or is the beer hitting me harder than normal
Thank you for going into how this all happened, there's plenty of people who want to make videos saying, "this is what happened", without actually saying anything new about what happened.
Upper management thought that Minecraft Story Mode should have been rated M, it's pretty obvious why they went broke.
@wizzzer1337
5 жыл бұрын
wait..... WHAT?
@Mrdaimion
5 жыл бұрын
the article saying it was originally rated M was a typo, it was actually originally going to be rated T because of some dick jokes. still a dumb decision, but not nearly that catastrophic
@FrightNFight
5 жыл бұрын
Racist Minecraft creeper
@AntiVectorTV
5 жыл бұрын
Rated M for Minecraft, duh.
@shukterhousejive
5 жыл бұрын
Ah, I guess that explains the part in episode 3 where Steve reaches for the officer's service weapon and then it fades to black
The gameplay of the walking dead never interested me. So when all their games started to follow that mold it made it so I wasn't interested in any of their games
6:39 you can't fool me. Even if it's background music, I will always recognize red soil wetlands.
Didnt know that they did a guardians of the galaxy game
@troodon1096
5 жыл бұрын
Nor did a lot of other people. Why it didn't sell well.
@AAhmou
5 жыл бұрын
I knew it... It just sucked.
@jroc3080
5 жыл бұрын
this was what I think their biggest problem was. Their marketing sucked.
@deadschooled
5 жыл бұрын
It's bad ass
@CaptainCocaine
5 жыл бұрын
@@jroc3080 Their "games" sucked, too.
It's very telling how one of telltale's best games post TWD:S1 was Tales from the Borderlands. Telltale's strongest trait pre-TWD was their comedy. Strong Bad, Sam and Max, Poker Night at the Inventory. After TWD they felt like they had to make everything out to be serious and dramatic which worked for TWD but that only worked because of the writers they had at the time. I feel like TTG should've tried to balance out their serious games with more lighthearted comedic adventures. Of course Hindsight is 20/20 and there was a lot of things they should've done differently but seeing how strong Borderlands was really makes me wish for more comedic TellTale games. (also rip the dream of Poker Night at the Inventory 3 starring Lee and Bigby.)
NDAs are a huge deal in… well, business generally. you Do Not break them. In the games industry I'm sure it's particularly intense because of the buzz/hype cycle thing.
I loved every telltale game. They were so fun and took you on a ride
TL:DW: properly manage your staff and projects, don't rely on other people's IPs, and make sure your games are on a more sustainable level of quality instead of a big spike that drops off pretty far pretty quick.
@sofija1996
5 жыл бұрын
Also don't rely on heavily outdated software that slows you down and don't repeat a flawed formula over and over again in spite of constant negative feedback.
@jenniferlunberg1471
5 жыл бұрын
@@sofija1996 The formula could have worked - the problem was the missing variety. Common complaint on some of these games was the "doesn't feel like it mattered"-choices for ex. More diverse paths, more creativity in these (even spanning multiple episodes) could have saved them for a while. I guess it would have been expensive, but pull it off successfully and you bet you can use that expertise for future games. Create the unexpected.
@Iritis-
5 жыл бұрын
They really shouldn't have been grabbing those IPs unless the IP holders were going to front most of the dev costs under contract. Companies like Quantic Dream, Supermassive Games, & DontNod have been skirting around this issue by making original IP and working with partners that cover a lion share of the development costs.
Tales from the Borderlands is the unsung gem of TellTale Games.
@jackmaster3134
5 жыл бұрын
Telltales name being on a borderlands title is why I never played I think the borderlands devs and writers are far better I should give it a shot but I hate telltale but love borderlands so conflicted I am
@ShadowWolfRising
5 жыл бұрын
Indeed It also makes me think they should have done more comedic in tone games.
@fillosof66689
5 жыл бұрын
ShadowWolfRising is Wolf Among Us more comedic or dramatic?
@RossFixxxed
5 жыл бұрын
I will name my first born Loader Bot
@freggittlegamint2830
5 жыл бұрын
There is no good Telltale game because they are not games.
Seeing this just reminds me how badly the video gams industry needs strong unions, life for devs would be so much easier
@redactedredacted658
4 жыл бұрын
VerumRex how would that help the employees? unionising means its harder for bosses to exploit their workers, ur point of not doing politics literally wouldnt help in the slightest "just make a good game" yeah bc its that easy
@chrissmith3587
4 жыл бұрын
[REDACTED] [REDACTED] not necessarily some unions, especially the militant ones who treat management as the enemy, can just cause trouble with their politics preventing any meaningful reforms to the industry, the best case were the coal miners unions in Britain. While a devs union probably won’t get that bad (or get soviet backing), strong unions aren’t perfect. Though a union is usually a good idea to prevent exploitation, it can’t just be managers bad
@Medrin
4 жыл бұрын
@@chrissmith3587 the managers are literally your enemies and exist to exploit your labor dude.
@chrissmith3587
4 жыл бұрын
@@Medrin managers are necessary in order for a business to survive, business brings in money which is necessary for normal people to survive.
@Medrin
4 жыл бұрын
@@chrissmith3587 to be very clear: when you negotiate for better working conditions, it is the managers job to fight you. if you don't have a union and work to organize organize one, it is their job to keep you from succeeding. they are by definition the opposition in a struggle for dignity.
Unfortunately ive never liked ANY of their newer interactive games. Choices u make dont mean shit which ruins the whole point of a choice based game to me. I know David Cage is a mixed bag but his games make far more of an impact on your choices and have many outcomes which I respect.
@14TND88
4 жыл бұрын
Detroit become human is a perfect example of meaningful choices, that game has over 40 endings, most being drastically different.