Telltale Games is Closing - The Bear and Badger

Diluted Dante

Andy wrote:

Stopharage wrote:

I think that's a bit unfair but totally understand the perspective; the gameplay was poor, but the stories invariably weren't.

I know a lot of people share this opinion. But when people talk about the story-telling in their games, it’s one of those situstions where I feel like a lot of people are drinking a fucktonne of kool aid. I don’t see it. At all.

I remember listening to the Cane & Rinse folk wittering on about The Wolf Among Us, and describing the most laughably on-the-nose tripe as though it was special. I bought Guardians of the Galaxy, and I haven’t been back, after they sucked the fun out of it. Game of Thrones was insufferably poor. The Walking Dead transparent. They drained the life and soul out of other people’s IPs with dismaying consistency.

I’m really, really sorry for the individuals concerned. I’d be fucked for the rest of my life if that happened to me, and I imagine it’s orders of magnitude worse in the US.

But, on an utterly selfish, pathetically shallow level, I’m glad there won’t be any more of their shite on PS+.

Clementine will remember that.

Brooks

Gamedev seems pretty bad.

nick_md

Depends where you work, like every industry no doubt.

davyK

When the games get big so do the teams and the financial & marketing forces - and the impact one can have reduces.

Indie would push my buttons.

Vela

High risk, low security, anti-union, hit-driven market with concentration highest in high-cost centres?

I respect the patience of anyone who gives it a serious crack but those conditions are exploitative. No doubt the technical skills will translate well in many other fields, but creatives must have it particularly rough.

Nina

nick_md wrote:

Depends where you work, like every industry no doubt.

This, think B has been pretty lucky so far with both GG and RAD. Hasn't really done any crazy overtime. Maybe a couple of Saturdays total in 10 years, sometimes staying a bit later in the evening but we've had dinner together almost every night. People he has worked with have always been understanding when there were unexpected off days needed or whatever.

RAD of course isn't as great as GG when it comes to holiday days and firing people. But that's more America than the company. They seem to try (giving everyone an extra 10 days holiday when Lone Echo was released, birthday will always be a free day, studio closes between Christmas and NY so no one is expected to work then). I know there are people at RAD that do work Saturdays /weekends, but they seem to choose for it, no one is really forced to do it. (this is all afaik of course, it does seem very American to want to do more then the person sitting next to you, which seems to be something people are finally starting to realize isn't healthy).

But Telltale ehh, Twitter is full of posts saying they're looking to work with partners to at least finish The Walking Dead. No talk about getting severance pay for anyone. Some people counter that with saying Lionsgate dropped all their backing off Telltale without warning, leaving them with no money and why they had to decide to lay off almost everyone. Sounds like a hot mess.

Yossarian

Not read this yet, but The Verge has interviewed some ex-Telltale employees to see what went wrong.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/4/17934166/telltale-games-studio-closed-layoffs-end-the-walking-dead

Howdy, Stranger!

Categories