{"id":146,"date":"2021-02-22T00:10:03","date_gmt":"2021-02-22T00:10:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/?p=146"},"modified":"2021-02-22T00:10:03","modified_gmt":"2021-02-22T00:10:03","slug":"the-end-is-nigh-because-telltale-games-is-dead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/index.php\/2021\/02\/22\/the-end-is-nigh-because-telltale-games-is-dead\/","title":{"rendered":"The End is Nigh … because Telltale Games is Dead"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

This article originally ran under a different banner\/website in October of 2018 and is now being here re-uploaded for purposes of convenience and consolidation. Please enjoy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!\u00a0 DEARLY BELOVED!\u00a0 We are gathered here today to mourn the passing of Telltale Games.\u00a0 On September 21, 2018, Telltale Games released a statement saying they would be laying off around 250 employees and only keeping 25 employees to work on the Netflix Minecraft Story Edition<\/em> project.\u00a0 As soon as the project is done, Telltales will be closing its doors for good.\u00a0 We mourn its passing, for it was a good studio focused on delivering high-quality stories without resorting to any of the anti-consumer practices plaguing the industry today.\u00a0 I am truly honored to speak at their funeral.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While I am aware of Telltale Games existence long before I stood on my soapbox, I first heard the name Telltale Games in 2012 when The Walking Dead: Season 1,<\/em> was being showered with praise for asking players to make tense decisions that influence the game\u2019s story.\u00a0 Again their name would come back into my life with their 2013 release of The Wolf Among Us<\/em>;\u00a0 a game about fairy tale characters trying to live in hiding in a modern-day New York City.\u00a0 The cel-shaded art style along with the lone wolf sheriff Bigby Wolf always captured my imagination.\u00a0 At last, despite The Walking Dead <\/em>and A Wolf Among Us<\/em> along with many other titles sitting comfortably in my Steam library, I was never able to dedicate time to these games.\u00a0 I was never able to find myself in the right mood for Telltale\u2019s games, usually choosing a more action-packed game over theirs.\u00a0 A move that will probably haunt me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Though I will admit, their typical episodic release schedule always drove me to put off playing their titles until all episodes were out.\u00a0 While I can see how an episodic release schedule can assist developers in making their games, I can say as a player, I loathe it.\u00a0 I find episodic storytelling kills a story\u2019s pacing, which is much of the reason I stopped watching TV.\u00a0 With episodic games, I often find myself forgetting about the title while waiting for the complete game, like Hitman<\/em>, or annoyingly waiting for the final chapter, like Bendy and the Ink Machine<\/em>.\u00a0 Telltale\u2019s games, unfortunately, fell into the same camp as Hitman.<\/em>\u00a0 I always hope Telltale would move away from this strategy, but much like Ubisoft, they religiously stuck with the formula that gave them success with The Walking Dead <\/em>and A Wolf Among Us<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The episodic release schedule wasn\u2019t the only issue with Telltale Games.\u00a0 Much like Ubisoft, their games stuck to a rigid formula and fans were starting to take notice.\u00a0 Fans started to note that even though Telltale Games offered many different story paths, all the choices would eventually lead to one ending.\u00a0 Fans started to feel their choices were meaningless.\u00a0 Making it very hard to summon the energy to play through all the titles Telltale pumped out.\u00a0 Some could say Telltale was oversaturating their own market with games like Game of Thrones, Minecraft: Story Mode, Batman: The Telltale Series, Tales from the Borderlands, <\/em>and Guardians of the Galaxy<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now I can see some insidious publishers lining up to cheer the death of Telltale Games.\u00a0 I am sure many of them will be using Telltale\u2019s death as proof for their message.\u00a0 Proof that single-player is dead.\u00a0 Proof that games need microtransactions in them.\u00a0 Proof that your studio will go under if you don\u2019t engage in microtransactions such as Capcom is doing with Devil May Cry V<\/em>.\u00a0 I am here to tell you to not listen to those lies.\u00a0 Yes, Telltale Games was not perfect.\u00a0 Yes, Telltale Games made mistakes.\u00a0 Some of these mistakes include not providing former employees severance packages and forcing employees to engage in crunch periods, but Telltale Games did not fail due to their lack of microtransactions.\u00a0 Telltale did not fail because they didn\u2019t resort to microtransactions or other psychological manipulation tactics.\u00a0 Telltale Games failed because they chose not to innovate their formula.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0While Telltale Games chose to release the same game with only a new coat of paint, games like Until Dawn <\/em>and Life is Strange<\/em> was building on the framework Telltale Games had made; including the multiple daunting choices that made Telltale famous.\u00a0 They also learned to make sure the choices didn\u2019t diverge into one ending, these games would continue to branch out and provide many different endings.\u00a0 Until Dawn <\/em>gained notoriety for having different endings based on which of the teenagers were saved and which were killed.\u00a0 Many people did multiple playthroughs of Until Dawn<\/em>, not only to see how all the teenagers were killed but to piece together the right choices to get their favorite characters to live through the slasher film-like story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

We lost a good soldier today in the fight against unchecked greed, but the war is not over.\u00a0 I can only hope that studios looking to make quality single-player story-based games will continue to innovate and provide new experiences for players.\u00a0 With Dontnod Entertainment releasing Life is Strange 2<\/em> and Until Dawn<\/em>\u2019s developers, Supermassive Games, working on a new horror series called Dark Pictures Anthology<\/em>, I can only hope they are not only building on the formula Telltale Games developed but working to improve the changes they made in their previous games.\u00a0 While I personally believe single-player games are not dead, I do believe single-player games could become extinct if they continue to sit in stagnation as Telltale Games did.\u00a0 The sole lesson we can take away from Telltale Games is we must continue to innovate or close our doors as Telltale did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This article originally ran under a different banner\/website in October of 2018 and is now being here re-uploaded for purposes of convenience and consolidation. Please enjoy. LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!\u00a0 DEARLY BELOVED!\u00a0 We are gathered here today to mourn the passing of Telltale Games.\u00a0 On September 21, 2018, Telltale Games released a statement saying they would… Continue reading The End is Nigh … because Telltale Games is Dead<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":147,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-opinion","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":152,"href":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146\/revisions\/152"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}