Interesting Telltale interview about Batman, VR, hints at future projects, quicker episode releases
Blind Sniper
Moderator
I was doing some googling for another post of mine where I was trying to show how Telltale describes their games nowadays, and I found this interesting interview from December in the process. They talk about Batman, how they pick out IPs to work with, and they also hint at a few things of theirs coming in the future.
http://www.alistdaily.com/interviews/the-telltale-games-method-for-success.html
I'll post a small handful of the questions they asked, or interesting answers:
Batman
Telltale recently announced an upcoming game based on the Batman comic books. Tell us a little about how this partnership came about.
We’re huge fans of Batman here at Telltale and have had an established working relationship with Warner & DC Comics now for a few years that started with The Wolf Among Us. It’s pretty safe to say we earned a great deal of their trust with the work we did on their Fables IP with Wolf and we’d been expressing our interest on Batman for quite some time. It all worked out and were super excited with what we’re going to bring to fans next year.
Hints at quicker episode releases to continue onward from Minecraft: Story Mode
What are the challenges in promoting an episodic game series, especially ones that release for console, PC and mobile platforms?
[...] Also cadence in the delivery of our episodes is critical, especially once you get people who are really into what you’re doing, they want their episodes on a reasonable schedule. We have struggled with that at times in the post Walking Dead Season 1 era and there is nothing more important to us than giving great episodes on a nice cadence at the moment. We’ve been able to do this on Minecraft: Story Mode *and we’re working hard to maintain that on the things that follow.
Hint at Telltale potentially continuing to return to more family friendly games in the future
What would you say players love most about Telltale Games' adventures, and how do you grow that audience?
[...] Minecraft: Story Mode appeals to a large group of 10-17 year old players that is pretty new for us in addition to the very large 17-35 year old audience and we’re likely going to explore some projects that can appeal to this 10-17 year old group in the future if it makes sense. [...]
Telltale working with VR
What are your thoughts on virtual reality technology, and how do you think it will impact video gaming?
We are very interested in VR. In the abstract telling a crafted story in the VR space is an exciting problem to try and solve and we talk about it often. There’s also the idea of adding extended VR experiences to our game series that are affected and influenced by playing one of our regular game series enhancing the overall experience for someone who has a VR setup. We’ll definitely be talking about our plans for VR publicly attached to a project of ours in the next year. [Mod note: Keep in mind, this was posted last month in December 2015, so he means this year in 2016...]
Comments
Very interesting, thanks for posting this. As long as it doesn't lead to a decrease in quality, I don't think anyone would mind quicker releases, so this is good to hear.
Hopefully they focus on one game from 2018 and longer
Focusing on only one game isn't an automatic recipe for success or quality. Taking that into consideration, I'm confused on why you and some other people want only one game a year.
To me it I is, FOCUSING ON 2-5 GAMES IS NOT SUCESS EITHER
I'm confused you think the reason why you, only you, think that the reason why Twd s2 and twau were shorter than the other games was because of "cinematic reasons" you fail to give any real reason. That is a stupid lie, you really are making it up
They've always had multiple game projects a year. Even The Walking Dead: Season One had Law & Order: Legacies release in the same year. Although, in those days, the company was so small, they'd have to release seasons only after the last one ended, as opposed to the size they are now, where they can have multiple seasons going on at the same time.
If they only shipped one game a year, that would mean that they'd have to cut down on the amount of staff, which would mean that the wait for episodes to be released would be even longer, rather than shorter as people seem to think. Note that multiple projects don't interfere with the release time of any other project, as the games have separate teams working on them.
If they were to cut down the release to one a year, they'd have to cut their staff down from their present amount of over 200 employees to the level they had during the release of The Walking Dead, of around 80-100 employees (even less if only one season is released a year, so if you want just one season a year, cut that figure in half to 40-50 employees, as the amount of employees they had in 2012 accounted for two season releases per year). If they did that, we'd be seeing 3-8 month waiting periods between episodes again, or possibly even longer as the staff size would have to be quite small to account for the reduced output in game production.
You seem a little angry, but my posts weren't meant to be agressive or snarky towards you or anything like that. Telltale genuinely thought that people wanted shorter episodes. I wasn't a fan of that either, and they went back to making longer episodes for their current series.
Likewise, I also agree with you in some areas and I think it would be cool if their games were more interactive in certain areas of if they went back to using hubs and puzzles more often. My posts earlier were mainly to explain their reasoning, and my posts weren't meant to attack you for wanting longer episodes/more gameplay if that is how you thought my posts came off. Explaining something isn't always the same as defending it personally.
EDIT: This article OzzyUK linked to earlier explains it. Again, I'm not defending it - I'm just explaining their thought process in trying new things and seeing what sticks.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/josephbernstein/the-after-dinner-video-game#.rfE55JQ10r
Why does'nt everyone just work on one project. Another moderator response
Back in 2012, they did work on one project at a time. The Walking Dead: Season One only started production after Law & Order: Legacies ended. At that time though, as I said, they were a small team, so their releases were far apart. That's why we got 3-8 month waits between episodes, as their team size wasn't large enough to account for the added complexity of the choices and consequences model as opposed to their previous puzzle based games. Their increased size has allowed for larger teams, which have allowed for more complex cinematic presentations, and improved models and animations.
If you want to have just one season a year, you'd have to have a much smaller team than they even had during The Walking Dead, which would mean that in order to get the releases at a 1-2 month release window, you wouldn't have the improved cinematic presentation that they've had since The Wolf Among Us, nor would you have the improved animations. You'd be looking at a team the size it was during Sam & Max: Season Two, which would mean that you'd likely get a lot of reused assets, including not just character models, but whole locations, and you'd be looking at streamlined gameplay, since if they tried to do the type of gameplay they're doing now with a team that's smaller than The Walking Dead: Season One (which did have the whole studio on it, as they were much smaller then and could only operate that way), you'd be looking at episodes releasing a lot further apart than two months.
If they only released one game a year, Telltale would have to cut their employees down to around 50 employees (including those who are essential to the company, but aren't involved in development, such as lawyers, information technology people, and public relations people, not to mention the quality assurance team, which is integral to the quality of any game) to compensate for the huge slowdown in game production. 50 employees is just not enough to handle monthly, or even bi-monthly, episodes of the type of game that Telltale Games is currently creating. You would absolutely have to either have a decrease in quality or a longer release cycle if Telltale were to return to the size of a small indie developer (which they'd have to do, if they only released one game a year, in order to stay in business).
Oh my god, just fricken plan it all in advance and than you can have an order of releasing them, one game a year= organized schedule and no long 4 month disappointing episodes
They do plan the general plot of an overall Season in advance, but they make changes during the Season depending on fan feedback. They look into how long it took players to make choices they were presented with in previous episodes, and which characters people liked/disliked more than others among other things, and then make small or moderate changes to the plot.
As one of the interview quotes says above, they are moving back to releasing episodes on a quicker schedule like they used to prior to Walking Dead, so I don't think four month waiting periods for an episode will be as frequent anymore.
What if they just release the game full
They actually do already make a season long plan for every season in advance (they currently come up with a season wide plan for every season with a very small team while another season is currently running). Making a season long plan in advance without the ability to work on it while another season is running wouldn't make the game releases come any quicker. It would actually make things longer, as you'd have to wait several months for them to actually make that plan, before the season begins, if you don't want any games to be released in the meantime.
If you eliminate the ability to make a season wide plan while another season is running, you're just going to make the development time longer. Game development takes time, especially with a small team. Traditional game development takes several years. Telltale can do it quicker because their size and episodic model allows for them to release games in a season as they're being developed.
If you eliminate their size (which you'd have to do if you eliminated their output down to just one season a year), no matter what they do, they couldn't release the games at the same quality they are now at the rate they are doing for Minecraft: Story Mode. It's the current large size of the team that's allowing for that quick rate of output. In order to do that with a smaller team, you'd have to overwork the employees, and that's opening a can of worms I really don't want Telltale to get into. They'd be entering EA territory, in the EA Spouse era, and I really don't want them to become like that.
Back on topic, I'm wondering game Telltale is first going to use VR on. They said it will be on a project that comes next year, so I could see that being Marvel, Walking Dead: Season 3 (they wanted it to be bigger than other Seasons), or maybe the Super Show perhaps.
[EDIT: I forgot the article was written last month (in 2015), so that means Telltale will announce something VR related this year. That makes me even more curious...]
Speaking of which, I wonder what the schedule is going to look like anyways? Outside of Batman (and Michonne, which was delayed from last year), we don't have any hard, concrete information saying any of their other upcoming games are specifically coming this year. Of course, we are almost certainly getting more than Batman this year, but I just mean it's odd as we'd usually have more confirmed to be coming this year going off of how Telltale has done things the last few years.
Great idea bout virtual reality. I just want to say that it is okay to give your full option on a game. I will defend you.
They like to release games episodically to keep it relevant for longer as opposed to the game fading out a few weeks after launch. It's like TV in that it gives people something to talk about and sparks interest when you talk with friends online or in person. Back in their earlier days, I imagine it was also beneficial in the sense that it was cheaper, as they could work on the earlier episodes, and then use money earned from the earlier episodes to finish the later episodes as opposed to doing the more expensive choice to work on the whole game at once. Now that Telltale is bigger, I don't imagine they rely on early episode sales as much to cover the development of later episodes, so I assume they do it because it makes Telltale stand out and they want their games to resemble TV.
If they released a game all at once instead of episodically, that would be a traditional game development model, which is a really tricky one. They'd be looking at a development cycle of several years. If they only worked on one game at a time, that would mean that they would have no income coming in for between two and three years, at least, while they work on their game.
That would mean that they would have to deal with a traditional publisher, in order to pay the bills while they're waiting for their game to release, or eat into their disposable (saved) income while they're working on the game. If they did the latter, it's likely that they'd lose their ability to be a publisher themselves, as part of the deal that makes you a publisher (based on a quote from Double Fine on the matter), is that you have enough disposable income to qualify as a publisher. They'd then be banking on the hopes that the game was a success (and if they go with a traditional publisher, hope that the publisher doesn't pull out of the agreement, which happens sadly way too often in game development), in order to get enough income to pay their employees and have enough money left over to fill their disposable income reserves back up.
It's the reason why companies like Double Fine have several small projects going on all the time instead of making large games published traditionally. Doing development on a single, large, game at a time is not a business model that is sustainable for very long, unless your studio is a subsidiary of a much larger studio.
That's is what is good about it, making one game a year means that they have many years already planned, so they do not have to just development all of the time.
You aren't living up to your name. Pffffffffffffff
Just have one team. Have the same "good writers" for each project.
The last time they had such uncertainty about their release schedule was in 2013, and that year gave us the surprise release of Poker Night 2. It's possible be seeing a similar small game released in between the break between Michonne and Batman this year. The Poker Night series is their second best selling series on Steam after The Walking Dead, according to SteamSpy, so if they did surprise us with another game set in The Inventory, I actually wouldn't be that surprised.
I'm wondering if they abandoned their idea of multiple series happening at the same time in order to concentrate on getting the episodes out quicker. If that's the case, it's one thing I really wouldn't mind. Of course, it also would mean that we'd have three months without a release (or two, if they release a small game in between), and that's not at all common for modern Telltale. Maybe they actually do intend to start Game of Thrones: Season Two this year (or Super Show?).
It's certainly strange to not be in the know. It feels like the old days again.
They do not have 300 employees, I always felt like it was weird how telltale really does not look at their reviews
They do have over 300 employees, Job Stauffer mentioned it in an E3 video interview when Michonne was announced and I think Kevin Bruner has said so too in some online interviews/articles.
You really don't know much about maintaining a gaming company.
Yeah, I was thinking on that too. As I speculated in the GoT Season 2 waiting thread (and maybe that thread where we predict Telltale's upcoming schedule too), I guess that either of the following happen:
Even if this year is slow, it only puts more weight in the following years to come. On top of Marvel in 2017, we have Game of Thrones: Season 2, Walking Dead: Season 3, and a Super Show all with unconfirmed dates.
The VR stuff does sound interesting, i am planning on buying a Oculus Rift later this year so it would be fun to experience a Telltale game in VR.
I could see them possibly doing their Super Show project in VR as the TV show part could have parts filmed in a first person perspective which could be interesting in VR, another thing they could do is something similar to the 360 youtube videos and let us be able to choose where we want to look in VR or with a mouse or controller on screen.
Maybe they want to surprise us?
They could have a secret project up their sleeves as i can't see them having a big gap between Michonne finishing and Batman starting.