Interesting interview with CEO Pete Hawley on Telltale's new direction, response to feedback, etc

Blind Sniper

https://venturebeat.com/2017/12/11/game-boss-interview-new-ceo-pete-hawley-will-focus-telltale-on-its-core-strengths/view-all/

GamesBeat: Do you want to go over what’s happened since you joined Telltale?

Pete Hawley: I joined two months ago. It’s been five years now since Walking Dead season one, which was an enormous hit for the company. We went on to do Minecraft, another giant hit. But from that success and that player base, how much people loved the company — through that revenue the company grew and grew. Pretty much doubled in size in the last couple of years. This year we released 17 episodes, which is a pretty phenomenal effort. Each episode is around two hours long. For a relatively small company that’s an insane amount of content.

One of the challenges over the last few years, as the company doubled in size and the amount of product going out increased exponentially — we just took our eye off the ball on innovation and quality. Before I took the job, the first thing I did was go on forums and app stores and try to get an idea of the voice of our players. It was clear that our games had become fairly predictable. The formula is loved, but it’s getting old. It’s time for us to innovate, get back to our roots, and do a much better job with fewer games.

[...]

GamesBeat: I don’t know if Telltale has had what you would call an engine, but it’s had that same sort of choice-driven gameplay with a comic-book style, going back for years now. At one point it did seem like that was fairly innovative, but it often came with some cost to it as far as interactivity. Is that the thing that players have gotten tired of? Have you re-used that particular format a little too often, across too many games? What were some conclusions you had?

Hawley: There’s a couple of things that come to mind. One is, over the last couple of years — to some extent we’ve moved away from some of the magic of season one of Walking Dead. That real player agency and interactivity, that real sense of consequences has moved away. We’ve moved more toward pure narrative and let go of some of the — whether you call it gameplay, or just interactivity and engagement, we’ve actually moved away from it.

In many ways it’s not about changing who we are. It’s just getting back to what we did incredibly well in season one, plus more. We’re doing some great work for season four, which might surprise a few people. We’re taking the game and the gameplay in some different directions. But in the end, the company’s reputation and the love our players have for us because of what we do—I’m not here to turn this into a one-game MMO shop. We don’t have Blizzard envy. We’re storytellers.

In the future we’d like to innovate away from the four-choice wheel, but for now it’s what we do, it’s what people love, and it’s what people are asking us for, to get back to our best, and to ship and produce software that’s of high quality. Not just gameplay, but also no crashes, no glitches, really focus on the quality of the overall product. It’s not about a reinvention. It’s about getting back to doing our best work with our best people.

Summary of Interview from ResetEra user:

• When their new CEO (Pete Hawley) first came in, he went and read a ton of feedback Telltale had been receiving about what was wrong with the company and then started working on a plan to fix that.
• He decided to delay a bunch of future Telltale products so that the developers could focus on ensuring good quality in their products from both a technical (performance, bugginess) and design perspective. In general, they will be releasing less per year going forward, so they can invest more time on each given product.
• In the immediate future, Telltale has three traditional games releasing. Their focus there will be to put more choice into the games, as they feel they got away from players being able to make meaningful choices, and that they had started to just deliver pure narrative games without much player interaction. I believe these games are The Walking Dead Season 4, The Wolf Among Us 2, and I think they're counting the rest of Batman in that as well.
• After that, Telltale will be focusing on a lot of new gameplay innovations in their titles. There will be a new deal (IP licensing presumably) announced soon that will be their first game focusing on some new gameplay innovation.
• Telltale will also focus on "grittier" IPs a la The Walking Dead and The Wolfe Among Us, as he feels that's where Telltale has gotten the best reception. He says he views the studio more as an HBO or a Netflix than a Hollywood studio.
• Similarly, Telltale will stop licensing the types of mass market IPs where they can't do things like let the player have a notable impact on shaping the characters or choose which characters live an die. He said to expect to see less IPs like Batman and Guardians of the Galaxy in the future, since the characters are so well defined and have very stringent limitations that are hard to work with for Telltale's format.
• After the new deal next year, they will also be introducing new IPs with even more gameplay innovation instead of just licensed IPs. These won't come out until 2019.
• Their CEO insists Telltale's financial situation is very good. He notes that as far as platforms go, their sales are best on PC and PS4, though they're even quite happy with their smaller mobile business, and will be working to make those ports better.
• The studio is now 250 people.
• They will also continue to focus on their external publishing business.
• Despite going with new gameplay innovations, they have no intention to move away from adventure games and get into first person shooters or MMOs or something else like that, especially internally.
• Since people are asking, while it's not covered in this interview, they talked about moving to new technology when they first had the layoffs. However, they have a few more games on the old technology still, so that's probably not going to get talked about a lot until they have a game announced on the new technology.

Maczime

Long interview between VB and Telltale's new CEO published today.

Nirolak on Reset Era made a highlights / TL;DR here:

• When their new CEO (Pete Hawley) first came in, he went and read a ton of feedback Telltale had been receiving about what was wrong with the company and then started working on a plan to fix that.
• He decided to delay a bunch of future Telltale products so that the developers could focus on ensuring good quality in their products from both a technical (performance, bugginess) and design perspective. In general, they will be releasing less per year going forward, so they can invest more time on each given product.
• In the immediate future, Telltale has three traditional games releasing. Their focus there will be to put more choice into the games, as they feel they got away from players being able to make meaningful choices, and that they had started to just deliver pure narrative games without much player interaction. I believe these games are The Walking Dead Season 4, The Wolf Among Us 2, and I think they're counting the rest of Batman in that as well.
• After that, Telltale will be focusing on a lot of new gameplay innovations in their titles. There will be a new deal (IP licensing presumably) announced soon that will be their first game focusing on some new gameplay innovation.
• Telltale will also focus on "grittier" IPs a la The Walking Dead and The Wolfe Among Us, as he feels that's where Telltale has gotten the best reception. He says he views the studio more as an HBO or a Netflix than a Hollywood studio.
• Similarly, Telltale will stop licensing the types of mass market IPs where they can't do things like let the player have a notable impact on shaping the characters or choose which characters live an die. He said to expect to see less IPs like Batman and Guardians of the Galaxy in the future, since the characters are so well defined and have very stringent limitations that are hard to work with for Telltale's format.
• After the new deal next year, they will also be introducing new IPs with even more gameplay innovation instead of just licensed IPs. These won't come out until 2019.
• Their CEO insists Telltale's financial situation is very good. He notes that as far as platforms go, their sales are best on PC and PS4, though they're even quite happy with their smaller mobile business, and will be working to make those ports better.
• The studio is now 250 people.
• They will also continue to focus on their external publishing business.
• Despite going with new gameplay innovations, they have no intention to move away from adventure games and get into first person shooters or MMOs or something else like that, especially internally.
• Since people are asking, while it's not covered in this interview, they talked about moving to new technology when they first had the layoffs. However, they have a few more games on the old technology still, so that's probably not going to get talked about a lot until they have a game announced on the new technology.

The same Reset Era thread also has a memeber claiming being a former Telltale employee part of the recent lays off (Message #27, nothing to back him up so take it with a grain of salt):

Without going into too much detail, I was one of those they laid off recently. Obviously it's a bummer to lose my job, but I still think it was a good move on the company's part. There were almost 400 people there working on 3-5 different projects at once, it just wasn't sustainable and the formula was growing stagnant. I wish them the best, hopefully this new direction finds them making the sort of changes that will get people excited about their games again.

Karnedg2013

This year we released 17 episodes, which is a pretty phenomenal effort

Each episode is around two hours long.

Box Tv

Thia interview gave me positive vibes, lets see...
“He said to expect to see less IPs like Batman and Guardians of the Galaxy in the future, since the characters are so well defined and have very stringent limitations that are hard to work with for Telltale's format”
Yeah but TWAU also have this limitation...

Box Tv

I hope they still continue with Batman and its universe, this interview doesnt look good for the game...

Blind Sniper

Keep in mind that's just a bullet point summary that a message board user wrote; not direct phrasing.

Melton23

Took me 2 hours to get through each anf episode so it seems kinda accurate. But then again I try to get all of the dialogue and inspect everything in the environment instead of speed running it and making instant choices as soon as I see them

MetallicaRules

I don't know about anyone else, but I'm feeling incredibly positive with the future of this company under the reign of Mr. Hawley. For the first time in a while, I'm feeling pretty confident, like I (and many others) who have voiced complaints with recent titles, as well as current and former employees discussing the problematic management of the company, are finally being heard. He talks about a return to how they made S1 in terms of gameplay and development, and that does fill me with some hope. Actions speak louder than words though, so the next year or so will have to prove that he means what he says here. But if recent episodes of Batman are anything to go on, then I think the company is heading in a good direction.

Another takeaway for TWD fans, he says S4 won't be out until around the summer of 2018. I know some people here were saying around March or April, sorry to burst your bubble. My guess, it will probably be around July/August.

AChicken

Okay, interesting stuff. From what I've read, he seems to know what's up and how to get great things moving again.

This year we released 17 episodes, which is a pretty phenomenal effort. Each episode is around two hours long.

Well... Maybe not every episode, heh, I'd say about 10-12, most things post-TWD.

Before I took the job, the first thing I did was go on forums and app stores and try to get an idea of the voice of our players. It was clear that our games had become fairly predictable.

I like this, he seems dedicated to making the company do its best, and to change things for the benefit of their consumers. Yay.

We made the decision, going into 2018, that it’s better for us to get to three games next year and do our very best work again. Give ourselves some breathing room, time, space, get back to some real innovations. We’re closing the Walking Dead storyline with season four. We want to get back to our best with that. That’s coming in the summer. We’ll close out Batman in the first half of next year. We have a new IP that I can’t announce yet, but we’re really excited about it. We’re doing that for Q4.

Okay, so he does mean 3 starting projects next year, excluding Batman. Let's hope 3 is their magic number.

GamesBeat: When you decided to do the layoff, were you cutting some projects that were in a dubious state?

Hawley: No, no. There was certainly more on the slate for the 2018, but we just moved some things around as opposed to cancelling anything. Give the smaller teams a long time to get things right. I didn’t come in and cancel much. It’s just that if we’re going to do a great job with things, we need more time to do that. I don’t think we’ll do service to our players or ourselves by trying to squeeze all this into 2018. Clearly, the last two years, the idea that increasing the amount of product and the episode count doesn’t work. It’s never worked. The idea that you have one or two hits and then scale your business and hope that continues — in the end, if you don’t innovate, it stops.

I like this man. He knows how to steer this ship.

In many ways it’s not about changing who we are. It’s just getting back to what we did incredibly well in season one, plus more. We’re doing some great work for season four, which might surprise a few people. We’re taking the game and the gameplay in some different directions
I’m not here to turn this into a one-game MMO shop. We don’t have Blizzard envy. We’re storytellers.

Seriously, I like this man. I hope this work strategy pulls through and comes as a benefit to Telltale, because these seem like the perfect steps to make things better -- overall -- with what they do.

GamesBeat: Were 2017’s results less than what you guys had expected in some way? Did you have a combination of hits and misses? Or was it the overall audience declining? What made the company realize that it had to take some action?

Hawley: If you’re going to hire someone like me — I’m not one for the status quo. The games have been successful for the last five years, but this year I’d say — I wouldn’t say misses. We’ve generally seen strong revenues. We’re in a great position as a company. But in the end, some of what we signed up for just doesn’t work quite as well for us as some of the other choices we’ve made.
I said to the team, “I think we’re more Netflix or HBO than we are Hollywood.” Our game choices should reflect that. If you look at Wolf Among Us and Walking Dead, that’s some of what we’re going to get back to. That’s when Telltale is at its best, when we have real control and agency for the player and over the characters in the stories we tell. If you work with larger IP, you’re often very restricted. You have 50 or 60 years of expectations as far as who and what that is. We’ve been at our best when we hand control over to the player as far as the story and the destiny of the characters around it, the life and death choices they’re asked to make.

GamesBeat: Is it fair to say that we might see fewer things like Batman and more things based on newer IP?

Hawley: Yeah, for sure. We’re very proud of Batman. Some of the more recent reviews have said it’s the best treatment of the Joker as a character they’ve read for decades. I think we’re still doing great work. It’s done well for us. But really I think we’re best when we get back to the grittier, deeper, darker side with some of the IP we’ve worked with, and when we’re given real freedom of choice. We’re not playing in worlds or with characters that have very specific sets of rules and ideals and approval processes around them. We have more freedom when we take our own path.

Not exactly liking the fact that he'd want to stay away from larger IPs (because that's when the real creative effort comes in and you're forced to make something new and original like TTGBatman), because they've proven that they can do them right. Hopefully this doesn't mean they'll shut down Batman just yet. He's probably their best work yet, if the next two episodes turn out great.

We’re building three games in the traditional way, and we have a big deal to announce next year for something a little more radical, which we’re super excited about. We’re going to make those four products next year, and then more third-party, which has been really successful.

GamesBeat: What have you learned from the fans? Did they have a certain reaction to the layoffs? Have they given you some interesting feedback?

Hawley: [...] Generally, I find that as far as feedback, players don’t care about how you’re running the business. They’re not really that interested in any news related to a layoff or whatever. But they do want to see us getting back to our best work and releasing quality software that’s bug-free and not frustrating for them. We’ve done a disservice to our players over the last few years.

Well, we do care, but there's just not much we can do about it.

[...]

We’re super excited about next year, particularly some of the new stuff we’ll talk about soon. Getting into 2019 we’ll have some new IP to talk about, some original IP, and new gameplay too. The next couple of years, we’ll be locking in the road map soon and we’re really excited about it.

SU - PER - SHOW! SU - PER - SHOW! SU - PER - SHOW!

All in all, this sounds like Telltale is changing for the better, and that they know what not to stumble over again. At least in terms of management.
Good luck Telltale!

Blind Sniper

Not exactly liking the fact that he'd want to stay away from larger IPs (because that's when the real creative effort comes in and you're forced to make something new and original like TTGBatman), because they've proven that they can do them right. Hopefully this doesn't mean they'll shut down Batman just yet. He's probably their best work yet, if the next two episodes turn out great.

I disagree; I like it when they come up with original and definitive takes to franchises like Wolf, Borderlands, or (Season 1 of) Dead, as opposed to trying to be reactive to other ideas like Batman or Guardians. Batman: TEW is really good in particular, but even so, I'd still like to see Telltale in the future work on definitive takes of a franchise instead of reactive takes.

AChicken

Okay. But sorry, I think you're misinterpreting this. Or maybe I am. Uhh.... I think we're agreeing sort of?

Basically, what I mean is that -- based on your categorisations of definitive and reactive -- we've got them opposite each other and mixed up. I find things like Batman to be more definitive because of their open-ended, twisted ideas rolled into one. Its continuity is wholly original, and has nothing to brace itself on. They can make Joker your Robin if they so please.
Things like Borderlands, Wolf or TWD, I find to be reactive because of their insertion into a pre-determined world. Wolf is a prequel to Fables, and while it has a lot of leeway, they can't go killing off Bigby. TWD runs in parallel to the comics, so there's a small amount of links it can have to Rick's gang without stealing those people for their own group. It's original, but has its limits. Borderlands is probably the best, most original reactive take on a franchise because of its open-endedness. They're given a starting point, and no real end. They did some serious damage to the world and its characters, and now Gearbox has to pick up the pieces.
I find reactive to be more basing itself off of something pre-established, and reacting from it. A prequel or a sequel. Definitive works of theirs go along with making something new out of a blank canvas and a select number of colours.

I don't mean that I don't like reactive or definitive titles, I just enjoy the "original, definitive" ones more. (That's probably why I'm anticipating their original IP with every fiber of my body.)
Do I have this right or...?

Justin22

So this mean Game of Throne season 2 is in 2019 smh

IronWoodLover

How could we have been so blind! ANF was, in fact, HUGE. Even lengthier than Season 1!! The answer was right before our eyes! We just needed to e x p l o r e t h e e n v i r o n m e n t s and spend 2,3 seconds making choices rather than just spending 2! IT'S GENIUS.

By taking 3 additional milliseconds choosing, you can turn the first two episodes which average at about an HOUR of playtime, into TWO HOUR long episodes! Incredible!

Also, if you want to experience ANF's huge lenght, you MUST take time exploring its incredible environments, especially the non-existent ones in episode 3 and 5!

We have cracked the code, humans.

Blind Sniper

I think he was mainly counting Batman, Minecraft, etc. Outside of the more hardcore Telltale followers, I don't think the general gaming audience articulates their problems with Telltale in terms of episode length in particular as much as the forums do. I'm not defending short episodes and I've been critical of that in the past - I think episodes should be 2 hours on average - but I think he was more so focusing on the cumulative playtime of episodes this year.

The general gaming fans tend to focus on the glitches, repetition of gameplay formula, the recent focus of prioritizing narrative over gameplay (like what Season 1 of TWD had), Telltale's focus of quantity over quality, etc - and all of these specific criticisms were addressed in the interview.

It seems a bit reductive to take away from this interview that Telltale will continue "going nowhere" when they addressed most of the brutally honest complaints people had, just because they made an off handed comment about "2 hour" episodes instead of 90/60 minute episodes. Most of the general gaming fans/media don't split hairs to the exact degree of categorizing 120/90/60 minute episodes like the forums do; I think he was just generalizing the concept of "17 playable episodes that each roughly share the same playtime as a movie's length, give or take."

BetterToSleep

This man's words are pretty.

I'm feeling optimistic, kind of.

Blind Sniper

I was thinking the opposite; Season 2 of Batman has it's own original story, but Season 1 focused primarily on making plot twists to the canon (I won't spoil such twists here as we aren't in the Batman forums, but I presume you know to what I am speaking), and similarly, Guardians made a similar choice with a character in the first five minutes of Episode 1.

Meanwhile, with Wolf, Borderlands, Dead Season 1, etc - they weren't just arbitrarily throwing around plot twists and shaking up the canon to make their own take - they were defining their own stories.

What I mean by my definition of "reactive" is, imagine if Season 1 of Walking Dead was entirely different, and instead of focusing on Lee/Clem, they instead made a "plot twist" version of Rick Grime's story during the first several issues of the comic where [X event] never happened and [Y character] lived instead of dying.

With what we got from Season 1 of TWD, Telltale created an original take on the series instead of just coming up with an "alternate canon" version of a storyline that others already wrote. Does that make sense?

(Even with Wolf, Borderlands, etc - they still focused on original story ideas instead of just making "plot twist" variations of typical story ideas.)

Blind Sniper

Negative criticisms are fine, but let's try to keep posts constructive and focused on discussion instead of jokes.

lupinb0y

I like this guy. He really seems to know what to do. The only problem I have with anything he's said in the interview is that he wants Telltale to focus on more grittier properties. This could mean that we won't be getting anything like Tales from the Borderlands where it's just big dumb adventures.

Blind Sniper

That was a "mistranslation" from the user summary. In the context of the actual interview, Hawley meant that he wanted to get into IP where they can tell stories that support "gritty" larger consequences instead of just being constrained to larger IPs that don't easily allow major story alterations.

Like, with Telltale's Game of Thrones, you can't kill of Ramsay no matter how much he torments House Forrester. That's what he meant.

lupinb0y

Ah gotcha. Okay NOW I'm all aboard this

AChicken

Okay, that makes sense. Still gonna hold on to my definitions though.

(Either way, they're all original creations of Telltale in one form or another. So it's good to know that they're trusting themselves to push more for that angle and challenge their creative minds.)

xxplvb

Did u fall asleep half way threw or something

Acheive250

I really like this guy's words. I'm hopeful for Telltale's future.

(And totally off topic, but @xxplvb, I feel like our avatars go together perfectly for some reason... I love it)

eRock92

The only thing that I'm a small tad oh so slightly in an extremely minor way worried is... where does a sequel to Tales From The Borderlands fit into all of this?

Other than that, the new CEO is saying all the right things. Let's see if the future TTG entries live up to it.

Melton23

Nope ?

Johro

I rather liked what I read, but I hope they don't abandon their true roots(comedy).
I'm just going to buckle up and see where we go.
I'm along for the ride.

DaveTheArakin

I am feeling quite positive of the new CEO after reading the interview. I am looking forward to see what Telltale can do under his direction.

xxplvb

Yea for real

thewalkingclementine

Each episode of A New Frontier was around 1 hour more like

dylanwoods777

In my own personal opinion I believe that this is exciting news to hear as a fan of Telltale. I have only played all Walking Dead Seasons and Season One of Minecraft Story Mode and I enjoyed both of them a lot! I have yet to play the other titles such as Wolf Among Us,Guardians of The Galaxy and many others ( I am buying them all Telltale Games for Christmas!!) ? But anyways I am getting carried away here.

I hear quite a bit of criticism about Telltales recent projects. Not because they were absolutely horrible, but because they were disappointing. They did not reach the high bar that Telltale set after the success of Walking Dead Season One. Pete Hawley seems to know that the titles that Telltale have produced are not up to par for many fans and he wants to try to create games that captured the hearts and attention of players. And which game did that 5 years ago? Walking Dead. Telltale are trying their hardest to make great games and I honestly respect them a great deal for this. I don't envy the position of working as part of a development team for their high profile titles due to the stress that they must go through. This is a positive sign and one that will definitely help relieve some fears from fans that are worried about the future of Telltale. All I can say is thanks Telltale for the hard work that you undoubtedly put into your games and I look forward to your future titles ?

dylanwoods777

sorry if my comment is all over the place. I am currently working on a school assignment

OfficialMonkey

Each episode is around two hours long.

Two hours my ASS.

But it seems like the new CEO knows what people want (more innovation to gameplay, story, etc) - but actions speak louder than words.

Kennyshouladiedins1

I like the idea of keeping things grittier...hopefully TWAU2 retains the feel and everything from S1...it is a harsh world...people do things to survive...and it is up to Bigby to sort out the real villains from the rest.

InGen_Nate_Kenny

Hopefully this new approach gives some good tangible results.

Happy that the new CEO recognizes some of the issues the games have had and wants to improve on it.

prink34320

Wow, this makes me feel like the voices of the fans will be heard with both ears from now on, I'm a little disappointed that we won't seemingly be getting a DC or Marvel universe within Telltale but I like the sound of them focusing on what they've done best in the past, I just hope they don't exclusively make gritty games because Tales from the Borderlands was a success in itself with the strong focus on comedy.

This actually made me feel excited about the Final Season of TWD, here's to hoping that things will get better.

Johro

I just hope they don't exclusively make gritty games because Tales from the Borderlands was a success in itself with the strong focus on comedy.

TFTB was a pleasant surprise since it was developed in the last year that some of the classic TTG comedy writers were around, yet none of them were involved(both assumptions purely based on writing credits; I know some credited writers of past/pre-TWD held other positions). Adult comedy is a thing. Actually, a very popular thing right now, and I hope we do get something in the future.

Melton23

Guardians of the galaxy is marvel and we got that

lupinb0y

I think he means we probably won't get more Marvel/DC games by Telltale aside from Batman and Guardians.

SolidNemesisX97

Does that mean no more Batman and Guardians or something?

lupinb0y

I think Batman will probably continue because of how well received it is. Probably won't get another Guardians though.

Creeper1846

This new CEO knows what he’s talking about. The games are the same thing almost all the time and I’m glad this CEO is here. So I’m hoping to expect greater consequences and more gameplay mechanics like the combat in story mode s2 and that scene in TWD s1 ep 3 where you basically snipe all the bandits.