Ex CEO Kevin Bruner: "Crunch was 'Necessary' To Keep Company Afloat'
Basically he blamed the crunch on the fact that they didn't have the budget to give the employees any leeway at all.
Translation: We spent too much money on too many deals, expensive voice actors, and weird features we couldn't afford, so we had to force the employees to work 80 hour weeks, and STILL couldn't update our engine or make choices matter.
Sign in to comment in this discussion.
Comments
The dude was, and continues to be, a narcissistic, self-serving, egotistical dumbass who destroyed the very thing he helped create because of his own incompetency and greed. He may have helped build Telltale, but there is nothing good I can say about this man after what's he done and what he's said. The only reason I hope he continues to make excuses and spout drivel like this is so his name because synonymous with failure, that his name becomes a cancer in the industry like Uwe Boll is to movies. No one hire this man, no one support him so that, especially if he were to achieve some sort of success again, no one else has to suffer under his "leadership." He has learned nothing, and by the time the management finally decided to get rid of him, it was already too late.
To this day, and I will continue to say it for the future, Pete Hawley tried everything he could to save the company. We might criticize him for the initial layoffs and such, but it was a necessary move to try and keep the company afloat when the ship was sinking rapidly. Hawley did not have an enviable task, but goddamn did he try to fix things, and for the better. I can't speak in regards to crunch time as there's not enough information on that, but the treatment of workers did seem to improve, costs were cut, not as many titles were being taken on, growth was suspended, quality had returned, and they were prepared to take the next step into the future and innovate. I've heard the ideas that Kent Mudle and others have said in regards to the future of the company. It went beyond just using Unity and a new dialogue system like we saw in TuB, it was a step away from the repetitive Telltale formula. It could have changed the way people thought when they heard a Telltale game. But no, because incompetent and soul crushing management, that constantly failed to live up to any ethical standards in its treatment of workers, fans, and investors, had effectively destroyed the company.
I cannot believe how quick the quality went up either. Almost immediately after Hawley took over we got Batman: Enemy Within and Final Season, both of these games easily being among the best of Telltales. Not only that but the communication between the devs and fans was so much better! It legitimately felt like they were taking and applying feedback. If the company did end up continuing I feel like we would have gotten a new golden age of Telltale.
Do you know what the other plans were besides the switch in engine and dialogue systems?
Kent Mudle briefly touches upon some of this stuff in an interview with Gamespot.
I know he’s talked about it a bit more somewhere, but for some reason, I can’t find it.
Hawley could have done a better job in his short time as CEO, but I wonder who the mysterious investor that pulled out at the last second was. Also a shame that sales for TFS were so low.
In the Stranger Things game, there would have been First Person gameplay, with new UI, as well as running and hiding segments that goes beyond QTEs and keeping players truly engaged.
I never said he was perfect, but he did the best he could with the hand he was dealt with. I know both AMC and Smilegate decided not to invest the day before Telltale shut down, and Lionsgate stopped with their investment because Telltale had pretty much failed to uphold their end of the agreement (no Super Show, no original IP).
Those likes tho
Why are we living in this world full of terrible humans like him?
This is really the darkest timeline. What a shame. Wish I could go back to 2012-2014, that was such a good time period for me thanks to TTG and this community (helped me get through my first year of university, wish I had been more active here, fuck being shy). After ANF it was so hard to give a damn anymore, then with Batman TEW I started believing again, only to be soul-crushed mid TFS.
Seeing this guy behaving like that, pretty much single handedly killing the company, then spitting on its corpse, makes my blood boil. No shame, no remorse, hope he gets the taste of his own medicine one day.
All that is left is a tiny shred of hope that even though this chapter's closed, something new can rise from the ashes in the future. Fat chance with how impossible it seems to be able to profit from these games, but dreaming is all i can do at this point.
2006-2009 was when times were sweet. Raving to crazy frog and getting a whole lot of club penguin girlfriends, the early 2000’s we’re fine living.
My thoughts exactly,2012-2014 truly was a golden era
The worse thing about telltale being gone is that there's no other company like them who make good episodic games hopefully another company like Adhoc Studio learns from their mistakes and start making games like telltale did in the future somehow.
I think it's still possible to profit from these games as long as you get some good writers stick to one vision,don't take 10 months to make an episode and listen to what your players want.
I think the thing that destroyed Telltale wasn't that these style of games couldn't be profitable (the years before TWD S1 proved that they could be, and with relatively smaller sales numbers that were less than what they were doing at the time of the shutdown), but leadership that held the sales of TWD S1 as a new standard, and not an exception. Bruner's mentality was to just recreate TWD S1 with all of their subsequent games, and originally, it sort of worked, but people eventually recognized the formula, and led to deep animosity towards Telltale because people wised up to the gimmick. Telltale could have (and should have) seen this response and done something, but they didn't adapt, they kept with the same formula that was slowly killing them. It became an endless and fruitless attempt to throw darts and a dartboard and hope that one of them hits. Bruner and management's mentality was to keep releasing games and hope that one would have the numbers of TWD S1 and reap in the profit. Hence why they kept taking on so many projects, why they continued to hire and grow the company to unsustainable numbers. It's why games like TWAU or TWD S2, which sold very well, didn't even make profits, the rising costs that crippled the company.
I think you're seeing something similar at Dontnod/Square Enix with Life is Strange. The first game managed to be a huge success along the lines of TWD S1, critically and sales wise, and it managed to be an original IP and not based off of a licensed property. However, look at Life is Strange Season 2. Critically, while not as high as the first game, it's still doing well, but sales wise, it looks to be doing far worse than the previous installment. Other than new characters, it follows the same formula with little to no changes. For the diehards, they don't mind all that much, but you can't always rely on the diehards to sustain yourselves. You're also seeing larger gaps between episodes, to the point where Episode 5 won't be out until almost a full year after the first episode. It looks like Dontnod is learning the same lesson as Telltale was being taught, Telltale ignored it, will Dontnod do the same.
Bruner was a cabrón. Ask @BigBadPaul for more clarification. xo