Job Stauffer interview with gamesindustry.biz - more hints at Telltale's future
Blind Sniper
Moderator
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2017-10-12-telltale-we-have-yet-to-tackle-a-romantic-comedy
Here are some interesting excerpts of particular sections:
Telltale Publishing:
"On top of the stuff we've already announced for 2018, there will be more partner publishing projects throughout the rest of next year. Multiple titles coming from Telltale Publishing that look nothing like a Telltale game, play nothing like a Telltale game, but are games that Telltale love to play."
Changes in Episode format/release schedule/etc for future series, starting with Wolf Among Us S2/The Walking Dead S4:
Yet one of the fundamental things that we'll see from Telltale going forward is the change in how its games are played. The studio suffers the same issue that many developers face when creating iterative titles - the notion that its games are 'all the same'. Games like FIFA or the LEGO titles are updated and improved gradually over time, and changes are not always noticed by players.
Stauffer tells us that the 2018 line-up, including The Walking Dead Season 4 and The Wolf Among Us Season 2, will offer a change in the format that has made the studio famous - and not just in how the games are played.
"It's on our agenda for the next year to push our format forward with bigger, bolder changes than you're used to," he tells us. "You will see that evolve over the next few projects. We're committed to that. It's exciting to really have so many passionate creatives in the studio right now, thinking about how to push Telltale forward. And we have these three incredible franchises to evolve the format with."
He concludes: "There's nothing we can talk about yet, but it will be iterative. So you might see changes between episodes in current seasons. By the end of 2018, the format of a Telltale game could look fundamentally different from what it does now, even going down to how we release stuff.
"Right now we release five episodes at a time, piece-by-piece every four or six weeks. The very nature of how we release our series could have changed by 2018. The release structure of these two projects [Wolf Among Us and Walking Dead] could be very different to what we have for Batman.
Comments
Oh, so now they'll release episodes every 8 weeks. Dope!
tho I wonder what they really mean
I think they mean we will never get a 3 month episodes being made. I like it and I can't wait for The Wolf Among Us Season 2!
YES!! Any news regarding their original IP is good for me. (Considering we might not see it until 2019)... I've been waiting years after that announcement, Telltale. I want more.
Okay... intrigued even though I don't own one...
Hmm... could this mean we see other seasons be various lengths? (more or less than 5 episodes?) It would help them shape a season to include exactly the right amount content, rather than wrapping things up too quickly or too late.
Please Telltale, please don't do a romantic comedy.
That was A New Frontier
So many words without really saying anything
Ugh. why why why why why why why.
I am all for them wanting to update and grow and yada yada yada... but why do they do it to an already existing story? If it worked before WHY are you going to change it? WHY are you going to change a continuing story?? IF ITS NOT BROKEN DO NOT FIX IT
Sigh why bother. They don't listen.
I agree with your last point whole heartedly. I've been waiting for TTG to abandon the concept of 5 90-minute episodes. I would love for them to truly treat each season differently. One season might need 7-8 smaller episodes where another might need 4 or 5 larger episodes. Each game release should have its own unique episodic length, quantity, and style. I'm sure that probably is a pre-production nightmare, but I feel like that would better allow season to flow organically and naturally. TV is moving away from the standard cable syndication. It only seems natural for TTG to follow that same idea.
While it may not be broken, the standard TellTale way isn't a cookbook solution for every situation. TWD: S2 to me was the first game to show it had its flaws. Other games have shown its faults as well. TTG diversifying the way they do games is the best way for them to stay fresh and innovative. I think doing it to existing series is perfectly fine. It's not like they are rebooting or doing a retcon for their series. They are just telling it differently. Why not? If the story and gameplay work together with its own unique format, I don't think fans will have an issue in the long run. I bet TWAU and TWD fans would rather have TTG change their format to bring a top notch gaming and story telling experience than to force everything into the same mold. They did it once when they switched it up for TWD (I'm not sure if Jurassic Park started it before TWD), they sure can do it again.
side note: yeah... TWD was a new franchise, but still. I'll take a new format if it means a better TTG product.
I agree. I feel like they're holding themselves back a bit by sticking to the same format for all these different franchises.
They've made it work out fine so far, but sometimes things need a bit more time of story, others maybe less.
Cool....didn't understand shit but cool dawg
I wish I can upvote this more than once.
...Well that's like-- I don't even know how to-- How can you have an opinion on something you don't understand?!
I'm gonna play the entire game again and treat it as you've described it. Who knows, maybe i've just missed it's hidden genius XD
Sounds like:
and that's just going off what's listed in this thread (I have too many tabs open)
Drugs
To get a better product they would need to make a new engine and we all know that's not happening.
How did you get any of that from something so ambiguous?
From a technical side, yes. A new engine whole help to prevent the glitches and snafus in TTG when they are released (and minimize post-release patches and updates). I also believe I've heard that some past and/or present TTG employees think their current engine is cumbersome and difficult to use. However from a story creation and telling standpoint, a new engine won't really fix that. Both would be ideal, but I rather have a good TellTale game in an old engine than a great visual experience with an unimpressive story. To many fans, I probably just explained the difference between TWD: S1 and TWD: ANF and their issue. But we fans have our own individual wants unique from one another, so it is what it is.
How can I play the story game if my game can even start up due to the engine being completely broken. If youre going to continue a story (season 2 and season 4) why completely change everything? Just continue things the same for the most part, not make it unrecognizable. Makes no sense. All they're gonna do is add some things here and there to make fans think they're "changing" and being "innovative" and "bettering their engine" but the only way any of those things can happen is if they make a new one.
Same thing happened with season three. They updated and changed and fed us all the shit about how everything will run better. All that ended up happening was people were begging to go back to the previous style and how their games are even more broken.
They can add on, update and tease all this "our games wont be recognizable" shit all they want, until they make a new engine, the games will always be shit and broken. So changing the way they do things with their current engine will fix nothing. Teasing "Our games will change" will fix nothing. Adding more shit on top of a broken engine will only make it run worse.
You can build a new house on bad foundation all you want. It might look pretty and new, but the root of it will always be broken.
All of their current menu layouts seem to only support 5 episodes (Batman 1&2, Guardians, Frontier, MCSM 2) and they seem to be adding episodes to accommodate for the complaints about the games being too short while not losing money from jamming more time into $5 episodes while also keeping to strict one-month schedules. They could also be changing how they advertise their games, as an aside.
Hardcore drugs?
I don't like this whole shorter episode but more episode nonsense Job talked about a while back. I don't really care for how many episodes it is, only that they are at least 90-100 minutes. If the story takes 3 episodes with that length I stated, or 7 episodes with that length doesn't matter to me.
Would be fine with me.
Even though the monthly releases are nice, once Telltale finally went to do monthly, a lot of the quality went down. Like Tales from the Borderlands took forever between episodes but they were all good, and even games like Wolf where episode 4 was really weak compared to the others, it was mostly just due to time and not that actual quality. We look at Telltale today and it seems like after GOT and Tales when they started releasing everything monthly, a lot of the quality began to dip, so I hope they go back to just releasing whenever the episode is ready, instead of just as fast as possible.
Oh boy, are Telltale going to finally start making actually games that can be played and not extremely long cut scenes poorly imitating the most inanely structured films with only occasional button prompts that act as thinly veiled "choices" with no real consequence?
This is some exciting news, no doubt. ( ° ʖ °)
Don't know where some of ya'll are getting the idea that this means shorter episodes. All I see is Job saying that the games'll play differently from their usual style and that the release format will be different.
Well if you do, you have to tell us how it went.
No. Other people are going to make games, and Telltale is going to help them distribute it with their Telltale Publishing team. It's not "their" games, but "games they support".
Examples of current Telltale Published games:
The Walking Dead Season 1 only supported 5 episodes in its menu. When 400 Days came along, they added one more slide to the menu for the Extra Episode. They can still use their "Netflix-Style" menu while having more than 5 episodes. They can simply extend the count of episodes to the right of the screen, and you'd need to scroll past that point to get to them. Simple. Plus, Batman S1 had 7 episodes of its "Batman Unmasked" aftershow planned (as evidenced by the menu), and they extended the menu bar for that.
Where was that? So far they've still got 5 episodes per season, and all we know is that "the way we distribute them" may change. Whether or not that means more or less episodes... we'll see.
Where did you get that from? If anything, the Netflix menu could probably lend itself to supporting more episodes. It's not hard to update the code of a menu to add in, say, 8 episodes instead of 5. Even the older games did this before the Netflix style menu system.
Telltale drugs
Yeah, I don't know. There's much assuming on here, and I think it has to do with how some felt with GOT, ANF, and/or the glitches in Batman. It's not the internet without over assumption through extreme bias, though.
I am getting a feeling that the current TellTale model will be as strict and definite as before. It seems like Job is hinting at them not mapping out and releasing episodes the same way every time. Then again like I mentioned before, that's through my bias lens (my TTG experience has been ok, so I'm more optimistic than others on here). We won't know what's really going on until either TTG releases more info or the 2018 lineup releases.
Ugh. Please TT, get your shit together before you release a game instead of relying what shit sticks to the board. As a gamer, there's no reason I shouldn't have expected the E3 trailer even somewhat resemble what the game would be. And then Clem got more screen time in a damn trailer and I struggled through two episodes of Xavier whining about things and people I wasn't there for. I can't think of another game franchise that fucks up this bad because of constant rewrites and second guessing between the announcement and the actual launch. Please, get it together.
Probably from Job stating that they're imitating movies. Because most movies have seasons of entries. Instead of trying to end on a solid fucking note, unlike a tv show that has 20 or such episodes. Fail, all away around here.