Fucking knew it; it was inevitable considering how their new games have been doing recently. Hopefully the new CEO makes some major changes.
Main points for the lazy people: “The realities of the environment we face moving forward demand we evolve, as well, reorienting our organization with a focus on delivering fewer, better games with a smaller team.”
Telltale also said it plans to move its internal development “over to more proven technologies that will fast-track innovation in its core products.” The developer didn’t specify which technology it will be pursuing, but Telltale has received criticism for the technical performance of its products for years.
The restructuring is “not expected to impact the release of any of the company’s previously announced projects,” Telltale said.
https://twitter.com/patrickklepek/status/927981715389341696
Probably Unity. UE4 would be preferable I think, but at least Unity is still miles better than their crap engine.
If that's true, I wonder how they're going to publish games on mobile. Does this mean they'll stop publishing games on mobile? Because if yes, then they could finally focus on gameplay and such properly for actual gaming devices.
https://twitter.com/patrickklepek/status/927981715389341696
Probably Unity. UE4 would be preferable I think, but at least Unity is still miles better than their crap engine.
Job, can you reassure us that the company is still healthy?
Very worried about this company's future... Bruner leaved, along with Shorette, Lenart, Herman and others leaved by choice.... and now 25% fired. And the rest of employees bummed and not happy, and probably willing to find a better and stable company.
2 project announced and they are only marketable sequels (and one is the final season) and the Supershow and Game of Thrones are on hold with no concrete plan about them.
Really worried that this company will sink after 2 bad sequels on 2018.
They fired the complete procedural narrative team.
This means that among other things they fired alspo the most experimental side of their work... so further innovations and evolutions of gameplay will be unlikely....
Expected this a lot sooner after the horrific sales of GOTG. They were really banking on that being a heavy hitter but it was a big swing and a miss. As far as a new engine goes, I'd rather they don't go with Unity. It's not bad on it's own but if they really want to 'innovate' then they should really go with Unreal. There's a lot more options available there.
If that's true, I wonder how they're going to publish games on mobile. Does this mean they'll stop publishing games on mobile? Because if yes, then they could finally focus on gameplay and such properly for actual gaming devices.
With Telltale new crappy engine that makes the games crash, releasing 2-3 games per year, receiving poor sales from Guardians of the Galaxy, lying to Walking Dead fans and rushing A New Frontier resulting Telltale employees leaving the company and firing 25% of the group, we all know Telltale is not doing well. You can't have good expectations on their latest games after what they have done so far.
Yes, by all means, move to a better 3rd party engine (prefferable unreal), because yours was crappy since the beginning. I've been buying games since Walking Dead season 1, which I loved, but technically wasn't exactly impressive (disappointing even).
You need to hire [i]more[/i] programmers, who know the ins and outs of your new engine, and can make sure you release a game that works 99% of the time. And who can incorporate more actual gameplay in your games.
You need to hire [i]more[/i] artists, so you can finally step away from the same artstyle you've been using for every game I've bought. I mean, sometimes it suited the franchise, but it becomes tiring to see it every fucking time. You need to make sure you take advantages of the new engine and make something that's visually interesting again.
You need to hire [i]more[/i] writers. So that instead of games getting shorter each time, they become longer, filled with all sorts of great and variable dialogue. So that stories remain great. So that you can include more branches, and choices which actually matter, not just for variable dialogues.
I've bought the Walking dead season 3 (and haven't even played it yet because I can't import my savefile), but unless things change, season 4 will be the last game I'm buying (unless you make a season 2 of Borderlands, but I suspect that's not going to happen). Batman and Guardians of the Galaxy should have gotten me excited, and should've been instant pre-orders, but I don't care anymore, so I didn't buy them. The quality has been going down for years.
So I've already stopped buying your games, I only bought season 3 of Walking Dead because I was already invested in the story, and I will buy season 4 because I want to finish it. I guess you can say I stopped being a fan. I'm coming here out of courtesy, because I hope you will change your ways, and make great games again. You have structurally been doing certain things wrong for years, but firing those people is the wrong anwser. Mark my words. Unless you're do a 180 with regards to how you do business, Telltale game will be finished within a few years, and than it'll be just one of many studios who have closed. With the difference that, since you're independant, you've only got yourself to blame.
This does not bode well.
I agree with others, this will hopefully make them do more quality work on a smaller number of titles.
However, I can't lie. I think Telltale's improved quite a lot over the past 6 months. Guardians (while a forum cult-hit) did not sell well, but has a lot of work put into it.
Hopefully this leads to an even better Telltale down the line. For now, this is kinda worrisome.
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Might be easier actually. There is literally a tab built into unity and unreal to select which platform you want to export to. Not sure what engine they currently use but I assume they built it from the ground up years ago, so their current engine might not be as user friendly.
You can look at this as a bad decision or a good decision for Telltale. Fewer employees means the games might be better since they don’t have a bunch of writers working on one episode of one of their games (ANF). Or this can be bad because the games can also get even worse and many of the workers just lost their jobs.
Doesn’t matter to me because I’ll probably distance myself from Telltale for a long time after I play The Final Season Of TWD And TWAU2
I mean...Are we really surprised? What, Telltale, the company that got its first big hit only in 2012 and decided to squander that money on hiring a whole new bunch of staff, didn't innovate their engine, didn't do anything and has been just falling off track ever since, are facing financial difficulties? Shocker.
Instead of working on Game of Thrones in prep for the new season, they announced the second season of Batman. The only reason Minecraft has been going ahead is because it makes them a ton of money (I mean let's be real, they add 3 episodes for Season 1 and then go full board for Season 2). Their only good games after were The Wolf Among Us and Tales From The Borderlands.
Any other game has been mediocre, with some good moments or complete disasters (see: The Walking Dead: A New Frontier).
Honestly, I feel terrible for the people who were laid off and generally most staff at Telltale Games (I see those Glassdoor reviews), but maybe some good can come from this. Otherwise, give it five years and I won't be surprised if Telltale is no more.
I feel for those whom lost their jobs and wish them a speedy hiring.
It's nice to see so many companies posting available positions to the former Telltale employees. It's not nice to know that 99% of them require relocation. I hate moving.
Editorial biased non-sense incoming.
That said, I felt a change was needed as well. Not necessarily the people. I'm not one of the people whom hate 9/10 of the writing staff. The engine has been a constant issue and so has the watering down of content. You lose that excitement with the model they've been running. You don't have that "Telltale has a new game coming out!" when there is ALWAYS a new game out. I could see doing a couple major games with maybe some smaller projects sprinkled in.
I also don't see Telltale going anywhere any time soon. They don't have a parent to shut them down when they're seen as less profitable and they have survived almost a decade with fewer staff prior to a massive expansion. I wouldn't worry.
If that's true, I wonder how they're going to publish games on mobile. Does this mean they'll stop publishing games on mobile? Because if yes, then they could finally focus on gameplay and such properly for actual gaming devices.
https://twitter.com/patrickklepek/status/927981715389341696
Probably Unity. UE4 would be preferable I think, but at least Unity is still miles better than their crap engine.
Wow. I hope he finds success in finding work somewhere else. Strange to see him go, considering he's been the main communicator between the company and fans for a while.
...I don't want to sound too harsh, but I hope that with this restructuring of Telltale we get more transparency. Job's promotion and teases of projects from Telltale were kinda misleading, only due to the fact that it was purposely vague (but part of this may be fans' expectations being too high). But the truth may be that it's probably because he was restricted in what he could and could not say about such products, leading to wording that hinted at things in any direction.
Wow. I hope he finds success in finding work somewhere else. Strange to see him go, considering he's been the main communicator between the … morecompany and fans for a while.
...I don't want to sound too harsh, but I hope that with this restructuring of Telltale we get more transparency. Job's promotion and teases of projects from Telltale were kinda misleading, only due to the fact that it was purposely vague (but part of this may be fans' expectations being too high). But the truth may be that it's probably because he was restricted in what he could and could not say about such products, leading to wording that hinted at things in any direction.
Things looked so promising for TT after TWD S1. GoT episode 5 (Nest of Vipers) is where I think the decline began. My biggest fear is the company being bought out by another publisher (cough EA). Hopefully that won't happen now.
Things looked so promising for TT after TWD S1. GoT episode 5 (Nest of Vipers) is where I think the decline began. My biggest fear is the company being bought out by another publisher (cough EA). Hopefully that won't happen now.
That can actually be a good thing. Look back at what Job Stauffer did in the past. You have to understand that the guy did literally nothing except: 1)play new episodes abd teasing them on his twitter 2)say that telltale are all about choicea and stuff (being a lazy promotioner)
It's a good change, now that he won't be taking money from the company for doing literally nothing
Please be respectful of personal boundaries of staff, past and present. Criticizing content is OK but please don't make personally charged comments singling out current or former staff.
That can actually be a good thing. Look back at what Job Stauffer did in the past. You have to understand that the guy did literally nothing… more except: 1)play new episodes abd teasing them on his twitter 2)say that telltale are all about choicea and stuff (being a lazy promotioner)
It's a good change, now that he won't be taking money from the company for doing literally nothing
I mean, I stopped buying their games.
I originally came onboard to buy Sam and Max, then Monkey Island. I also bought Puzzle Agent.
Telltale gave up on all of those to license franchises.
I went with Back to the Future, which was still an adventure game. Never got touched again by the company.
They went more narrative, and I enjoyed Walking Dead tremendously, as did countless people.
But then all the Telltale games started to feel... samesy. Predictable, with no new innovations in gameplay. The last game I bought and truly enjoyed was Tales from the Borderlands, but that was because of the music and humor. There wasn't anything gameplay wise that would have kept me around, just the writing was so good, and that was a universe I'd never explored before.
Game of Thrones? Already saturated in it. Minecraft? Boring. I bought the first Batman game, but I felt it was so lackluster, with only basic variations on what we'd already seen plenty of in their other games, that I didn't bother with the sequel.
The cool stuff they used to have in their store is gone. I still remember how awesome some of the merch was.
It's like they got hyperfocused on sharpening multiple, big franchise titles I only had a little interest in to use poor gameplay mechanics and hope the story carried the games. Except... the stories didn't. I never felt the writing got better after Wolf Among Us. It really just felt worse and worse, and in combination with everything else wrong... I was no longer motivated to buy their games. I still remembering buying the Michonne Walking Dead game and thinking... if this series hasn't changed, if Telltale isn't doing anything new, I'm not going to bother with Season 3. And I didn't.
So, I obviously feel terrible for people losing their jobs, but no company can stay stagnant without dying the slow death.
No wonder they cancelled Amy Hennig's Star Wars linear single player game and will turn it into a Destiny style game. They also said that they didn't cancel it because it was single player, it was because it was a specific choice. How can someone still support them?
I'm as shocked as many of you folks, but it seems to me many are jumping to conclusions right now. 90 people laid off – in 2010, that would have been the entire company. So the company exploded during the last five years, evidently NOT to its benefit. Scaling back may be the right step. Of course, there are some people now gone that I dearly love/loved during the subjective "good times" before TWD struck, people that made Telltale for me. Then again, a lot of people that "made" Telltale for me left even before or during 2012.
As someone who really wishes to work for Telltale, this news is very frightening. For the past year I have been going through college with a clear idea in mind to one day join Telltale's writing team to help make great games. But with this giant layoff it really frightens me as to whether or not Telltale will still be around in the next three years when I graduate. As many here are saying however, I do feel that perhaps the layoff was necessary, and that a smaller team with a focus on fewer, but higher quality games may be necessary if the company is to survive. Although I have fairly enjoyed many of Telltale's work recently which others have despised (Michonne, New Frontier, Minecraft, and Guardians), I will admit that most of these game's quality has been lower than that of several pre-GOT Telltale games (Borderlands, TWD Seasons 1 and 2, and TWAU Season 1) and their profits have suffered as a result. I can only hope this layoff will strengthen the company and not be a sign of its downfall.
Comments
Fucking knew it; it was inevitable considering how their new games have been doing recently. Hopefully the new CEO makes some major changes.
Main points for the lazy people:
“The realities of the environment we face moving forward demand we evolve, as well, reorienting our organization with a focus on delivering fewer, better games with a smaller team.”
Telltale also said it plans to move its internal development “over to more proven technologies that will fast-track innovation in its core products.” The developer didn’t specify which technology it will be pursuing, but Telltale has received criticism for the technical performance of its products for years.
The restructuring is “not expected to impact the release of any of the company’s previously announced projects,” Telltale said.
Quality over quantity.
Probably Unity. UE4 would be preferable I think, but at least Unity is still miles better than their crap engine.
This tweet was liked byJob Stauffer. Maybe there's a point in it.
If that's true, I wonder how they're going to publish games on mobile. Does this mean they'll stop publishing games on mobile? Because if yes, then they could finally focus on gameplay and such properly for actual gaming devices.
Job, can you reassure us that the company is still healthy?
Very worried about this company's future... Bruner leaved, along with Shorette, Lenart, Herman and others leaved by choice.... and now 25% fired. And the rest of employees bummed and not happy, and probably willing to find a better and stable company.
2 project announced and they are only marketable sequels (and one is the final season) and the Supershow and Game of Thrones are on hold with no concrete plan about them.
Really worried that this company will sink after 2 bad sequels on 2018.
They fired the complete procedural narrative team.
This means that among other things they fired alspo the most experimental side of their work... so further innovations and evolutions of gameplay will be unlikely....
Welp, no high hopes for TWD and TWAU anymore.
Expected this a lot sooner after the horrific sales of GOTG. They were really banking on that being a heavy hitter but it was a big swing and a miss. As far as a new engine goes, I'd rather they don't go with Unity. It's not bad on it's own but if they really want to 'innovate' then they should really go with Unreal. There's a lot more options available there.
Nope, I seriously doubt that. I'm pretty sure that Unity supports mobile rather well.
Yeah but I'm pretty sure it'll be harder to port their games since their old engine allowed for easy porting.
With Telltale new crappy engine that makes the games crash, releasing 2-3 games per year, receiving poor sales from Guardians of the Galaxy, lying to Walking Dead fans and rushing A New Frontier resulting Telltale employees leaving the company and firing 25% of the group, we all know Telltale is not doing well. You can't have good expectations on their latest games after what they have done so far.
NO.
You need to hire [i]more[/i] people.
Yes, by all means, move to a better 3rd party engine (prefferable unreal), because yours was crappy since the beginning. I've been buying games since Walking Dead season 1, which I loved, but technically wasn't exactly impressive (disappointing even).
You need to hire [i]more[/i] programmers, who know the ins and outs of your new engine, and can make sure you release a game that works 99% of the time. And who can incorporate more actual gameplay in your games.
You need to hire [i]more[/i] artists, so you can finally step away from the same artstyle you've been using for every game I've bought. I mean, sometimes it suited the franchise, but it becomes tiring to see it every fucking time. You need to make sure you take advantages of the new engine and make something that's visually interesting again.
You need to hire [i]more[/i] writers. So that instead of games getting shorter each time, they become longer, filled with all sorts of great and variable dialogue. So that stories remain great. So that you can include more branches, and choices which actually matter, not just for variable dialogues.
I've bought the Walking dead season 3 (and haven't even played it yet because I can't import my savefile), but unless things change, season 4 will be the last game I'm buying (unless you make a season 2 of Borderlands, but I suspect that's not going to happen). Batman and Guardians of the Galaxy should have gotten me excited, and should've been instant pre-orders, but I don't care anymore, so I didn't buy them. The quality has been going down for years.
So I've already stopped buying your games, I only bought season 3 of Walking Dead because I was already invested in the story, and I will buy season 4 because I want to finish it. I guess you can say I stopped being a fan. I'm coming here out of courtesy, because I hope you will change your ways, and make great games again. You have structurally been doing certain things wrong for years, but firing those people is the wrong anwser. Mark my words. Unless you're do a 180 with regards to how you do business, Telltale game will be finished within a few years, and than it'll be just one of many studios who have closed. With the difference that, since you're independant, you've only got yourself to blame.
This does not bode well.
I agree with others, this will hopefully make them do more quality work on a smaller number of titles.
However, I can't lie. I think Telltale's improved quite a lot over the past 6 months. Guardians (while a forum cult-hit) did not sell well, but has a lot of work put into it.
Hopefully this leads to an even better Telltale down the line. For now, this is kinda worrisome.
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Might be easier actually. There is literally a tab built into unity and unreal to select which platform you want to export to. Not sure what engine they currently use but I assume they built it from the ground up years ago, so their current engine might not be as user friendly.
Hopefully that "fewer better games" line is legitimate and not just trying to save face.
You can look at this as a bad decision or a good decision for Telltale. Fewer employees means the games might be better since they don’t have a bunch of writers working on one episode of one of their games (ANF). Or this can be bad because the games can also get even worse and many of the workers just lost their jobs.
Doesn’t matter to me because I’ll probably distance myself from Telltale for a long time after I play The Final Season Of TWD And TWAU2
If any Telltale employees are reading this, directly affected or not, you're in my thoughts. This sort of thing is not easy on anyone.
(Though if someone runs off to start a new company with a Sam & Max adventure, please let me know.)
I mean...Are we really surprised? What, Telltale, the company that got its first big hit only in 2012 and decided to squander that money on hiring a whole new bunch of staff, didn't innovate their engine, didn't do anything and has been just falling off track ever since, are facing financial difficulties? Shocker.
Instead of working on Game of Thrones in prep for the new season, they announced the second season of Batman. The only reason Minecraft has been going ahead is because it makes them a ton of money (I mean let's be real, they add 3 episodes for Season 1 and then go full board for Season 2). Their only good games after were The Wolf Among Us and Tales From The Borderlands.
Any other game has been mediocre, with some good moments or complete disasters (see: The Walking Dead: A New Frontier).
Honestly, I feel terrible for the people who were laid off and generally most staff at Telltale Games (I see those Glassdoor reviews), but maybe some good can come from this. Otherwise, give it five years and I won't be surprised if Telltale is no more.
It looks like @puzzlebox is now gone. I don't know if she was part of the layoff or snuck out earlier, but it feels like the end of an era.
She's been gone since she took maternity leave earlier in the year.
I was going to say she was on Maternity Leave, but I checked her Twitter to prove this, and Laura is indeed gone from Telltale.
https://twitter.com/lauraperusco?lang=en
...yowza, seems Job Stauffer is also gone.
Hold on... I need to see this with my own eyes. Where does it say this?
https://twitter.com/jobjstauffer
"Veteran of Telltale". I didn't expect Job to be one of the ones to go...
I feel for those whom lost their jobs and wish them a speedy hiring.
It's nice to see so many companies posting available positions to the former Telltale employees. It's not nice to know that 99% of them require relocation. I hate moving.
Editorial biased non-sense incoming.
That said, I felt a change was needed as well. Not necessarily the people. I'm not one of the people whom hate 9/10 of the writing staff. The engine has been a constant issue and so has the watering down of content. You lose that excitement with the model they've been running. You don't have that "Telltale has a new game coming out!" when there is ALWAYS a new game out. I could see doing a couple major games with maybe some smaller projects sprinkled in.
I also don't see Telltale going anywhere any time soon. They don't have a parent to shut them down when they're seen as less profitable and they have survived almost a decade with fewer staff prior to a massive expansion. I wouldn't worry.
Unity works on mobile.
Probably both...I have some thoughts on this situation below
Wow. I hope he finds success in finding work somewhere else. Strange to see him go, considering he's been the main communicator between the company and fans for a while.
...I don't want to sound too harsh, but I hope that with this restructuring of Telltale we get more transparency. Job's promotion and teases of projects from Telltale were kinda misleading, only due to the fact that it was purposely vague (but part of this may be fans' expectations being too high). But the truth may be that it's probably because he was restricted in what he could and could not say about such products, leading to wording that hinted at things in any direction.
Well, the good news is that Twitter has 280 characters now, so Twitter teasers don't have to be as vague.
They'll just add the Spanish translation now.
Things looked so promising for TT after TWD S1. GoT episode 5 (Nest of Vipers) is where I think the decline began. My biggest fear is the company being bought out by another publisher (cough EA). Hopefully that won't happen now.
EA only cares about multiplayer...no worries.
That can actually be a good thing. Look back at what Job Stauffer did in the past. You have to understand that the guy did literally nothing except: 1)play new episodes abd teasing them on his twitter 2)say that telltale are all about choicea and stuff (being a lazy promotioner)
It's a good change, now that he won't be taking money from the company for doing literally nothing
Please be respectful of personal boundaries of staff, past and present. Criticizing content is OK but please don't make personally charged comments singling out current or former staff.
Welcome to the John Riccitiello's machine.
Doubtful that TTG will ever be the same.
Sad news. Goodbye Job.
I mean, I stopped buying their games.
I originally came onboard to buy Sam and Max, then Monkey Island. I also bought Puzzle Agent.
Telltale gave up on all of those to license franchises.
I went with Back to the Future, which was still an adventure game. Never got touched again by the company.
They went more narrative, and I enjoyed Walking Dead tremendously, as did countless people.
But then all the Telltale games started to feel... samesy. Predictable, with no new innovations in gameplay. The last game I bought and truly enjoyed was Tales from the Borderlands, but that was because of the music and humor. There wasn't anything gameplay wise that would have kept me around, just the writing was so good, and that was a universe I'd never explored before.
Game of Thrones? Already saturated in it. Minecraft? Boring. I bought the first Batman game, but I felt it was so lackluster, with only basic variations on what we'd already seen plenty of in their other games, that I didn't bother with the sequel.
The cool stuff they used to have in their store is gone. I still remember how awesome some of the merch was.
It's like they got hyperfocused on sharpening multiple, big franchise titles I only had a little interest in to use poor gameplay mechanics and hope the story carried the games. Except... the stories didn't. I never felt the writing got better after Wolf Among Us. It really just felt worse and worse, and in combination with everything else wrong... I was no longer motivated to buy their games. I still remembering buying the Michonne Walking Dead game and thinking... if this series hasn't changed, if Telltale isn't doing anything new, I'm not going to bother with Season 3. And I didn't.
So, I obviously feel terrible for people losing their jobs, but no company can stay stagnant without dying the slow death.
No wonder they cancelled Amy Hennig's Star Wars linear single player game and will turn it into a Destiny style game. They also said that they didn't cancel it because it was single player, it was because it was a specific choice. How can someone still support them?
EA= 500 Sins
I'm as shocked as many of you folks, but it seems to me many are jumping to conclusions right now. 90 people laid off – in 2010, that would have been the entire company. So the company exploded during the last five years, evidently NOT to its benefit. Scaling back may be the right step. Of course, there are some people now gone that I dearly love/loved during the subjective "good times" before TWD struck, people that made Telltale for me. Then again, a lot of people that "made" Telltale for me left even before or during 2012.
So basically, wait and see.
As someone who really wishes to work for Telltale, this news is very frightening. For the past year I have been going through college with a clear idea in mind to one day join Telltale's writing team to help make great games. But with this giant layoff it really frightens me as to whether or not Telltale will still be around in the next three years when I graduate. As many here are saying however, I do feel that perhaps the layoff was necessary, and that a smaller team with a focus on fewer, but higher quality games may be necessary if the company is to survive. Although I have fairly enjoyed many of Telltale's work recently which others have despised (Michonne, New Frontier, Minecraft, and Guardians), I will admit that most of these game's quality has been lower than that of several pre-GOT Telltale games (Borderlands, TWD Seasons 1 and 2, and TWAU Season 1) and their profits have suffered as a result. I can only hope this layoff will strengthen the company and not be a sign of its downfall.