New Variety Article on Telltale (NEW ENGINE)
A FEW BIG TAKEAWAYS
-Bruner continually shot down the idea of a partnership with Netflix as well as putting Game Of Thrones on digital platforms.
- The Final Season of TWD is expected to do worse than previous entries
- The Final Season will be the final season on the Telltale tool. Telltale will then switch to the Unity engine.
- WAU 2 had a large amount of trouble getting off the ground.
- The Telltale board is very confident in the direction the company is taking
- The company appears to be in a much better position after their deal with Netflix
- oh yeah and a REALLY BIG DEAL. since TFS will the last game using the TT tool and Stranger Things will be the first game using the Unity engine, it can be inferred that Stranger Things will hit the shelves before WAU S2 in 2019
Comments
So a few quick thoughts
-Article says that the last Telltale 'home runs' were WAU and TWD S2. Kinda interesting how Bman and Minecraft got quick sequels even though they didn't sell fantastically.
-I'm guessing the low sales predictions stems from lower preorder sales than from earlier seasons. Or Maybe the general decrease in sales the company has gone through the past few years is just expected to continue, who knows?
- Also mentions that the game that kept TT afloat during its worst period was 7 Days to Die. Funny how the game that most people have no clue has anything to do with Telltale is the thing that kept it alive
Thank god there ditching that dated engine, also nice to hear that stranger things and wolf among us 2 will utilize unity.
Hey this all sounds like good news (for the most part)! Hopefully they manage to pull all of this off.
Thanks for this.
See? I knew Telltale were doing well considering they announced they're partnering with the biggest name in streaming. (well, they're doing fine now but the lawsuit could change that)
Yikes. Worse than the smaller classics? OOF
Wow. That'll be an impressive quick reveal. First trailer footage might come with a quick release.... And if this project has been in the works for a few months already, progress lines up to being near-complete I guess (for Episode 1 at least).
Again: Wow if true.
Thanks for posting this link! This helps fill in some of the gaps in our knowledge between Telltale announcements.
I find the technical part VERY hard to believe. Batman S1 ran absolutely TERRIBLY due to the new upgraded engine. In fact, the engine was by far the biggest critism of the game by both fans and critics. I'm doubting that it somehow still ran better than TEW, which I haven't heard really anyone complain about.
I think by "worst performing" they mean "worst amount of sales, financially."
Thanks to @4k60fpsHDR's stats (where ever those are from, I forget), we know Minecraft S2 and Guardians are some of the worst selling Telltale games in a long time. I find it hard to believe Batman S2 sold terribly. He's a big icon, and I was sure it performed financially on the same level as Season 1.
Wow wasn't expecting unity to be used so soon. I guess TFS really is the lifting ground for what they plan to do with Unity, and the telltale tools final swan song. I love that engine despite how ancient it is at this point.
Also very bummed Enemy Within bombed so hard. It was such a lovingly crafted season with so much heart and love put into it.
Considering they announced the change in tool as far back as last year, I'm not that surprised that we're presumably getting it in games starting in 2019 to be honest.
(Generic Disclaimer: Moderators are only community volunteers who are not Telltale staff. This post is just my personal speculation/commentary and we don't have any insight if this is true or not...)
You think Stranger Things will be a 2019 game? I was thinking late autumn. (Oct-Nov)
It'll be coming before WAU 2 so I expect it to be in the Feb-April range
Wolf was delayed to 2019 so I just kinda subconsciously assumed that ST was also meant to be a 2019 title by association. Unless the gameplay overhauls for Wolf Season 2 are that dramatic (which I very much would not mind the extra wait for, if so), I don't see why Wolf 2 would be delayed if ST was still coming out in 2018.
Doing something as large as switching to a new engine takes a long time in video game development production, so with both that and Telltale's upcoming gameplay innovation focus in mind, I wouldn't predict Telltale games in Unity to release as soon as 2018.
Well according to Steam Spy (which is pretty reliable) TEW has sold somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000 copies, which is better than Guardians and MCSM 2, but still no where near as well as anything else post TWD. Keep in mind that with sales and free episodes, the sales numbers usually about double within a year or two, so I do expect that number to climb. It's still pretty disappointing
I think it's one of the best things Telltale has ever done.
That's true I just assumed the wolf delay wouldn't be that long into 2019 but if they are having some troubles its probs a spring title.
Yeah I’d say it sold on the same level as the first season, but those sales are still a far cry from walking dead/wolf among us numbers.
That's interesting. Unity is a great engine that's not too hard to use. I wonder how different their games will be overall? The lighting and shadows are different than the Telltale Tool.
Also, Telltale should totally release their game engine now. I've always wanted to check it out. I imagine it's specially customized for making choice-based games. Oh, how awesome.
Stranger Things was supposed to launch along with S2 of the show in fall 2017. Even if they released it today, they spent an additional 9 months on it.
And also, about those 3 games being compared to Wallace and Grommit
I introduce to you, the telltale unholy trinity!
The telltale unholy trinity consists of
Guardians of the Galaxy
Minecraft Story Mode season 2
Batman:The enemy within
The telltale holy trinity consists of (credits to @Poogers555 )
The Walking Dead
The Wolf Among Us
Tales From The Borderlanda
I think the days of Telltale releasing two game simultaneously are behind us. It looks as if they want to have more space between their games, decreasing the overall supply, thus hopefully driving up the demand, and have their PR and marketing resources fixated on one game at a time, just my speculation at least.
And this is one of the many reasons why he is (thankfully) no longer CEO. Along with poor treatment of staff, complete ineptitude when it comes to managing, and deceiving consumers, we can add "shitty business decision maker" to that list. A partnership with one of the biggest and most popular companies in the world would be a dream come true for most small companies, and he wanted nothing to do with it? How did a person with a vision so small be put in charge of anything?
SteamSpy recently changed its algorithms so that it’s no longer as accurate.
Before steamspy started making all their stats a ballpark range, It was around this. (This data was collected by me in January, after ep5 got good reviews and was put on the front page of steam, Batman s2 was around 78k)
GOTG-61k
B:TEW-58k
MCSM s2-38k (rip)
Here’s the full chart for reference
[Mod edit: Fixed image; image embeds must link to the direct image that will end in a file extension.
[User edit: Lmao the mods fixed it while I was PMing @Blind Sniper to fix it since I’m on mobile mods are confirmed gods
->unholy
->Guardians of the Galaxy.
...Real talk though that's pretty publicly accurate. (but not in my heart
)
The real unholy trinity is A New Frontier, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Minecraft Season 2. Batman S2 was when Telltale finally started to get back on track, those other 3 tho... really dark times.
ANF
GOTG
MCSM S2
B:TEW
I mean like they all sold badly, but ANF sold 4 times what The Enemy Within sold on steam.
I'd say it's both seasons of Minecraft and ANF. GOTG had problems, but it certainly was a step in the right direction, and there were some good aspects to it. There's just a lot of it that is pretty forgettable, but I wouldn't say it's one of the three worst games Telltale has ever made.
Well in terms of quality I find to be kinda more important, I mean Batman did outsell Minecraft 2 and GOTG. ANF sold cuz it was Walking Dead but thats opening another can of worms
I wouldnt say GOTG is "bad' but for the time and with every going on with Telltale is was something that wasnt looking so hot. I can go on and on about how uninspired and lazy I found GOTG though. Like really no offense to the team behind it, but it felt so bland and as if there was no passion behind it, just a cheaper version of the movies minus the fun and excitement.
They weren’t bad games per say, they all had their issues that lead to their failures
GOTG was bland and graphically unpleasing. It also had very unfunny marketing that didn’t represent the game well. Marvel did no effort to promote the game aside from the funko pops which are now being sold for 5 bucks online. You can get the rocket/lyla double pack for 6ish bucks, good deal tbh.
MCSM 2 was a terrible idea that shouldn’t have been greenlit. MCSM s1e1 came out when Minecraft was dying, and Minecraft was dead by the end of 2016. Why Telltale made a game out of a dead IP baffles me to this day. The Minecraft YouTubers didn’t play it because there are no Minecraft YouTubers any more, so the kids didn’t see it. Seriously, Stampylonghead used to get millions of views on his Minecraft videos, and now he struggles to hit 200k. Minecraft had no audience in 2017.
Batman s2 had literally no marketing. They just kind of released it and said “enjoy!” There was no publicity regarding this game. They really should have marketed it around the Joker and not the Riddler. There’s a reason the game sold an extra 20k units on steam right when episode 5 released. It’s because people talked about the Joker and how fresh the telltale take on the character was. Nobody was impressed by the Ridler or any of that. Also Arkham City looks better than the enemy within and it came out like what, 5 years before TEW?
I think you said that “GOTG was the first time that things weren’t looking so hot for telltale” but autocorrect had a field day so I can’t tell.
If that was what you said I beg to differ: Michonne was the first time a choice driven telltale game was received negatively. Every game from The Walking Dead to Minecraft season 1 were received as at least 7.5/10 games by the public. Michonne was rushed and crappy, and almost everyone I know agrees.
Show me your wisdom. I can't find it for below the base price (30$ over here)
Edit: Oooh, actually Amazon CAD's got it on sale for 15 bucks...
https://www.amazon.com/Funko-Pop-Marvel-Games-Rocket/dp/B0759MJW4W/ref=as_sl_pc_tf_til?tag=hob010-20&linkCode=w00&linkId=1e9a80d3e8e2d6ed362945a9105f679f&creativeASIN=B0759MJW4W
Gamora and Hala are like 7-8 bucks too. Funko has warehouses full of the telltale guardians pop.
I am pretty sure GOT was almost as bad/mixed received as Michonne
No Telltale Game has ever received 'bad reviews. They've been mixed at wost on Metacritic (who has a terrible system) and mostly positive at worst on Steam.
I wasnt saying that was the first time, I was saying for what GOTG was, and for the time of release with all the Telltale drama, it felt more like it was going down a negative road of uninspired lazy games like ANF was.
I remember back when Michonne ended and I said I hoped Season 3 didnt try to be that much like Michonne with the poor characters and action focus. Sadly we know how that went RIP
I said this before but the sales numbers usually double between the release of the final episode and a year or two. Batman S1 and ANF were both at about 200,000 after episode 5, but by the time Steam spy changed the algorithm they were both well over 300,000. I think in a year or two TEW will be considered a moderate success. I feel like enough people enjoyed it enough to generate some sort of hype and fanbase, something Guardians and Minecraft never were able to do.
Pointless argument here, but I still think that ANF had far better written characters than in S2. Mainly because more than two character in ANF actually had real character arcs. I still obviously prefer the pacing, story, and themes of S2, but I felt the characters were given more time to grow and develop in ANF, and I cared for them much more.
Similar to what you said, I think it’s safe to say the ANF and TEW broke even at least. MCSM s2 also probably broke even due to its improved sales on consoles and its switch release in August.
However, it’s obvious GOTG flopped on all platforms
Oh and while I’m dissing MCSM here’s an OG forum meme, only the 2015 kids remember this one
Haha...funny meme. Real takes me back to all those people throwing a temper tantrum over a game.
If the old CEO and some employees didn’t like the ideia of a Netflix partnership at all, then why Telltale made a deal with Netflix two years* ago? Didn't get that...
Also I hope Variety keeps cooking these articles about telltale at the rate telltale released episodes in 2017. I love reading these