Telltale’s Tale: Their Rise and their Downfall

Telltale games are the great minds behind some of the best narrative driven games in gaming history. Telltale’s fall from grace is an intriguing tale. We’re going to be discussing the following in this article:

• The history of the company
• How they rose to success
• Why they went bankrupt
• Why they could be making a comeback

This one’s a bit long so do grab a drink or two and let’s get into it.

The history of Telltale

Telltale was founded in 2004 by three former LucasArts Developers, Kevin Bruner, Dan Connors and Troy Molander.

Telltale focused on making episodic releases that are digitally distributed. Massively reducing the added cost of producing physical disks of their games. The company single handedly brought the adventure genre back from the dead by changing up the formula of the old point and click classics, which were mostly developed by LucasArts themselves. Or at least up until 2004, when they decided to make a thousand Star Wars games instead.

How success failed them

In 2011, soon after the announcement of the first episode of their Walking dead games, Telltale hit the motherlode. They secured $7M in series C funding from IDG ventures, Granite Ventures and a number of their original angel investors.

So what is Series C funding? Series C funding is an investment made by venture capitalists in companies that are already well established as a successful business, with the expectation of doubling their profits as soon as possible.

IDG ventures and Granite Ventures saw Telltale’s potential given the fact that they sold 800,000 episodes of their Jurassic Park games — with The Walking Dead being a well-known IP that was rapidly gaining popularity at the time, they anticipated that Telltale will crush those previous numbers with the release of The Walking Dead’s first episode.

Let us examine the investors’ mindset. Here is what the managing directors of the IDG and Granite had to say back in 2011, according to this article published by businesswire.com.

A word from the investors

Phil Sanderson, Managing Director of IDG Ventures, said that, “Digital distribution is changing the intrinsic dynamic of how video game publishers do business with retailers and consumers. With its profitable content model and digital storefront, Telltale Games is ideally positioned at the forefront of this emerging and critical new platform. ” Regarding the investment, Chris Hollenbeck, Managing Director of Granite Ventures said, “This team rocks. All the big trends in the video game business are converging toward the vision Telltale has had from the start … they are positioned to lead the next wave and we’re proud to be a part of it.”

Both Sanderson and Hollenbeck believed in Telltale’s vision and in their ability to lead the “next wave” in the gaming “business”. Which is just corporate jargon for “we want to make more money” — so they invested in Telltale games hoping to make back double the amount, which is in this case about $14M. Not an easy number to achieve, considering that Jurassic Park didn’t sell that much to begin with. Were Telltale Games able to pull it off eventually?

Short answer: No, they didn’t

The players will remember this

Classics such as Grim Fandango, Full Throttle and Day of the Tentacle had you clicking each dialogue option repeatedly until you got the answer, or spending hours trying every combination of items to solve a simple puzzle.

While these games gave you the freedom to choose whichever dialogue option you wanted to without having any consequences whatsoever. Telltale Games restricted you with a timer for each choice. The choices you’re often presented with are poralizing to say the least. Picking one or the other made you experience the impact that your words and actions would later have on the game’s world. This allowed for a higher replayability and for an emotional connection to be established between the player and the game’s protagonist.

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Similar to taking a Rorschach test, the ticking clock forces you to quickly pick an option. The sense of urgency pushed the player to choose the first reaction that pops up in his mind, befitting of their own personality, which can be jarring at times. Telltale Games often allowed us to delve into our own psyche and discover previously unknown traits about our own personalities.

Although Telltale Games’ magic has been reproduced many times by other studios such as Quantic Dream with their phenomenal Detroit: Become Human and Supermassive games’ Until Dawn, it’s important for us to acknowledge the original impact left by Telltale Games on this rapidly changing industry.

What the Walking dead did differently

in The Walking Dead, you play as Lee Everett, an escaped convict who meets a little girl called Clementine. You spend the majority of the first season in Lee’s shoes trying to protect Clementine and navigating Zombie infested towns, after discovering that her parents turned into zombies. Leaving her orphaned.

Unlike previous Telltale Games, The Walking Dead gave you a small window of time for you to choose what to say. Going through each dialogue option was no longer possible. Dramatically increasing the replayability of their games and crafting unique playthroughs for every different person that plays them.

This mechanic was revolutionary in 2012 when The Walking Dead first released. Both you and a friend could play the game but have completely different experiences, your decisions would even impact later seasons of their games by synchronizing the save games.

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it

When talking about The Walking Dead and Telltale games, we can use both terms interchangeably. The reason for that is that Telltale Games never bothered to change their formula. They adhered religiously to the principle of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”.

However, the gaming industry, like every tech industry, is fast evolving. It constantly demands innovation and doesn’t react to stagnation very kindly. The investors would eventually show no mercy if Telltale didn’t bump those sales numbers up. Not to mention the fact that they never bothered to change their engine. An engine that was aging rapidly and wasn’t on par with next gen consoles.

The beginning of the end

We’re also going to discuss how a lack of innovation, a mismanagement of funds and a toxic working environment had almost destroyed their legacy. The one that they spent so many years and so many sleepless nights on building — only for it to crumble right in front of their eyes.

The first thing that pops in people’s heads when talking about Telltale Games is their award-winning The Walking Dead series. On paper, it sounds like a boring run of the mill game. Especially for the naysayers who consider that videogames are filled to the brim with gratuitous violence and lacking any substance whatsoever.

Telltale Games offered the players a game about zombies and how to deal with them in an apocalyptic scenario. Instead of focusing on bloody bits of brains and senseless violence, the game’s main focus was the relationships and the connections you built along the way. While every gaming company out there was churning out loads of generic zombie games. Offering nothing of value, with the exception of a hundred different ways of bashing a zombie’s head. Telltale tried and succeeded in giving the gamers something fresh. Something original, unlike anything they’ve ever seen before.

Keeping your emotions in check while playing a Telltale Game is extremely difficult. The choices are often forcing you to decide between a rock and a hard place. The first season of The Walking Dead was loved by both the players and the critics. A massive success at the time, the game would later define Telltale’s whole approach to developing their games.

Why The Walking Dead was a big success for Telltale

Most of the success of The Walking Dead can be attributed to the marketing and the widespread appeal of the TV show, which came out around the same time. The game basically sold itself simply because of its source material, not to say that the game wasn’t phenomenal, but the show definitely helped boost those sales numbers. Evident in the fact that The Wolf Among Us, based on the comic book series Fables that’s written by Bill Willingham, which is definitely not as mainstream as The Walking Dead, sold only a fraction of The Walking Dead’s copies.

Telltale failed because they set aside the one thing that made them a success in the first place; their creativity. Instead of focusing on new fresh ideas, they focused on bringing more and more expensive licenses for IPs that didn’t really need the storylines that they were putting out.

Stuck in a creative rut

The Wolf Among Us was praised the way it was because Telltale’s formats fits the story like a glove. Had they poured more efforts and had a bit more faith in The Wolf Among Us instead of producing a bazillion seasons of walking dead, things could’ve been much different. And how on earth did Batman get a second season? Sure, a game that focuses on Bruce Wayne as both a normal human being and as The Caped Crusader is remarkable, but it didn’t serve the lore that much.

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Telltale were quickly becoming known as the company that makes games that, when boiled down, are simply fanfiction. They added nothing to the source material that they serve. Often failing to capture the magic of the franchises they represent such as The Game of Thrones and The Guardians of the Galaxy. Trying to cash in on the popularity of the IPs wasn’t enough anymore.

While the first seasons of Game of Thrones and Batman were enjoyable, and they did receive some positive feedback over them. At the end of the day, they weren’t that special. Folks weren’t ready to fork over their hard earned money to get them. Not to mention the fact they took their sweet time in releasing each episode.

Each episode ended in a cliffhanger and then they’d delay the next episode for months at a time before release. It was simply better to just wait for the whole season to be released before purchasing the episodes, and the mantra “time is money” rings true for every investor.

All of their subsequent games were simply a reskinning of the first season of The Walking Dead. Before The Walking Dead, Telltale had a diverse range of games. The CSI games are among my favorites as well as the Wallace and Gromit ones, it wasn’t until the success of The Walking Dead that they became a broken record. Stuck playing the same song over and over until everybody was sick of it.

The inevitability of Crunch

Crunch is the act of forcing the employees to spend more time at work. It happens when there’s a risk of failing to meet a deadline or a certain milestone. It’s often viewed as exploitative and abusive. Even though they’re compensated for it in most cases, it’s still a stressful experience that no worker should be subjected to. Why should the people that bring us so much joy, suffer through so much pain? Is it that big of a deal for the average consumer if their favorite game got delayed or not? It’s not that much of an issue for the typical worker neither.

The investors are always looking to make as much profit as quickly as possible. Pressuring the publishers to turn up on the heat under the CEOs of the game companies. Who then in turn force their employees to stay after hours at the office.

In Telltale’s case, they were racing against the clock, trying to strike gold like they did with The Walking Dead. The return of Telltale’s co-founder Kevin Bruner only made things work. He took the helm of leading the company as the CEO. Demonstrating his exceptional leadership skills by creating a toxic environment. Forcing the employees to spend their nights working in overtime on these formulaic games that lack any type of creativity or innovation.

The crash

In 2017, Bruner replaced Pete Hawley. With him at the helm, Telltale fired more than 25% of their employees (about 90 employees) as part of their alleged initiative to develop smaller, better games. But then a year later, Telltale’s management fired about 250 employees. They were given 30 minutes to collect whatever stuff they had at the office before forcing them to leave the premises. Offering them no severance pay. The layoffs were the result of them failing to attract any new investors to finance their expensive licenses and their last investor had already pulled funding.

At the time, Telltale were working with Netflix on developing a Stranger Things game that never saw the light of day. But then a miracle happened, albeit a minor one. Robert Kirkman, The Walking Dead’s creator, both the comics and the TV Show, swooped in to save them from the pickle that they got themselves into. He dedicated his own company, Skybound, to continue the production of the last season of The Walking Dead game. We can’t help but admire his dedication to providing an ending befitting of such a beloved franchise.

The End of Telltale, or is it?

Telltale rose from the ashes once again. Last year, they were acquired by a holding company known as LCG entertainment. Telltale will no longer be producing on any The Walking Dead games though, since the rights reverted back to Skybound.

The first game released under the wings of LCG was a re-release of Batman: The Telltale Series, adding in a new noir-style shader among other fixes, which was released in December 2019. They also announced The Wolf Among Us 2 at The Game Awards 2019.

We’re looking forward to seeing what the future holds for Telltale under the management of LCG. A company that suffered so much deserves to have a hero’s return. Especially knowing that they’re perfectly adept at creating such engaging characters and compelling storylines. If LCG could loosen the ropes a bit and give them the creativity freedom they deserve, Telltale could come back as a top player in the gaming industry.

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Sources:

• https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/21/17888162/telltale-games-layoffs-the-walking-dead
• https://www.polygon.com/2017/11/7/16619444/telltale-games-layoffs
• https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20110607005670/en/Telltale-Games-Secures-7M-in-Series-C-Funding-From-IDG-Ventures-Granite-Ventures-Private-Investors
• https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/knowledge/trading-investing/series-c-financing/
• https://eu.alienwarearena.com/ucf/show/1924169/boards/awa-on-topic/ForumPost/graph-of-telltale-sales