From what I've heard, Telltale never saw a profit from any game post TWD Season 1. They staffed up way too quickly and took on too many projects with too much crunch and too much waste from fatigue.
I thought Minecraft: Story Mode did surprisingly well?
Then again it's pretty obvious they were rushing out and releasing too many games toward the end. No one was clamoring for a Telltale take on Guardians of the Galaxy. And when Steamspy was still a thing, it indicated very, very few people were buying the latest releases, including TWD.
According to the article Telltale died when Netflix pulled out of a Stranger Things game. Which is definitely a blow to any studio, but it's odd because they had multiple other licensed games in the pipeline. Telltale's finances must have been completely jacked up.
Instead of Clem dying at the end of the whole season the company dies after one episode.
Telltale was the walking dead all along.
Wow.
Switch: SW-7690-2320-9238Steam/PSN/Xbox: Drezdar
0
BethrynUnhappiness is MandatoryRegistered Userregular
Honestly, there were definitely management problems, but it's kind of funny that they directly repeated one of the problems of the adventure games industry. After the success of Walking Dead, they made every game afterwards using the same system, whereas their games before like Sam & Max, Jurassic Park and Monkey Island used systems and puzzles much more appropriate to their games. It actively put me off playing more Telltale Games because despite having some interesting properties, they would always play exactly the same, and that opinion wasn't one I was alone in holding. And the homogeneity of adventure games back in the day was a very similar problem. Their success made them overlook the things they were doing to prevent repeating past failures.
Here's my version of the TWD Season 4 finale, in case it never officially gets made by anyone. Keep in mind, I still haven't played TWD Season 3 or whatever they've released of Season 4 but I'm willing to bet this will still fit:
In the very last episode, Clem finally reveals herself as the original mastermind behind the entire Walking Dead zombie crisis. The little girl routine was just an act because Lee coincidentally stumbled onto her while she was safely living in her science lab having dispersed the zombie plague, so she had to quickly assume the role of a survivor. The entire series was a lie, shown in retcon flashbacks where Clem was actually pushing people into the dire situations they kept finding themselves in. She then pushes a button on a little device she's had the entire time which disperses an antidote into the atmosphere. We then cut to 10 Years Later where Clem has started her own video game design studio, but has to lay everyone off the day before Christmas Eve with no severance because she wants to cash out and spend the rest of her life on a desert island. The after-credits stinger is just text: "Clemtale's Closure Means Half-Life 3 Is Permanently Cancelled." Then a bunch of binary flashes on the screen which people take months to decrypt and the message is "BE SURE TO DRINK YOUR OVALTINE."
Sad to hear the news, but not altogether surprising. The massive number of games they were putting out, combined with the samey nature of almost all of them, and the increasingly transparent illusion of 'choice' that got clearer with every release was always going to depress sales.
Fucking garbage that they pulled some of this shit on new hires, though. That's awful.
Zilla36021st Century. |She/Her|Trans* Woman In Aviators Firing A Bazooka. ⚛️Registered Userregular
Sad news. I hope other studios, like DONTNOD pick up where Telltale left off, and we continue to see these interactive-narrative style games that I enjoy so much.
Buyouts often don't go well, but it's a pity that they were not even able to secure one of those. May be a result of possessing so little IP with all those licensed games.
I'm surprised that people still want to work in video games given the lack of responsibility of the people managing these companies. I sure wouldn't.
They do still have a massive library of games. I'm going to assume that's something's going to stay open at least if only to keep them up on steam and bringing in revenue from those.
I keep hearing conflicting info. The VA for Clementine just posted a message that amounts to "I just heard the news, I'm sorry you won't get to see the end of Clem's story", but then I also keep hearing bits, like somebody asked another VA and they said it's still going?
The second episode is coming out on Tuesday. After that, I'm just assuming the series is completely canceled. If updated news says otherwise, then it'll be a nice surprise. But basically hope for the best but expect the worst.
"The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
0
AxenMy avatar is Excalibur.Yes, the sword.Registered Userregular
edited September 2018
Since I do see the sentiment come up a lot when things like this happen I figure I'd clarify some things on the union front. (for the record I am pro-unionize)
1) It is not a magic cure all. There would still absolutely be crazy crunch time and overtime. That's just the nature of the beast. However being unionized means devs would at least be guaranteed pay for it.
2) If what I think happened to Telltale did happen (that they straight up ran out of money) then being part of a union would not have changed anything. If there's no money then there is no money. Even unionized nobody would've gotten severance or anything.
3) Somewhat depression to consider, but the people who would benefit the most from being in a union would be those who work for studios owned by big publishers (EA, Ubisoft, Activision, etc). As I mentioned in 2) if there is no money then there is no money, but that really only applies to independent studios. However if your studio is owned by a big ass publisher and they shutter it then a union would absolutely ensure you're paid all you're owed.
4) Unfortunately this isn't just an up hill battle, it's an Eve Online difficulty curve. For one the big publishers have very little reason to even entertain the idea as a lot of their studios are outside the country and there is no shortage of new flesh for the wheel. Secondly smaller dev studios could potentially be fucked. Thirdly for every Telltale Games horror story there are five other stories from devs who love the studio they work at.
Sadly the whole movement pretty much relies on EA giving it the OK.
Axen on
A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
+2
Casually HardcoreOnce an Asshole. Trying to be better.Registered Userregular
I keep hearing conflicting info. The VA for Clementine just posted a message that amounts to "I just heard the news, I'm sorry you won't get to see the end of Clem's story", but then I also keep hearing bits, like somebody asked another VA and they said it's still going?
The second episode is coming out on Tuesday. After that, I'm just assuming the series is completely canceled. If updated news says otherwise, then it'll be a nice surprise. But basically hope for the best but expect the worst.
Oh, the episode is still coming out? I guess I should play it as the final hurrah. I kind of don't want to because I enjoyed the first episode a ton. Playing the second one with no solid ending will probably just hurt more than not.
Since I do see the sentiment come up a lot when things like this happen I figure I'd clarify some things on the union front. (for the record I am pro-unionize)
1) It is not a magic cure all. There would still absolutely be crazy crunch time and overtime. That's just the nature of the beast. However being unionized means devs would at least be guaranteed pay for it.
I have friends who do programming work for the insurance, banking, and medical/pharma industries (IT is huge in central North Carolina). They develop software that is central to Fortune 500 businesses, and they all have reasonable 9-5 or equivalent schedules with holidays, weekends, and vacation. They don't do crunches for deadlines, and I imagine that most of them would walk quick if their employer started budgeting and scheduling projects in such a way to require it.
There's nothing inherent in software development that requires the kind of schedules that game companies operate under. It is 100 percent down to the culture of the games industry and the way that the libertarian ethos and contract employment have combined to create a perfect storm of manager control over the lives of its employees. You change the ability of the industry to abuse workers, and you'd see rippling changes throughout the entire industry.
And to come back to my friends, you'd probably also see an expansion of available talent. One common thing that comes up is that they'd like to work on a game - or even went into software development because they were originally interested in creating games - but have zero desire to work on that side of their industry as it now operates. I expect that is not an uncommon sentiment throughout the software development world.
+14
AxenMy avatar is Excalibur.Yes, the sword.Registered Userregular
edited September 2018
That’s not just my opinion on it, the people spearheading the unionize movement have even admitted such.
A good comparison is the film industry. It is full of different unions and guilds, but people still have to work 70-80 hours a week or more to meet deadlines.
Edit- and again I am super pro-union, but there are some things it won’t be able to change. However it is still a huge plus in the long run.
Axen on
A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
I wonder what the culture and work environment is like at Bethesda?
They are famous for their quick turn around from announcement to release. I feel like a large part of the reason why these game companies are always under a crunch is because of A) Christmas and Release dates in general.
If more companies would just work at a steady, stable, normal pace and work the 8-5 shift with little to no overtime, and then not even announce their game's existence until they are content locked and feature locked, and only working on polish and bug fixes, I think that would go a long way to helping alleviate so much of the pressure.
Don't announce that a game is in development and then promise a release date that is exactly 2 years out from when it was first announced. That's silly. By the time the project matures that much, who knows what state it will be in.
Since I do see the sentiment come up a lot when things like this happen I figure I'd clarify some things on the union front. (for the record I am pro-unionize)
1) It is not a magic cure all. There would still absolutely be crazy crunch time and overtime. That's just the nature of the beast. However being unionized means devs would at least be guaranteed pay for it.
I have friends who do programming work for the insurance, banking, and medical/pharma industries (IT is huge in central North Carolina). They develop software that is central to Fortune 500 businesses, and they all have reasonable 9-5 or equivalent schedules with holidays, weekends, and vacation. They don't do crunches for deadlines, and I imagine that most of them would walk quick if their employer started budgeting and scheduling projects in such a way to require it.
There's nothing inherent in software development that requires the kind of schedules that game companies operate under. It is 100 percent down to the culture of the games industry and the way that the libertarian ethos and contract employment have combined to create a perfect storm of manager control over the lives of its employees. You change the ability of the industry to abuse workers, and you'd see rippling changes throughout the entire industry.
And to come back to my friends, you'd probably also see an expansion of available talent. One common thing that comes up is that they'd like to work on a game - or even went into software development because they were originally interested in creating games - but have zero desire to work on that side of their industry as it now operates. I expect that is not an uncommon sentiment throughout the software development world.
Yep. They get paid less, too. I ain't cutting my hourly rate in half (or more) just to ruin my life.
+5
Casually HardcoreOnce an Asshole. Trying to be better.Registered Userregular
Since I do see the sentiment come up a lot when things like this happen I figure I'd clarify some things on the union front. (for the record I am pro-unionize)
1) It is not a magic cure all. There would still absolutely be crazy crunch time and overtime. That's just the nature of the beast. However being unionized means devs would at least be guaranteed pay for it.
I have friends who do programming work for the insurance, banking, and medical/pharma industries (IT is huge in central North Carolina). They develop software that is central to Fortune 500 businesses, and they all have reasonable 9-5 or equivalent schedules with holidays, weekends, and vacation. They don't do crunches for deadlines, and I imagine that most of them would walk quick if their employer started budgeting and scheduling projects in such a way to require it.
There's nothing inherent in software development that requires the kind of schedules that game companies operate under. It is 100 percent down to the culture of the games industry and the way that the libertarian ethos and contract employment have combined to create a perfect storm of manager control over the lives of its employees. You change the ability of the industry to abuse workers, and you'd see rippling changes throughout the entire industry.
And to come back to my friends, you'd probably also see an expansion of available talent. One common thing that comes up is that they'd like to work on a game - or even went into software development because they were originally interested in creating games - but have zero desire to work on that side of their industry as it now operates. I expect that is not an uncommon sentiment throughout the software development world.
Yep. They get paid less, too. I ain't cutting my hourly rate in half (or more) just to ruin my life.
It isn't about the pay, it's about the passion!
/Every programming job listing that true to sucker young talented developers into a miserable existence.
That’s not just my opinion on it, the people spearheading the unionize movement have even admitted such.
A good comparison is the film industry. It is full of different unions and guilds, but people still have to work 70-80 hours a week or more to meet deadlines.
Edit- and again I am super pro-union, but there are some things it won’t be able to change. However it is still a huge plus in the long run.
While I could go in depth why the film industry is a horrible model, there are excuses in that industry that just do not exist in the software world. Is software being developed on location? Do you need to set up a render at a certain time in the morning/evening to catch the light? Do game teams need to set up massive logistics for cast, crew, extras, etc. before the workday can even begin? Are there practical reason why you'd need to do reshoots at a location before they break down the equipment?
Because my suspicion is that the game industry shares a lot more in common with the other segments of the IT industry than it does with Hollywood. It's a job where managers, programmers, and support staff show up at an office, work from an org chart, follow a project development schedule, and maybe manage freelancers/partners in other time zones. There is zero reason other than industry culture that this has to be done in a constant overtime to crunch flow, but I also doubt there are many within the gaming industry who could manage a standard roll-out of a customer backend for a corporate website without 100 hour weeks for months, half the staff quitting, and a mid-project sexual harassment scandal involving the entire management team.
A lot of positive change from legal workplace reform and unionization demands are not agreed upon or planned out. They come from the ways everyone is forced to re-think the workplace in order to avoid getting sued by employees, with the changes occurring naturally once the worst abuses are banned. That's how workplaces managed when child labor and gender discrimination were banned - through a lot of struggle and iteration. As long as the audience still wants the product, some game developers will figure it out and keep working.
Phillishere on
+1
HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
I just saw the worst take; someone putting forward the idea that the employees should work for free to finish The Walking Dead. Their citation? "Mod makers do this all the time."
Gamers™ really don't deserve video games sometimes, I think.
+14
AxenMy avatar is Excalibur.Yes, the sword.Registered Userregular
For a company like Bethesda or Blizzard they can potentially take their time with things because their games sell fantastically well and continue to do so for years afterwards.
However for a somewhat smaller studio who release games that make enough to pay their employees and then fund their next project they need a quicker turn-around time or else risk just running out of funding. Then everyone is out of work.
For publicly owned companies they need to release games on a regular basis to appease the shareholders. If a studio isn’t performing well enough (publisher’s definition of “well enough” may be unrealistic) then they get shuttered. Which a Union still couldn’t prevent, though it can ensure everyone gets their due.
Currently there are a lot of people in the industry who are relatively indifferent to the cause and one of the main reasons why is because it won’t really fix crunch time and long work weeks. They ignore the multitude of smaller, yet still very important benefits of unionizing.
I don’t mean to sound like a downer or anything, but it is important to understand why crunch time and long hours won’t disappear. If people understand that there is a whole host of factors at play in regards to the crunch instead of it being a simple yes/no issue then they may be more inclined to support unionizing.
A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
0
Casually HardcoreOnce an Asshole. Trying to be better.Registered Userregular
edited September 2018
People need to get used to the idea of paying more for their games, too.
I never understood how people are willing to dropped $80, $90, $100+ on a boardgame but spending more then $60 on a videogame is sacraliege.
Posts
I thought Minecraft: Story Mode did surprisingly well?
Then again it's pretty obvious they were rushing out and releasing too many games toward the end. No one was clamoring for a Telltale take on Guardians of the Galaxy. And when Steamspy was still a thing, it indicated very, very few people were buying the latest releases, including TWD.
According to the article Telltale died when Netflix pulled out of a Stranger Things game. Which is definitely a blow to any studio, but it's odd because they had multiple other licensed games in the pipeline. Telltale's finances must have been completely jacked up.
Wow.
In the very last episode, Clem finally reveals herself as the original mastermind behind the entire Walking Dead zombie crisis. The little girl routine was just an act because Lee coincidentally stumbled onto her while she was safely living in her science lab having dispersed the zombie plague, so she had to quickly assume the role of a survivor. The entire series was a lie, shown in retcon flashbacks where Clem was actually pushing people into the dire situations they kept finding themselves in. She then pushes a button on a little device she's had the entire time which disperses an antidote into the atmosphere. We then cut to 10 Years Later where Clem has started her own video game design studio, but has to lay everyone off the day before Christmas Eve with no severance because she wants to cash out and spend the rest of her life on a desert island. The after-credits stinger is just text: "Clemtale's Closure Means Half-Life 3 Is Permanently Cancelled." Then a bunch of binary flashes on the screen which people take months to decrypt and the message is "BE SURE TO DRINK YOUR OVALTINE."
Fucking garbage that they pulled some of this shit on new hires, though. That's awful.
PSN: ShogunGunshow
Origin: ShogunGunshow
I assumed they were doing great or at the very least decent enough that they weren't anywhere near in trouble.
I'm surprised that people still want to work in video games given the lack of responsibility of the people managing these companies. I sure wouldn't.
No Wolf Among Us 2. That hurts.
The only damn game they have made I've been waiting for more of.
PSN: SirGrinchX
Oculus Rift: Sir_Grinch
At this rate, I'll be glad if TWD's Final Season finishes at all. Though that hurts too.
It's not going to.
Refunds for season pass purchasers, hopefully.
This industry needs to Unionize yesterday.
The second episode is coming out on Tuesday. After that, I'm just assuming the series is completely canceled. If updated news says otherwise, then it'll be a nice surprise. But basically hope for the best but expect the worst.
1) It is not a magic cure all. There would still absolutely be crazy crunch time and overtime. That's just the nature of the beast. However being unionized means devs would at least be guaranteed pay for it.
2) If what I think happened to Telltale did happen (that they straight up ran out of money) then being part of a union would not have changed anything. If there's no money then there is no money. Even unionized nobody would've gotten severance or anything.
3) Somewhat depression to consider, but the people who would benefit the most from being in a union would be those who work for studios owned by big publishers (EA, Ubisoft, Activision, etc). As I mentioned in 2) if there is no money then there is no money, but that really only applies to independent studios. However if your studio is owned by a big ass publisher and they shutter it then a union would absolutely ensure you're paid all you're owed.
4) Unfortunately this isn't just an up hill battle, it's an Eve Online difficulty curve. For one the big publishers have very little reason to even entertain the idea as a lot of their studios are outside the country and there is no shortage of new flesh for the wheel. Secondly smaller dev studios could potentially be fucked. Thirdly for every Telltale Games horror story there are five other stories from devs who love the studio they work at.
Sadly the whole movement pretty much relies on EA giving it the OK.
This also further reinforce the idea that companies are not your friends. Screw TellTale's.
Oh, the episode is still coming out? I guess I should play it as the final hurrah. I kind of don't want to because I enjoyed the first episode a ton. Playing the second one with no solid ending will probably just hurt more than not.
Yeah, Clem's VA basically saying I only know about Episode 2 and then no more after that. I think I'll probably skip it.
Twitch: KoopahTroopah - Steam: Koopah
...
...well, maybe not.
More specifically, screw Telltale's upper management.
Screw Telltale's BAD upper management.
Is there an echo in here?
I have friends who do programming work for the insurance, banking, and medical/pharma industries (IT is huge in central North Carolina). They develop software that is central to Fortune 500 businesses, and they all have reasonable 9-5 or equivalent schedules with holidays, weekends, and vacation. They don't do crunches for deadlines, and I imagine that most of them would walk quick if their employer started budgeting and scheduling projects in such a way to require it.
There's nothing inherent in software development that requires the kind of schedules that game companies operate under. It is 100 percent down to the culture of the games industry and the way that the libertarian ethos and contract employment have combined to create a perfect storm of manager control over the lives of its employees. You change the ability of the industry to abuse workers, and you'd see rippling changes throughout the entire industry.
And to come back to my friends, you'd probably also see an expansion of available talent. One common thing that comes up is that they'd like to work on a game - or even went into software development because they were originally interested in creating games - but have zero desire to work on that side of their industry as it now operates. I expect that is not an uncommon sentiment throughout the software development world.
A good comparison is the film industry. It is full of different unions and guilds, but people still have to work 70-80 hours a week or more to meet deadlines.
Edit- and again I am super pro-union, but there are some things it won’t be able to change. However it is still a huge plus in the long run.
They are famous for their quick turn around from announcement to release. I feel like a large part of the reason why these game companies are always under a crunch is because of A) Christmas and
If more companies would just work at a steady, stable, normal pace and work the 8-5 shift with little to no overtime, and then not even announce their game's existence until they are content locked and feature locked, and only working on polish and bug fixes, I think that would go a long way to helping alleviate so much of the pressure.
Don't announce that a game is in development and then promise a release date that is exactly 2 years out from when it was first announced. That's silly. By the time the project matures that much, who knows what state it will be in.
Yep. They get paid less, too. I ain't cutting my hourly rate in half (or more) just to ruin my life.
It isn't about the pay, it's about the passion!
/Every programming job listing that true to sucker young talented developers into a miserable existence.
While I could go in depth why the film industry is a horrible model, there are excuses in that industry that just do not exist in the software world. Is software being developed on location? Do you need to set up a render at a certain time in the morning/evening to catch the light? Do game teams need to set up massive logistics for cast, crew, extras, etc. before the workday can even begin? Are there practical reason why you'd need to do reshoots at a location before they break down the equipment?
Because my suspicion is that the game industry shares a lot more in common with the other segments of the IT industry than it does with Hollywood. It's a job where managers, programmers, and support staff show up at an office, work from an org chart, follow a project development schedule, and maybe manage freelancers/partners in other time zones. There is zero reason other than industry culture that this has to be done in a constant overtime to crunch flow, but I also doubt there are many within the gaming industry who could manage a standard roll-out of a customer backend for a corporate website without 100 hour weeks for months, half the staff quitting, and a mid-project sexual harassment scandal involving the entire management team.
A lot of positive change from legal workplace reform and unionization demands are not agreed upon or planned out. They come from the ways everyone is forced to re-think the workplace in order to avoid getting sued by employees, with the changes occurring naturally once the worst abuses are banned. That's how workplaces managed when child labor and gender discrimination were banned - through a lot of struggle and iteration. As long as the audience still wants the product, some game developers will figure it out and keep working.
Gamers™ really don't deserve video games sometimes, I think.
However for a somewhat smaller studio who release games that make enough to pay their employees and then fund their next project they need a quicker turn-around time or else risk just running out of funding. Then everyone is out of work.
For publicly owned companies they need to release games on a regular basis to appease the shareholders. If a studio isn’t performing well enough (publisher’s definition of “well enough” may be unrealistic) then they get shuttered. Which a Union still couldn’t prevent, though it can ensure everyone gets their due.
Currently there are a lot of people in the industry who are relatively indifferent to the cause and one of the main reasons why is because it won’t really fix crunch time and long work weeks. They ignore the multitude of smaller, yet still very important benefits of unionizing.
I don’t mean to sound like a downer or anything, but it is important to understand why crunch time and long hours won’t disappear. If people understand that there is a whole host of factors at play in regards to the crunch instead of it being a simple yes/no issue then they may be more inclined to support unionizing.
I never understood how people are willing to dropped $80, $90, $100+ on a boardgame but spending more then $60 on a videogame is sacraliege.
Especially since the amount of money it takes to make an AAA game has skyrocketed since $60 was first put in place.
They are used to that idea. $60 is a starter price routinely one upped by season passes and DLC and micro transactions.
Now if only those obscene profits were actually passed down to the Devs.
Which a Union could help with!