Talltale Games Crash Story (Topic)

Until the weekend of last week, Talltalle Studios was known in the gaming industry as Goliath in the production of interactive adventure games, which have given us many projects from our favorite comic book and movie franchises such as The Walking Dead, The Wolf Among Us, Back to the Future.

Unfortunately, Goliath fell defeated by David, or rather because of the unprofitability of his main projects. This year, the studio was supposed to celebrate 14 years in the industry. Today we will look at what helped her climb Olympus, and what made her fall.

Early Creativity

In a mistake, many believe that the studio's first project was "Back to the Future", but it was the adventures of the free police dog Sem and his partner the mad rabbit Max in the 2005 game Sam & Max Save the World ... Taltalle revived what LucasArt had done in the comics. The game took off thanks to the fact that, like the original source, it was full of mockery of pop culture and American life. There was trash in the game, but it was because of it that the game became a cult in certain circles. And it was in it that the notorious system of episodes appeared. The first season was followed by two more.

For this, the studio released a series of small projects that did not find great popularity among the public, but sold well. In 2009, they released the next cult game " Back to the Future ". The game simply breathed the atmosphere and humor of the original, and was voted by fans as the official fourth interactive installment in the film series.

In the same year, Heavy Rain by Quantic Dream was released, which was a rather controversial project, but sellable. This influenced the strategy of Telltale, who, after looking at the success of their colleagues in the interactive cinema genre, decided to make a bias not towards the atmosphere and characters, but towards the click of time events and action. After that, they took a ready-made project with a fanbase and released Jurassic Park: The Game , which was overflowing with click-time events and a little enraged. As a result, even though the Metacritic game was scored 10 out of 10, when the game was released, and users began to rate the game themselves, the rating dropped to 3.1.

However, the studio managed to prove itself with past projects and made a decision worth a million, after which it became famous, but at the same time - determined its fate.

Studio Rise and the Phantom Menace

You already know that the name of the project that made the studio famous is The Walking Dead. One million copies in a month, the fame and love of gamers - that's the bottom line. They also found a formula for success: buy the rights to a famous franchise and do five episodes a couple of hours long. No less successful, original and iconic was the casual The Wolf Among Us with a fabulous setting.

However, this was their death. After an interesting experiment called Tales from the Borderlands, which greatly expanded the lore of the original and also reached the fans, the studio directors chose a conveyor strategy, making games for popular franchises. This is how we got games: Game of Thrones, Minecraft: Story Mode, The Walking Dead: Michonne, Batman: The Telltale Series, Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy: The Telltale Series.

Problems in the next games

The second problem of the studio was also the unwillingness to improve the picture. The graphics of all the above projects were either comic, which was at least a feature of the studio, or at the level of 2010 in three-dimensional projects. And when, after the first season of the walkers, the money was, alas, it was invested in the wrong place. In addition, the studio began making several games at once on a tight schedule, which affected their quality.

Third, the variability of games is exaggerated. And in fact, elections do not always somehow affect the plot. In "The Wolf" under almost every answer, we saw that this or that character would remember it, but there were no consequences. The variability of the endings was not much different, for example, in the second season there are five of them walking, but they differ in who Clementine and the child leave with. Other games even had one ending

Plots also could not overshadow the same first walkers.

End of the story

Choosing the conveyor, the studio signed the verdict. While the games seemed to sell well, there were constant rumors of problems such as a group of developers from the studio looking for new jobs, wage delays and unfair work schedules, or that they were in financial trouble. But only after the massive layoff of 225 studio members and the closure last weekend, executives admitted that all of their projects since the first walking ones, except Minecraft: Story Mode, have been unprofitable.

It all ended sadly for the developers themselves, because they were told that they were fired and in 30 minutes they had to leave the building, and besides that there would be no compensation, medical insurance would end next Monday. The staff were left with nothing, as were some students from other countries who came to the studio for practice or internship.

Game Workers Unite, an organization that maintains professional standards in the gaming industry, accused Talltele's managers of negligence. On the example of this studio, we see how the directors were chasing profit, completely forgetting what they loved Telltale for.

The Topic of Article: Talltale Games Crash Story.
Author: Jake Pinkman