Telltale Games Closing Down - Rumors at the moment

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Telltale's biggest problem was putting all their eggs into 1 basket. The narrative games were moneymakers, but you need to diversify your assets in case those games have a down market (and it seems they did).

Also, the fact that they don't have an IP of their own means their creditors are gonna be pretty fucked when they liquidate the company, because nearly all of their assets are licensed games with zero IP value.
 
neural said:
Telltale's biggest problem was putting all their eggs into 1 basket. The narrative games were moneymakers, but you need to diversify your assets in case those games have a down market (and it seems they did).
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Yeah, the problem is that you actually need some kind of aptitude for game design to make real games where you actually do stuff instead of point-and-click narrative "experiences".
 
SauceRyuKen said:
It's probably optimistic, but I wouldn't be that surprised if they kept going instead of shutting down, or at least open up a spiritual successor studio. The laid off employees do state that the company has told them it's shutting down, and they're not receiving severance either. Seems likely the Telltale Games name might just die.
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The key question is whether investors will buy into similar projects in the future. Telltale's bankruptcy suggests ipso facto that the market for the interactive narrative subgenre is exaggerated. If the premier studio for such content with access to powerful IPs can't stay afloat, it has a chilling effect.

The concepts behind their games will live on, but likely as a niche. It's telling (hurr) that there's only been one notable success in the genre (Life is Strange) outside of TTG's works.

At the end of the day, this entire saga can be stripped down to a classic investment bubble.
 
> TTG could've released The Wolf Among Us S2 years ago
> Release some Minecraft shit instead
> TTG goes bankrupt
> Now season 2 will never, ever come

Fuck my life

 
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They finished Walking Dead so who gives a fuck.

Generic cape shit games based soley around QTE? We've truly lost something great.
 
Look at the bright side, sam and max and monkey island are finally free from telltale, hopefully nintendo buys those 2 ips
 
I thought they were the same company as Traveler's Tales and was going to make a Sonic R joke. Guess I know nothing about this company so uh, rip.
 
RJ MacReady said:
The key question is whether investors will buy into similar projects in the future. Telltale's bankruptcy suggests ipso facto that the market for the interactive narrative subgenre is exaggerated. If the premier studio for such content with access to powerful IPs can't stay afloat, it has a chilling effect.

The concepts behind their games will live on, but likely as a niche. It's telling (hurr) that there's only been one notable success in the genre (Life is Strange) outside of TTG's works.

At the end of the day, this entire saga can be stripped down to a classic investment bubble.
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Telling. :winner:

Aside from that, I mean, if we're REAAAALLY to get our game nerd on, Telltale's hardly the first to make talking simulators with minimal if any gameplay a thing. There was a game on Newgrounds a century ago where you played as a scientist who caused the end of the world and had seven days to try and fix it. I don't even remember the name. Mostly an exploration of a story and it's characters, and it even had one surprising bit of gameplay where you had to avoid getting a knife in your bearded face. Hate Plus even made you bake a cake for a virtual waifu for 100% cheevos.

Telltale just made bigger games. Bigger budgets, established IPs, and bigger profits, too. I think the genre will live on, we'll just get more Doki Dokis and less Games of Thrones. I mean, it's kinda reasonable. A text based narrative is always gonna be cheaper to make than actors or fully animated cutscenes. It's also not completely FUBAR'd if you have to go through, let's say, a single re-write. Which artistic projects often tend to go through.

It happened to Team Bondhi back then. Cutting edge facial recognition tech, established or modestly talented actors, an ambitious script, and making this become a reality forced everyone in the studio to perpetual crunch time. Now it's happened to Telltale too. It's just something about big scope artistic games. To the head of the studio, it's his magnum opus. To the guy making you a nice model of a hat, it's just a 9 to 5 job. And if he has to stay overtime every day, making you ten million hats to choose from, he's probably gonna resent and or sue your ass for it.
 
neural said:
Telltale's biggest problem was putting all their eggs into 1 basket. The narrative games were moneymakers, but you need to diversify your assets in case those games have a down market (and it seems they did).

Also, the fact that they don't have an IP of their own means their creditors are gonna be pretty fucked when they liquidate the company, because nearly all of their assets are licensed games with zero IP value.
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This plus a company that made mediocre visual novels decided their corporate HQ should be in one of the most expensive places in the country.

Gee I wonder why they're bankrupt? :thinking:

https://www.google.com/maps/place/T...6b40434c28762!8m2!3d38.0045566!4d-122.5379774
 
I wonder how much of their money was pissed away on licensing in the first place. Their games seemed popular enough but like has already been said, all they did were other peoples IP. That had to have hurt over time.
 
Ruin said:
This plus a company that made mediocre visual novels decided their corporate HQ should be in one of the most expensive places in the country.

Gee I wonder why they're bankrupt? :thinking:

https://www.google.com/maps/place/T...6b40434c28762!8m2!3d38.0045566!4d-122.5379774
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Telltale Games has always been in San Rafael. Remember they were founded in 2004. They moved to that location in 2013 when they were being flooded with investor money like growth hormones into factory farm livestock and were trying to expand rapidly.

If a company is in the black, paying for their office space should practically be at the bottom of their accounting sheets.
 
KillThemCrackasBabies said:
I wonder how much of their money was pissed away on licensing in the first place. Their games seemed popular enough but like has already been said, all they did were other peoples IP. That had to have hurt over time.
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I doubt they paid up-front for licensing. It's probably more like they just kept a much smaller cut of the profits, plus fronting all or most of the development costs. Which puts them in the position where a game has to be a smash hit to make even a modest profit.

RJ MacReady said:
Telltale Games has always been in San Rafael. Remember they were founded in 2004. They moved to that location in 2013 when they were being flooded with investor money like growth hormones into factory farm livestock and were trying to expand rapidly.

If a company is in the black, paying for their office space should practically be at the bottom of their accounting sheets.
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It's not just office space, you have to factor cost-of-living for employee compensation too. If you're paying your employees 70% more than you'd pay them to do the same job in Toronto or Dallas, you have a problem.
 
their catalog of games significantly dipped in quality after tales from the borderlands

in my eyes, they were already dead years ago
 
MrTroll said:
It's not just office space, you have to factor cost-of-living for employee compensation too. If you're paying your employees 70% more than you'd pay them to do the same job in Toronto or Dallas, you have a problem.
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That's a business consideration that's more relevant to fresh startups, not an extant company that's always been located in that area. And you missed the point: If Telltale Games was making money, the inherent expenses of doing business in California shouldn't have been a major financial concern. But @Ruin was making a joke, so it'd be silly for me to belabour this point any more.
 
TellTale Sealed their fate;) with Minecraft. The only thing that keeps this genre afloat is sex appeal.
 
Iodised Ant said:
TellTale Sealed their fate;) with Minecraft. The only thing that keeps this genre afloat is sex appeal.
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Speaking of Minecraft..

upload_2018-9-22_2-41-45.png
 
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