Telltale Games shut down--and was just bought and "revived"?

GoT would have had more changes visible in the second season different characters could be dead . The biggest issue with cyoa as a medium is games that are part of a series a lot of choices don’t come into play until later games so a choice that might do nothing in game 1 does something in game 2 or 3 etc

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From what i read… GoT fans were the one who bought it first, thinking that they could change the story… like saving some characters they like but they were frustrated when they knew they couldn’t , few fans comment that they prove it by replaying it few times … so i would say it damper the interest of other fans who read it, when i know that i can’t save Rob Stark, the sand snakes and obelyn martel, i don’t feel like paying for it either :slight_smile:

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You can say that’s the case, but that’s basically just asking people to have faith that the thing you failed to deliver the first time around will be delivered the second time while making excuses for why you didn’t do it the first time.

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Oh don’t misunderstand you still need choices that affect game 1 I’m just saying some choices won’t affect game 1 but later games.

Telltale sadly didn’t offer many choices that affected game one.

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They become the Joker no matter what though? You just put him on the route of being a vigilante for 20 minutes, before no matter what, he becomes demented and breaks.

It is interesting to consider that TWD Season 1 helped contribute to Tell Tale’s final downfall. I mean, Tell Tale Games formed in 2004…meaning it managed to exist for 8 years before the success of Walking Dead Season 1.

Of course, the gaming landscape was different back then, but it still managed to survive as basically an indie studio with some successes (I’m thinking like Sam and Max).

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Yeah, Sam and Max were great. They abandoned it along with it’s entire genre to create their semi interactive CGI TV shows.

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It still meant there were two very different final episodes with the Joker, which made it a completely distinctive experience each way, plus your relationship with characters like Tiffany, Gordon and Selina changed things in both settings. It’s definitely my favourite game alongside Wolf Among Us and Tales From The Borderlands.

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Soooo, no Wolf Among Us 2?? I’m going to cry.

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They’re sad because they all lost their jobs, suddenly, and with no severance.

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Apart from the obvious thing you just said, I was referring to the comments I have read on the twitter accounts of former employees who talk about how they will terribly miss working with their teams and the lost chance to finish projects like TWAU2.


Is a real same all that is happening, and I hope all the staff will be able to land on their feet.

What I am also very interested on, is on getting some official news from the TT directives.

Looks like Blizzard will be hiring some of the people from TT

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It was interesting to see the life is strange response on the telltale shutting down tweet.

Update:

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You said you were unsure about whether it was true that employees were treated badly. They were, and they were during this firing/shutdown. I’m sure some employees are feeling sad about not making games, but friend who lost her job is more…upset about losing her job.

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Then I guess it goes down to interpretation. I already knew they didn’t get the severance, but to me, to be treated badly on your job is to have your superior treating you badly and unfairly with malicious intention, and not the company declaring bankruptcy because they had a poor economic management. I call that a shitty situation, not being treated badly on purpose.

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It’s not that the company just suddenly shuttered its doors and unfairly fired its employees without notice (even though some had been hired a week before and even relocated across the country); it’s that reports have come out (as far back as 18 months ago) that the working conditions were terrible, the employees worked 18-20 hour days/60-100 hour weeks without being paid for overtime, and that a “crunch culture” was enforced where contract workers were hired, pushed to meet their deadlines under grueling conditions, regardless of the quality of their work, and then fired once the game was shipped.

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Holy shit. That’s a shit ton of hours, and no extra time paid… God, I would have leave that company the second that happened.

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Poor management/poor economic management is the same thing as treating your employees badly. If you’re in charge, if you’re cutting the checks, then it is your responsibility. See @rinari’s summary above. “Malicious” doesn’t have to come into it. Stupid or greedy works just as well.

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Continuing about the discussion of Telltale GoT: One of the biggest mistakes was probably having Ramsey as your main antagonist. Since he’s Ramsey, you can’t really defeat or hurt him in any way (because of the show having certain plot points decided for him), so you’re just locked in a doomed struggle where nothing you do will really matter against him. And, yknow, that can be fun in some games… but I don’t think it plays to the strengths of a choose your own adventure style game, where player choice is important.

Also, too many different main characters with almost completely separate storylines means that you need to do branching for each character while still ending up in the same general direction with all of them. If you had just played as one of the Forresters the story would have been more focused, allowed for greater interest in that one character, and given more options for branching.

Of course, if they do that they can’t brag about having Daenerys, Ramsey, Cersei, and Tyrion in the same game, and that is obviously a major selling point. Oh, and Jon Snow plus probably some extra ones that I have forgotten.

But yeah, tragic for the employees who lost their jobs. I was not a major fan of the games (enjoyed watching them on YouTube now and then though, and played GoT because the setting pulled me in), but if it is true that the company mistreated the employees then it was probably for the best that Telltale shut down so that better companies can take over.

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Here’s the thing about the working world: you can love what you do and who you do it with while still being treated like human garbage by your superiors. In fact, hardship tends to make immediate team members grow closer. So nothing they are saying would imply their work conditions were ideal. If anything, they point to the opposite.

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Despite the terrible way things have ended it was the previous management under Kevin which enforced such conditions, to the extent that the new CEO was never gonna fix the damage done, even after a year in the role.