/v/ - Video Games

They hit big with TWD S1, it was foolish to think they could keep it going. I think the big problem with their "games" is that they offered no real choice and people soon saw through it.

>>16472833

Basically you could watch their entire seasons on Youtube and you woldn´t miss much of anything.

>>16472809

I kinda wish they would have stuck with the Sam & Maz and Strongbad style of point and click games, those were fun.

>>16472833

Yea it was lightning in a bottle that escaped as soon as people saw that your choices didn't matter. Ironically cage does that style of games far better just because at least the story changes depending on the player.

>>16472911

Yea when telltale still made games with actual gameplay.

>>16472809

Well they were moving to Unity with Stranger Things and if they were starting from zero there after already having problems I'm sure it would have been a shit fire of bugs.

>>16472911

I sure hope their license for that has expired.>engine

>fucked that up

Quote was meant for OP

>>16472809

Watching this really makes me think about how the video game industry functions and its sustainability. Companies, no matter the scale, do R&D along with actually producing assets that can only be reused so many times. Very little of it seems to be contract work, too, as all these people are expected to settle down and get insurance. They either need a completely restructured methodology as to how video games are developed or scale back and settle to doing more with less.

>>16472809

Is this guy Irish? He's got an interesting accent.

I can't see Clementine's S2 model without just immediately thinking of all the SFM porn. It's funny to think that's going to be all the character is going to be used for from now on.

Anyhow, it's safe to say Telltale's big fuckup was not properly handling the success they had with TWD. It's one thing to just shoehorn the movie-game approach into every subsequent title they had, but even for the games where that approach worked they failed to properly expand on what they had. Everyone saw it getting old fast.

>>16472990

More of this is bound to become in question when the AAA fiscal model is destroyed as loot boxes are beginning to be regulated by the government and this will force lots of developers to attempt to fund their games through methods that are quickly loosing popularity and that might even become regulated in the future.

Add in the fact that there an upcoming recession and that's bound to increase people pirating and not purchasing and we in for large changes with the current developers to go defunct being ones in the calm before the storm. As this is fucking nothing, this is going to get much worse we are living in the good days for these companies.

>>16472833

I liked it in the sense that the choices were more about psychoanalyzing yourself under pressure, but the real problem was t hat the game formula only works when someone has a story they want to tell. They figured the franchise license was the important part, but past TWDS2 they didn't seem to give a shit about what they were writing.

>>16472990

Well no shit they need to restructure. Games used to be smaller in scale, made by fewer people but in the same amount of time. Their operating costs are shooting through the roof because AAA thinks they need to make massive games, requiring massive teams, but they want to push them out in the same 3-5 year development cycles. This exponentially drives up the cost.

We need to go back to the days of 10-15 guys making a game in 3-4 years and the scale of the game simply being what a small team can do in a few years.

>>16473512

>We need to go back to the days of 10-15 guys making a game in 3-4 years

No, we need to go back to the days of 1-5 guys making a game in 1-2 years.

>>16473512

Things don’t necessarily need to be smaller, but I would be interested if things operated more similarly to movies, where the workers are freelance agents or from different production companies and can be scaled in relation to the size of the budget. Video game companies don’t seem to have that luxury of changing their workers on a project basis with no strings attached.

>>16474950

They can do that but most studios are deathly afraid of having their employees scooped up by someone else so they just hire every single person they can get their hands on and make them do irrelevant shit. Riot for example has over 2 thousand employees but doesn't do jack shit.

>>16472809

>market your game on "make important choices"

>fill the game with shit like "He will remember this"

>proceed to make all of your choices irrelevant

>proceed to make shit episodic despite it being pretty much just a linear story that doesn't need some massive amount of content

>charge people for what is essentially a 3D VN only with about a tenth of content that VNs usually have

>expect to be successful

Telltale was so thoroughly shit that it's a small wonder they ever got any spotlight at all. I guess western market was just really starved for some VNs (which would explain the success of Life is Strange as well)

>>16472833

Eh, for me they had it with TWAU even if it wasn't as critically acclaimed, but I remember I really liked it because it was so unique. Then I tried their other games, like Borderlands which is actually good storywise unlike anything Burch even did and Batman, and it was the same fucking gameplay.

>>16472937

And now that you mention it, my mind was blown when I played the first episode of TWAU. Then since Chapters were fucking slow to be released I couldn't wait to tell how'd they handle the whole "your choices matter". Turns out they didn't, even if you killed a character off.

>>16474969

>charge people for what is essentially a 3D VN only with about a tenth of content that VNs usually have

To be fair, they have to actually animate characters and get things working with the engine. VNs are much easier in that regards as it is just static images for the most part, some do have animation.

>>16474956

That’s all the more reason to work with other companies and freelance agents on projects under a producer. Rather than having Telltale do an entire game, they split up by having their creative team work with another nearby company on something that doesn’t compete with their market while their programmers do R&D to further improve their engine.

>>16474991

>To be fair, they have to actually animate characters and get things working with the engine

Because it's oh so much work to animate something for the 20th time in the same engine you've been using forever, right? Most of their shit isn't even animated, the characters just stand there doing fuck all, waiting for you to chat them up before advancing the story

>>16472911

you mean the only IP that Telltale actually made instead of licensing?

>>16473017

>Edited & Hosted by Danny O'Dwyer

He's a fag that used to be on Gamespot.

Word is, Epic is trying to have all footage of this game be protected and cost money for viewing,

>>16475066

>you mean the only IP that Telltale actually made instead of licensing?

They licensed that too, with exception to the LucasArts game, Steve Purcell owns the IP.

>>16474997

Like I said, they're afraid some other studio will just outbid them if that happens and fuck them over. These people are paranoid control freaks.

>>16475066

Telltale never made an original IP, though they talked about it for years.

If you really don't know about the original Sam and Max comic, as well as the cartoon and LucasArts game, then you are really missing out.

>>16473512

>>16473852

Super Mario 64 was 28 guys, Sonic Adventure for Dreamcast was 30 people. I wouldn't be surprised if all the other N64 and PS1 dev teams averaged about 30 people. 2D games can be smaller but you'd speed production up massively if you had extra hands for drawing all the assets.

>>16475168

lucasarts sam & max is better than all the telltale shit put together.

>>16472809

>didn´t wanted

sucks shitskins can't speak English