Telltale Games Down to 25 Employees, Some Speculating on Studio's Closure - MMORPG.com News

SBFord

Telltale Games Down to 25 Employees, Some Speculating on Studio's Closure - MMORPG.com News

It appears that a massive round of layoffs has hit Telltale Games, developers of such well-regarded titles as Batman: The Enemy Within, the Minecraft: Story Mode games, Guardians of the Galaxy, The Walking Dead and others. While no official statement has been released, sources speaking to VentureBeat have confirmed the layoffs. Another source said that the company is down to only 25 remaining employees. Some believe this is a precursor to a complete shutdown of the respected studio.

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SBFord

Very sad, but perhaps the studio had become to unidimensional in the games they developed? Still...RIP. I hope the employees find new work soon!

Mykell

Was looking forward to the next Wolf Among Us but guess that won't be happening. Sad to see them go.

Sandmanjw

Torval said:

SBFord said:

Very sad, but perhaps the studio had become to unidimensional in the games they developed? Still...RIP. I hope the employees find new work soon!

Pure speculation on my part, this seems reasonable. I think of their games as one dimensional. I know a lot of kids watch game play videos and streams instead of actually playing it themselves. Sometimes my son will do share play sessions with close friends and they'll take turns playing a game while chatting.

Overall, I can see these games being "revenue challenged". There is little replayability. They're not only linear, but predictable and simple in the few places they provide game play. They essentially interactive visual novels, which is fine, but not particularly lucrative anymore.

Raph Koster has brought this up several times and has addressed it in some of his writings and speeches. Some games aren't going to be profitable to make in the present climate. That's my paraphrased interpretation of his point. Some games are more expensive to produce "per byte" and generate less revenue that others. This falls into that kind of game. Many single player narrative driven titles fall into this category.

Same...i think they just got too big to be profitable on the type of games they were making.  Hope they can maintain the 15-20 person and get enough work/sales to be profitable and continue on.

Lot of companies get some cash/success and go on a "let's hire and grow" only to get too big, too quickly, and ruin a good thing. Expansion is not always a positive.

venatis

A shame for the people who loved them and for the people who lost their jobs. I only ever liked Tales from the Borderlands. Would have loved them to do a second series. I just hope Gearbox uses the characters they made, I really liked Rhys and Fiona.

Manestream

Shutting down has been confirmed

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lahnmir

Really didn't see this coming. I thought they were doing quite well, loved their Walking Dead games. Sad to hear

/Cheers,
Lahnmir

ConstantineMerus

Heartbreaking

SBFord

Today Telltale Games made the difficult decision to begin a majority studio closure following a year marked by insurmountable challenges. A majority of the company’s employees were dismissed earlier this morning, with a small group of 25 employees staying on to fulfill the company’s obligations to its board and partners. CEO Pete Hawley issued the following statement:

“It's been an incredibly difficult year for Telltale as we worked to set the company on a new course. Unfortunately, we ran out of time trying to get there. We released some of our best content this year and received a tremendous amount of positive feedback, but ultimately, that did not translate to sales. With a heavy heart, we watch our friends leave today to spread our brand of storytelling across the games industry.”

Telltale will issue further comments regarding its product portfolio in the coming weeks.

SBFord

https://www.brunerhouse.com/blog/2018/9/21/telltale-closure

This blog post made by one of the Telltale co-founders is a personal blog. While he opines that the studio is closing, it is not, in fact if you check two posts above this one for Telltale's official statement. The writer has even amended his post with: "Update: This is not an official announcement by the company, just my blog." 

My guess is the 25 will "fulfill their duties to the board" and then it will close. I wonder what "those duties" are? 

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TheScavenger

This is very sad news. I loved their games (even though like someone said, they were ore like visual novels), and I have every single game of theirs on steam.

Out of all companies to close past couple/few years, this is up there with the saddest

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Kyleran

DMKano said:

Fortnite butterfly effect.

A single mega-blockbuster product with 120milion+ gamers that's gonna make more than $1 billion this year means - much less money and less time for other studios to shine.

The financial ripple effect goes throughout the entire video game industry and even games that are not direct competitors are feeling the financial strain

Expect to see more mergers, more acquisitions and more shutdowns 

It is much healthier for the free market to not be dominated by a few elite products and companies 

Just curious, what do players buy to generate all this revenue?

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Bananable

Lolz. What a surprise company that have no thier own ideas (seriously all their products are just fanfics) and makes mediocre movies that for some reason called games.

I watched walking dead on youtube. Ive never seen most depressive and dumbest (that moment with radio and batteries) story in my life.
I cringed through season one, then checked second, but i couldnt watch further after lil girl (main char, 11 years old) got bitten by dog and adults not only wont help, but want to kill her. Is this really fun to (i cant say play) watch? 

I have first season on steam , got it from giveaway. Still havent played it. I sigh everytime i look at it.

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MadFrenchie

I really enjoyed The Wolf Among Us.  Sorry to hear this.

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kitarad

What a pity. If more and more people don't support and buy the games or only when they are on sale or pirate them in the end the very thing that you like will cease to be.

immoralthang

I really hope the writers for Telltale Games narratives’ find careers elsewhere. There was a lot of flaws with TT, but excellent storytelling was not one of them.

I can’t say I’m surprised at this news. How many years have people been begging TT to stop making interactive movies and make games?

Solar_Prophet

The problem with their games was that they lacked any sort of meaningful choices. It didn't matter what path you chose, the story still played out in exactly the same fashion with a few very minor differences. This makes them fine to watch on livestream or a LP, but there's really no reason to actually spend money to play them. They were interactive storybooks, not games. 

gervaise1

DMKano said:

Kyleran said:

DMKano said:

Fortnite butterfly effect.

A single mega-blockbuster product with 120milion+ gamers that's gonna make more than $1 billion this year means - much less money and less time for other studios to shine.

The financial ripple effect goes throughout the entire video game industry and even games that are not direct competitors are feeling the financial strain

Expect to see more mergers, more acquisitions and more shutdowns 

It is much healthier for the free market to not be dominated by a few elite products and companies 

Just curious, what do players buy to generate all this revenue?

Epic has done something that very few companies has managed to do as far as monetization goes - the only thing you can buy are cosmetics <snip>

They did it via selling "season passes" (cost $10 worth of vbucks - vbucks are virtual currency in Fortnite) - and season passes give you faster "tiering/leveling up" - which really means faster skin/dance/emote unlocks and special season only skins etc...
<snip>

And 120M+ x $10 (say) adds up to a lot of money.

It not simply the financial disruption though - after all $10 per player (on average of course) isn't that big a deal. There is the TIME element.

People wrapped up in playing Fortnite don't have the time / desire / inclination to play e.g. a TT game. Which means they won't be buying e.g. a TT game.

Kyleran

DMKano said:

Kyleran said:

DMKano said:

Fortnite butterfly effect.

A single mega-blockbuster product with 120milion+ gamers that's gonna make more than $1 billion this year means - much less money and less time for other studios to shine.

The financial ripple effect goes throughout the entire video game industry and even games that are not direct competitors are feeling the financial strain

Expect to see more mergers, more acquisitions and more shutdowns 

It is much healthier for the free market to not be dominated by a few elite products and companies 

Just curious, what do players buy to generate all this revenue?

Epic has done something that very few companies has managed to do as far as monetization goes - the only thing you can buy are cosmetics - skins, dances, emotes - none of these give any power to the players in Fortnite Battle Royale - they are 100% aesthetics. 

Normally these sell worth a crap - and what really sells the best are things that provide direct power benefit to the player - like lootboxes, gear boosts etc...

So why are they selling so well? Because Epic has managed to create the illusion of progression - without any actual power gain whatsoever.

They did it via selling "season passes" (cost $10 worth of vbucks - vbucks are virtual currency in Fortnite) - and season passes give you faster "tiering/leveling up" - which really means faster skin/dance/emote unlocks and special season only skins etc...

So there is a sense of progression - like they put a really sweet tier 100 skin - so everyone is playing like crazy to get enough XP to get to tier 100 to unlock that skin as well as other skins/dances/emotes along the way.


Bottom line - people are buying skins/dances/emotes and that's all.

I am not going to talk about the PvE version because its earnings are so miniscule in comparison to Fortnite Royale that it's not worth even mentioning.

Thanks for the explanation.  I don't see the appeal of buying gaming "skins", or have any real desire to buy cosmetics in a game so it's a bit beyond my comprehension, but I do realize big money is spent on this sort of thing.

Kyleran

DMKano said:

gervaise1 said:

DMKano said:

Kyleran said:

DMKano said:

Fortnite butterfly effect.

A single mega-blockbuster product with 120milion+ gamers that's gonna make more than $1 billion this year means - much less money and less time for other studios to shine.

The financial ripple effect goes throughout the entire video game industry and even games that are not direct competitors are feeling the financial strain

Expect to see more mergers, more acquisitions and more shutdowns 

It is much healthier for the free market to not be dominated by a few elite products and companies 

Just curious, what do players buy to generate all this revenue?

Epic has done something that very few companies has managed to do as far as monetization goes - the only thing you can buy are cosmetics <snip>

They did it via selling "season passes" (cost $10 worth of vbucks - vbucks are virtual currency in Fortnite) - and season passes give you faster "tiering/leveling up" - which really means faster skin/dance/emote unlocks and special season only skins etc...
<snip>

And 120M+ x $10 (say) adds up to a lot of money.

It not simply the financial disruption though - after all $10 per player (on average of course) isn't that big a deal. There is the time element.

People wrapped up in playing Fortnite don't have the time / desire / inclination to play e.g. a TT game. Which means they won't be buying e.g. a TT game.

Exactly - my son used to play about a dozen different games before Fortnite - now for about 6 months he has played Fortnite 99% of the time, same with all his friends.

All of his game allowance money goes 100% to Fornite - used to spend it on about 3-4 different games.

Also there are 4 seasons per year - so at minimum Fortnite players that do spend money end up spending at least $40 per year on season passes alone 

It's a bit of cycle though, right?  I recall my son going through a phase where he played nothing but League of Legends exclusively for about a year, but eventually got past it and now plays a solid mixture of Playstation 4 titles, and buys new ones monthly.

One thing he never plays anymore is LOL..... well, or MMORPG's either..... despite being raised on them from the time he was 8...... things change I guess.