Telltale Game Studio's Closure.
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The Walking Dead studio Telltale Games is shutting its doors – report
Telltale Games is closing its doors, according to reports.
Reports today state The Walking Dead developer Telltale Games is shutting down.
Various posts on social media from multiple staffers at the studio seem to confirm the report, according to Gamasutra.
Posts we have seen on Twitter at least note a high level of lay-offs have occurred.
https://www.vg247.com/2018/09/21/telltale-games-shutting-down-report/
Telltale Games is closing its doors, according to reports.
Reports today state The Walking Dead developer Telltale Games is shutting down.
Various posts on social media from multiple staffers at the studio seem to confirm the report, according to Gamasutra.
Posts we have seen on Twitter at least note a high level of lay-offs have occurred.
https://www.vg247.com/2018/09/21/telltale-games-shutting-down-report/
But it was kind of predictable though. Following the success of their Walking Dead series, they just kept on growing and hiring new people (they ended up being 300 employers for grief's sake) to milk and rehash the exact same ideas; furthermore with in my honest opinion low scale visuals, average writing and terrible delivering...
It's one thing to make ''Cutscene-based'' QTE games, but they just threw a bunch of popular licensed into the market without adding any novelty into it; killing their own market...-_-
I think this graph representing their overall sales on Steam is a good indicator of people's gradual lack of interest of their title.
I mean Telltale Minecraft? Batman?
And the quality of their stuff was kinda low:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CyFrD3U4Ig&t=3601sNow compare this to something like Life IS Strange which kinda is the evolutionary step they should have taken for their title (at least for their budget). And with Quantic Dream's title (Become Human) around, they should have really stepped their game up or find a new direction for their stuff...
These guys were outdated...
I feel really sad for the employees there bit the studio's closure is not only in part of probable mismanagement from the execs, but also from a lack of creative vision...
Quoted from this neogaf comment:
Make games 99% based on story.
You don't have to think much when playing the game.
You only occasionally have to have semi quick reflex.
If you mess up the reflex test, it doesn't matter.
Have a huge success because of the license and temporary novelty value.
In the end most of the content you get is what you can watch on Youtube. There's no hook in gameplay. There's no hook in solving puzzles. The only hook is in the story. Most who would watch these on Youtube wouldn't feel they want to beat the challenge or figure out the puzzles by themselves. The only thing they could look for is to get through the story and on Youtube you can get that + be entertained by the reactions of whoever is playing it. These games don't feel as if you are controlling the characters through an adventure. It feels you are mostly just proceeding a story.
Even the studio's name tell their main thing is to tell tales.
I don't think the problem was in their engine or outdated graphics or even in clunky controls. If you want to have your hook solely on telling a story, you have to have an outstanding premise in every story you tell, or the hottest possible license that in itself sells product.
You don't have to think much when playing the game.
You only occasionally have to have semi quick reflex.
If you mess up the reflex test, it doesn't matter.
Have a huge success because of the license and temporary novelty value.
In the end most of the content you get is what you can watch on Youtube. There's no hook in gameplay. There's no hook in solving puzzles. The only hook is in the story. Most who would watch these on Youtube wouldn't feel they want to beat the challenge or figure out the puzzles by themselves. The only thing they could look for is to get through the story and on Youtube you can get that + be entertained by the reactions of whoever is playing it. These games don't feel as if you are controlling the characters through an adventure. It feels you are mostly just proceeding a story.
Even the studio's name tell their main thing is to tell tales.
I don't think the problem was in their engine or outdated graphics or even in clunky controls. If you want to have your hook solely on telling a story, you have to have an outstanding premise in every story you tell, or the hottest possible license that in itself sells product.
More talk and info here:
https://www.neogaf.com/threads/telltale-games-shutting-down.1466071/page-6
Replies
For any Telltale devs out of a job, if you haven't already, check the #telltalejobs hashtag on twitter for lots of folks reaching out (though not sure how you'd be here but not there).
Like I said, it's mismanagement but it's also a lack of creative vision and self awareness...I wonder where they execs blowed all the Walking Dead revenue on..
As for the artists, it's even more shitty than I thought....
''
Telltale Games Shuts Down Suddenly, Won’t Pay Severance To Hundreds Of Laid Off Employees''
The company was best known for its episodic graphic adventure games like The Wolf Among Us, The Walking Dead, Batman: The Telltale Series, and Minecraft: Story Mode. It initiated a “majority studio closure” today after laying off around 250 employees, saying in an official statement:
Various reports online have indicated that the laid off employees won’t receive any severance pay and will lose their health insurance within a couple weeks. (Capcom, by contrast, will be offering severance pay to its employees.) Affected employees have been sharing details on Twitter about their situation
https://www.cartoonbrew.com/business/telltale-games-shuts-down-suddenly-wont-pay-severance-to-hundreds-of-laid-off-employees-164434.html
And apparently, they're in the bay area; a place commonly known for being expansive as hell with actual homeless people with a job (cu they can't afford a rent or a home...
Shit like that reminds me to NEVER be entitled to my job I guess...
Nothing is safe in this industry
They put up way way too many games and for very strange IPs(Minecraft story mode, comes to mind)
Some comments online indicate that employees were given just 30 minutes to leave the studio after being told they were laid off. The company’s CEO Pete Hawley referred to these employees as “friends” in a statement:
Last streaks of tweet:
I feel the pain. I don't ever want to be a contractor again. Even when you're working in the same building, you always felt like the "other".
You can't put all your eggs in one basket -- especially a basket as shoddy as game development -- and rely on organizations to care about you. Always take care of number one first. Nobody else will.
Ambition understandably desires them to want to take care of other IP projects, which they did. It's just the unfortunate thing they couldn't find a similar ridiculous success with future games.
Hopefully we can keep that in mind. @BIGTIMEMASTER they did NOT put all their eggs in one basket. Unless you meant something else by that, Alex?
https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2018/05/17/median-priced-sf-home-income-333k-realtors-report/
It is also a city where $117,000 a year qualifies you as broke-ass poor.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/28/families-earning-117000-qualify-as-low-income-in-san-francisco.html
The overtime argument has been going on since at least 2004 in the public with the EA Spouse story. 14 years later, nothing really has changed. There are still far too many people willing to work 40 hours with no sleep just to put a game title on their resume.
Just general advice. Probably most of these people made all the right decisions, but just had a bad stroke of luck. Sometimes you do your best but life just burns you anyway.
But when you see stuff like this happen, you got to think "How can I prepare so that if this happened to me, I'd be in a better position?"
About living in a place so expensive that a king could go broke paying rent... yeah, don't do that if you can. At least get yourself some land and a house in a livable area. Some place you can fall back on if the big city spits you out. I've got a cabin on land I own -- in total about $6k went into that -- and it gives my wife and I alot of security. No matter what happens, we can go there and just live.
Once we both started earning some money, we bought a house. Now we got two (together we have a combined income of less the $100k), and the second house makes money for us. Real estate is really a no-brainer. Once you can scrape together a little bit of extra cash, invest. It's the surest thing.
From what I read and hear, game dev is an inherently risky endeavor. So don't let passion blind you. You might be the most brilliant artist or developer, but your company goes under. You got to be prepared. Like that person said in their tweet, "the company does not care about you." Truth is, nobody cares about you, besides you, and hopefully your family and close friends.
Mismanagement and creative stagnation/burnout foreshadowed their doom.
But the studio’s meteoric rise would not last. In November 2017, the company announced that it was laying off 90 developers, roughly a quarter of its staff. For some at Telltale, the news was a shock. For others, the inevitable outcome of what sources familiar with the company describe as years of a culture that promoted constant overwork, toxic management, and creative stagnation.
To keep up with the workload, the company started rotating developers in and out of different games during the development process, sometimes in ways that employees say made little sense. As the developer’s schedule grew more aggressive, management sought to remedy tighter turnarounds by adding more people to the department — a “solution” that did little to help the problem. As one former Telltale developer put it: nine women can’t make a baby in one month. “Focus on quality really started to shift to ‘let’s just get as many episodes out as we can,’” the source says.
Time management was a major issue. Release dates would often slip after games underwent multiple, extensive reviews that came with a great deal of feedback, but failed to budget enough time to make the changes. “The pace at which the studio operated was both an amazing feat and its biggest problem,” says a former employee. “Executives would often ask teams to rewrite, redesign, recast, and reanimate up until the very last minute without properly adjusting the schedule. The demands on production only became more intense with each successful release, and at some point, you just don’t have anything left to give.”
“Crunch culture” is well-documented and endemic in the game industry, and Telltale was no exception. Some former employees reported working 14- to 18-hour days or coming in every day of the week for weeks on end. But where most developers go into “crunch mode” in the final months of a game leading up to its launch, they described it as constant. Because of the episodic nature of Telltale’s games, the studio’s development cycle was a constantly turning wheel. As soon as one episode wrapped, it was on to the next one, over and over with no end in sight. “Everything [was] always on fire,” one source with direct knowledge of the company says. “You never [got] a break.” This sentiment was echoed over and over to The Verge by four different people across several parts of Telltale.
There were obvious signs it was all going down to be honest. I know many people can't just leave like that but the moment I sense any kind of pressure to crunch, work overtime without any sight of breeze, actual respect or gratitude for my time, I'd always try to prepare an exit.
I've already worked in 2 studios where I had to go through that shit (80-90 hours a week once) when most of it could have been solved if only management actually CARED about doing things better (for people not for the green)....They usually prefer to go their own way not listening to people, end up biting more than they can chew and blames it on the artists. Fuck these guys.
I've talked with other various artists that worked there and both said studios have now an horrid reputation and nobody (talented enough) wants to work there anymore.
You live and learn. People who know try to tell others. Hopefully they'll listen.
This sort of work is something people do only because they love it, but please always take close account of your own worth. Don't let anybody push you around.
Exactly. Maybe lift too
https://www.gameworkersunite.org
Also is it not against the law to not pay severance pay in the US? In the UK it's one month's pay for every year an employee worked for the company.
I think the bosses will find they broke federal law as it looks planed out to me.
Time for this crap to end.
I wish those who were affected luck, this is a pretty shit way to close down such a populated workplace. Even if they "had no choice", this wasn't just an overnight situation and could have had a mitigation plan put forward some time in advance.
https://www.polygon.com/2018/9/25/17901106/telltale-layoffs-lawsuit-warn-act
Imagine your company being bankrupt and then being sued on top of that...oh well, serves them right for taking the wrong decisions...
Telltale's Labor Disaster Proves Game Developers Need to Organize
https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2018/09/telltale-layoffs-dante-douglas.htmlGood article that explains what has gone on behind the scenes, its good to see good journalism researching various avenues before putting pen to paper.
"As Game Workers Unite said in a statement last weekend, the Telltale workers aren’t at fault for getting laid off. And it’s not the fault of the general gaming public for not knowing about the deeper labor issues at play here. Both were being exploited by branding efforts, managerial malfeasance, and labor abuse—issues that are not unique to Telltale, and also not insurmountable. But in order to fight against these events, we can’t do it alone." - paste magazine, 27/09/18
I was lucky enough to be in part of the company that wasn't affected and was in fact ramping up but it was so surreal touring a studio of 300 people and then starting work in a post apocalyptic wasteland. When they let everyone go they locked the doors and told employees they could schedule times to come get their personal effects, many did not so the offices looked like it was the weekend, for months.
That was back in 2001, its sad that not much has changed.
We were given a couple minutes to pack up under supervision, our machines were fully locked, and then promptly escorted out. Really made me doubt the gaming industry. I literally got out of it, and ended up doing Arch Viz, Ad work, and other non-gaming work for years.
I got into this work because I both love working on game art and love games in general, but sometimes I honestly think that I should have just become a carpenter.
You're not wrong. In my specific case, it would be like getting into the family business. I could have said electrician, or plumber too. I do understand your point though, and understand that in all non-unionized employment, there is a high level of uncertainty.
While that's true, in construction, ninety-nine percent of the time you don't have to move across the country every time a project ends.
After the interview an employee asked if I wanted to see the town that night. I met up with him later for dinner and he gave me an honest assessment of the studio. He said he would be surprised if the studio existed in 3 months.
I ended up not accepting the offer, and sure enough in 3 months they closed their doors. I'm so grateful he had the courage to speak up. Especially because I love how my career and life has turned out since then.
Would the company have been mad at him for telling you that? Probably. But who cares? He helped you greatly. We need more of that attitude.