The tragedy of Telltale Games is still being felt weeks after the studio closed. The studio was known for episodic content across all kinds of classic and beloved franchises, and they made a name for themselves for gripping storytelling. However, bad financial choices, and apparent shuffle games led to their demise, and the cancelation of all future games they were planning to work on. But now, a narrative designer from the studio remarks that things were much worse than people knew.
Emily Grace Buck, who gave a post-mortem interview about Telltale to Gameindustry.biz noted that many things led to the fall of the company, but one of the biggest ones was a “clash” of beliefs about what the games would be. As well as a “fundamental misunderstanding” of what the gamers wanted. The best example of this that she game was in regards to their Guardians of the Galaxy game.
Obviously, the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise grew in worth in a big way because of the movies from Marvel Studios, so a game by TellTale actually felt quite natural. Anyone who has seen the movies knows that they are very funny, and have a lot of banter between the characters. But according to Buck, the high-ups at Telltale Games believed that the only way to go for THEIR version of the game was to go darker, grimmer, and more violent.
“So we redid the first two episodes to be less funny and more dark and more violent and more sad, and that’s the game that shipped.”
Things like this led to many disagreements with the head executives, ones that never worked out for those who wanted to change things:
“It was very, very often an uphill battle, and one that was scary to fight.”
Buck goes on and on about this, and even though she admits that Telltale did have a “family culture” at points, the mistakes of the higher-ups cost them everything. And to this day, only 20% of the people who were laid off from TellTale have gotten jobs in other parts of gaming industry.
