Telltale Incorporated (trade name: Telltale Games) was an American video game developer based in San Rafael, California. The company was founded in July 2004 by former LucasArts developers Kevin Bruner, Dan Connors and Troy Molander, following LucasArts' decision to leave the adventure game genre. Telltale established itself to focus on adventure games using a novel episodic release schedule using digital distribution, creating its own game engine, the Telltale Tool, to support this. It closed in October 2018 after filing for bankruptcy protection.
Telltale's initial successes were with games using intellectual properties with small but dedicated fan bases including Sam & Max, Wallace & Gromit, Homestar Runner, and Bone. Around 2010, the studio gained more lucrative licensing opportunities in more mainstream properties such as Back to the Future, Jurassic Park, and Law & Order. Telltale's critical breakout game came in 2012's The Walking Dead, based on the comic book series of the same name. It introduced a more narrative-directed approach that diverged from the standard adventure game "point and click" gameplay. The Walking Dead gave players the ability to make choices that could affect how future events in the game or its sequels played out, effectively allowing players to craft their own personalized take on the offered story. Nearly all of Telltale's adventure games afterwards featured this player choice-driven approach. The Walking Dead was critically acclaimed and considered to have revitalized the adventure game genre since LucasArts' departure from it in 2004.
Telltale continued to expand with new licensing deals for episodic adventure games over the next few years, including for Minecraft, Game of Thrones, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Batman. However the rate of production created a "crunch time" culture behind the scenes, leaving poor company morale, little room for creativity to veer from the formula set by The Walking Dead or improvements on the Telltale Tool. A management shakeup occurred in early 2017, with CEO Bruner stepping down, and Pete Hawley, formerly of Zynga, brought in to fix Telltale's problems. Internal restructuring led to a layoff of 25% of the company's staff in November 2017, along with an emphasis to slow down game production to improve production quality, retire the Telltale Tool for a more standard game engine, and seek other lucrative properties to develop for. This resulted in an early 2018 deal with Netflix in which Telltale would adapt its Minecraft: Story Mode into an interactive program for the streaming service, and Netflix licensing the rights to Telltale for an adventure game based on its show Stranger Things.
In the midst of releasing The Walking Dead: The Final Season, the company was forced to initiate a "majority studio closure" after its last investor had pulled out of funding. Telltale announced on September 21, 2018, that it had let go of all but 25 of its staff as part of this closure, with the remaining skeleton crew completing specific obligations, such as finishing the Minecraft: Story Mode project porting to Netflix. Telltale Games filed for assignment in October 2018. Many assets were later acquired by LCG Entertainment, which revived the Telltale Games name as part of its business in August 2019, retaining many of the company's previous licenses and offering former staff freelance positions.
History
Foundation and initial growth (2004–2010)
Telltale Games was founded in San Rafael, California, by Kevin Bruner, Dan Connors and Troy Molander, a group of former LucasArts employees who worked on the studio's adventure games. In March 2004, LucasArts recognized that there were "current market place realities and underlying economic considerations" that made adventure games too risky to release, and canceled work on two sequels of previous adventure games, Full Throttle 2 and Sam & Max: Freelance Police, as well as laying off many of those developers. The studio opening was announced on October 4. The name "Telltale" was selected by Bruner as the three envisioned themselves creating more adventure games but de-emphasizing puzzle elements in favor of narrative aspects, telling a tale to the user.
thumb|right|The team of Telltale Games at San Diego Comic-con in July 2007; from left to right: [[Chuck Jordan (game designer)|Chuck Jordan, Jake Rodkin, Dave Grossman, Daniel Farjam Herrera, Doug Tabacco, Emily Morganti, and also a demo version of Sam & Max Save the World]]
The company's initial goal was to develop a new Sam & Max game in an episodic format. Grossman said that Telltale identified that Sam & Max had a small but dedicated audience allowing it to develop a title that would be successful in reaching out to this group and not requiring it to seek out a bigger license that would have incurred more development costs. Developing a Sam & Max game required both development of tools to produce the game, and the license to make it. At the time of the studio's founding, the license for Sam & Max was still held by LucasArts, who refused to negotiate a deal nor license the work on Sam & Max: Freelance Police for Telltale to complete it. Telltale waited out the licensing period until around mid-2005, after which Steve Purcell, Sam & Maxs creator, immediately offered the license to Telltale. They used the license around Jeff Smith's Bone comic book series to test the episodic format. Though initially planned for a five-episode series, Telltale only released two episodes in 2005 and 2006 and the remaining episode had been canceled. The studio created a second season for Sam & Max, and found additional niche intellectual property areas, including Wallace & Gromit and Homestar Runner, to continue the episodic adventure game format. The first game, Nelson Tethers: Puzzle Agent, a puzzle-solving game in collaboration with Graham Annable, was released in June 2010, while Poker Night at the Inventory, a crossover poker game featuring characters from Sam and Max, Homestar Runner, Valve's Team Fortress 2, and the webcomic Penny Arcade, was released late in 2010. Telltale followed up Puzzle Agent with a sequel, Puzzle Agent 2, in 2011. In 2013, Telltale continued the series with Poker Night 2. The Walking Dead started out as a pilot program game that was known internally as the "zombie prototype". In general, few of these games brought in large revenues, and until 2010, the founders feared that investors would suddenly pull out of the company and would force its closure. Notably, Telltale's Jurassic Park: The Game was the first game to break away from the standard adventure game format, including elements like quick time events and time-limited choices which would become a core gameplay element in its future adventure games.
By 2010, Telltale had proven itself successful, with yearly revenues of $10 million, 90% greater than the previous year. Allison stated that for most of its games, it only needs to sell 100,000 copies to break even, but many of its recent releases have seen twice that number or more. but Activision took back the rights in 2013, which were subsequently used by The Odd Gentlemen to create its 2015 episodic King's Quest game.
Telltale's breakthrough success came with the licenses of the comic book series The Walking Dead and Fables in association with Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment in 2011. Allison anticipated that The Walking Dead series could be a $20 to $30 million franchise. This format proved highly successful: the game sold one million copies in 20 days, exceeded 8.5 million episode purchases by 2013, and an estimated $40 million in revenue. The success led to two additional 5-episode seasons, a 3-episode mini-season and a final 4-episode season. The Walking Dead is considered to have revitalized the waning adventure game genre due to this more emotionally driven focus. Since The Walking Dead, nearly all of Telltale's games have used a similar approach of being built around the impacts of the player's choices as determinants in later episodes and seasons.
Telltale has had several other licensing details from popular works, including Tales from the Borderlands based on the Borderlands series by Gearbox Software, Minecraft: Story Mode based on the Mojang game, Minecraft, Batman from DC Comics, and Guardians of the Galaxy: The Telltale Series from Marvel Comics. On retrospective after the studio's closure, former employees of Telltale believed that the studio's expansion into all these additional licensed properties were trying to replicate the success of The Walking Dead, moving the company from a risk-taker to seeking risk aversion strategies. Around 2015, the company had grown to 200 to 250 employees. Internally, there were concerns about this transition and Brunner's influence on it; an anonymous quality control (QC) employee writing in Gamasutra after the firm's closure called this transition "the beginning of the end" for Telltale. In February 2015, Lionsgate announced an investment within Telltale Games to produce a number of "Super Shows", a hybrid interactive work combining television and video game elements, which would be distributed through non-traditional channels such as through streaming services. The first Super Show planned was an original intellectual property (IP) developed by Telltale that would be able to take advantage of this format. Telltale also announced that Lionsgate CEO Jon Feltheimer and Unity Technologies CEO John Riccitiello joined Telltale's board of directors. Alongside this, Lionsgate had invested into Telltale. During this time, the eighth generation of video game consoles emerged, and while the Telltale Tool was ported to these platforms, it showed its age in graphics quality, which also diminished Telltale's products. According to narrative designer Emily Grace Buck, management would frequently demand rewrites of materials, with most games having between 60 and 90 percent of the content reworked after executive review. Bruner and management created a "culture of fear" of demotion or firing among developers. Pete Hawley, the former VP for Games at Zynga, was announced as the new CEO, with Connors remaining on its Board and acting in an advisory role. Rather than other corporate "fixers" who take control of a company for a temporary period to help it regain its financial footing, Hawley had committed to staying with Telltale after helping the company to get past these problems. While Telltale had not stated which positions were let go in the restructuring, sources speaking to USgamer stated that most were part of the management structure that led to these problems; coupled with Hawley's appointment as CEO, this was expected to be a turning point to help revitalize Telltale. In its response to Bruner's lawsuit, Telltale stated that the company "is now working to turn around the decline that it experienced under [Bruner]'s stewardship".
In June 2018, Telltale announced a partnership with Netflix for the streaming service to provide its games to subscribers, with the first planned game being Minecraft: Story Mode. Alongside this, Telltale announced that it was working on a yet-untitled game based on Netflix's original property, Stranger Things. According to Variety, there had been suggestions of teaming with Netflix for collaboration shortly after Stranger Things first aired in mid-2016, but Telltale's management at the time, including Bruner, rejected the idea. The Netflix partnership solidified after Hawley took over as CEO.
Majority studio closure and aftermath (2018)
On September 21, 2018, CEO Pete Hawley announced that Telltale was undergoing a "majority studio closure", with around 90% of its present workforce (225 to 250 employees) let go that day. A core team of about 25 employees remained to "fulfill the company's obligations to its board and partners", which includes completing the Minecraft: Story Mode interactive media project for Netflix. According to Dan Connors, the studio had been ready to close another round of financing when its last major investor pulled out. The company executives had to make the decision to end all production as soon as possible without this investment. While Connors did not specify which investor pulled out, Variety suggested that this may have been Lionsgate, which had contacted Telltale's board the previous week about its intent to pull out of funding Telltale in order to return to its core film business. Variety also reported that AMC Networks, which owns the rights to The Walking Dead television series, and Smilegate, a Korean mobile games publisher, were looking to invest in Telltale, but both pulled out the day before Telltale's closure announcement. Dan Murray, president of Skybound Interactive which was working with Telltale for The Walking Dead games, said "We knew some of the challenges Telltale was facing, but when the news hits so suddenly everyone was taken off guard", while anonymous Telltale employees stated to The Verge that they had known the company was in financial trouble in the months leading up to the closure and was further hurt by leaks of news related to the Netflix deal, which management wanted to use as a lure for speculative investors.
In a press release, Hawley stated:
Those who were let go reported they were given no warning, had to leave the office building within 30 minutes of the company's decision, received no severance, and only had a limited amount of time on their health care benefits. Melissa Hutchison, the voice actor for Clementine in The Walking Dead games, said that the news came in the middle of a recording session which they had to immediately end. On September 24, the former staff were allowed to return to the office within a three-hour timeframe to gather any belongings they did not manage to collect in the 30 minutes following the majority closure decision. The suddenness of the closure, along with the lack of post-layoff support for the employees, led to renewed discussions about the need for video game developers to unionize, with the Game Workers Unite grassroots movement calling the treatment of the Telltale employees "exploitative". On September 24, 2018, a class-action lawsuit was filed by former Telltale employee Vernie Roberts, representing about a total of 275 Telltale employees, alleging that Telltale violated the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act of 1988 (WARN Act) and the more stringent requirements set by California of requiring at least 60 days notification before issuing mass layoffs.
Telltale did not officially comment on the status of its in-progress games, including The Wolf Among Us: Season Two, Game of Thrones: Season Two, and the untitled Stranger Things project, but laid-off employees alleged that teams working on these games had all been let go. On September 24, Netflix announced that it is "in the process of evaluating other options for bringing the Stranger Things universe to life in an interactive medium." It also confirmed that it plans to go ahead with releasing Minecraft: Story Mode as planned. The first three episodes of Minecraft: Story Mode were subsequently released on Netflix on November 27, and the remaining two were released that December.
Telltale released the second of four planned episodes of The Walking Dead: The Final Season as scheduled on September 25, 2018, and stated that it had been contacted by "multiple potential partners" to help bring the last two episodes of the series to completion in some manner. While some fans of the series were happy about the news, others, including Cory Barlog, suggested that Telltale should prioritize finding ways to pay the let-go developers over finishing the game. Two anonymous sources speaking to Ethan Gach of Kotaku clarified that Telltale was trying to convince potential development partners to hire the staff Telltale had laid off, so that the staff could remotely finish the two remaining episodes of The Walking Dead: The Final Season. During the 2018 New York Comic Con, Robert Kirkman, the creator of The Walking Dead comic, stated that his production company Skybound Entertainment had completed negotiations with Telltale to finish the last two episodes of The Final Season through its Skybound Games division and with the original development team from Telltale.
On October 4, 2018, narrative designer Rachel Noel stated that her team within the skeleton crew was also laid off, and that there were "not many" people left at the company. Telltale saw assignment proceedings begin on October 11, 2018, working through Sherwood Partners to liquidate all remaining assets; the company remains in assignment as of April 2019. For some of these removed games, after rights were returned, the original company was able to rerelease the titles through a new publisher; for example, Skybound republished all four seasons of The Walking Dead as one collection, The Walking Dead: The Telltale Definitive Series, in September 2019, while Gearbox Software rereleased Tales from the Borderlands in February 2021.
Relaunch under LCG Entertainment (2018–present)
Following negotiations with Sherwood Partners starting in February 2019, LCG Entertainment acquired several key Telltale assets and on August 28, 2019, announced that it was re-launching the company by assuming "Telltale Games" as its trade name, operating out of Malibu, California, with a satellite studio in Corte Madera, California. Under the leadership of founders Jamie Ottilie (chief executive officer) and Brian Waddle (chief revenue officer), the new Telltale is set to re-release the old Telltale's back-catalog, as well as work on new games based on Telltale-affiliated properties. While licenses for games and planned games like The Walking Dead and Stranger Things have since reverted to their original owners, the new Telltale retains licenses for The Wolf Among Us and Batman, as well as the intellectual property for Puzzle Agent. The new Telltale was expected to start small for the first six months to regain distribution channels, and the company has offered former staff of the old Telltale freelance roles within the company with the potential for full-time positions at a later point in time. Partners in the new Telltale include publisher Athlon Games, which will handle distribution, and financial contributors Chris Kingsley, Lyle Hall and Tobias Sjögren. None of the newly involved parties had previously worked with the old Telltale. The first game under this new company was a re-release of Batman: The Telltale Series, adding in a new noir-style shader among other fixes, which was released in December 2019. The company also announced The Wolf Among Us 2 at The Game Awards 2019. The sequel is being made in partnership with AdHoc Studio, a company composed of former Telltale employees who worked on the first game.
Former employees of the original Telltale were skeptical of LCG's approach to the relaunch of Telltale, considering that offering only freelance work while in San Francisco, which has one of the highest costs-of-living in the country, is risky. Others have urged LCG to pay off its existing Telltale debt to its former employees, while others have called for a boycott of any game from the new Telltale. As of 2022, roughly 50 percent of the company's staff is made up of former Telltale employees.
Development model
Telltale Games released video games in episodic installments. It is seen by production studios and other content producers to take a more realistic approach to movie tie-in games rather than the difficult "see the movie, play the game" model, and also collaborates with studios and screenwriters to create a strong experience that pays homage to the original film or franchise. For some of its games, Telltale developed additional downloadable content, such as 400 Days for The Walking Dead, or three additional episodes for Minecraft: Story Mode Season 1, which must be purchased separately from the season pass.
With Batman: The Telltale Series and most of the episodic adventure games released later, Telltale added a "Crowd Play" feature that can be used by those that stream their playthroughs on services like Twitch. Through Crowd Play, viewers can vote for an option for the streamer to select. While mainly a developer, Telltale also verified its self-publishing ethos; the only classic developer-publisher relationship was with Ubisoft for the CSI video game franchise. They have struck financial arrangements with GameTap for the first two seasons of the rebooted Sam & Max games, but its publishing arrangements have been chiefly made after the games were already completed and had already been sold via digital distribution.
Telltale aimed to present itself on as many digital platforms and avenues as possible. It has released games through GameTap; on Microsoft Windows and OS X, through Steam and similar services, plus its own online store, on Wii via WiiWare and disc, on Xbox 360, via Xbox Live Arcade and disc, on PlayStation 3 through PlayStation Network and disc, on iPhone and iPad through iTunes, on PlayStation Vita, and on Kindle Fire HDX. Though Telltale normally ports its own games to other systems, CSI: 3 Dimensions of Murder was ported to the PlayStation 2 by Ubisoft Sofia, and Bone: Out from Boneville was ported to Mac OS by Vanbrio. Telltale was one of the companies who Sony confirmed pledged PlayStation 4 third-party support at the PlayStation Meeting 2013. Telltale had also committed to developing and re-releasing seasons for the Nintendo Switch. Stauffer stated that there were no restrictions on what games they can bring to the Switch due to content, but it was focusing on its more recent, family-friendly games like Minecraft: Story Mode, Batman, and Guardians of the Galaxy only due to ease of porting these to the Switch, while older games like The Walking Dead required more effort to port. A casual poker game, Telltale Texas Hold'em, was created to test its engine and distribution model, and to ensure that all major bugs were ironed out before the release of its first adventure game, Bone: Out from Boneville. The Telltale Tool has been used for every game developed by Telltale Games, and continued to receive improvements since the initial version, such as compatibility to new systems and better graphics capabilities. The only third-party game to use the Telltale Tool, Hector: Badge of Carnage, was developed by Straandlooper and also published by Telltale Games.
While the Telltale Tool has been updated over the years to support newer consoles and computers, it lacked features that made it more difficult to develop for as the company took on more projects, rushing the development schedules.
Telltale moved to an improved version of its engine around early 2016, partially implemented first in The Walking Dead: Michonne and completed for the release of Batman: The Telltale Series. The updated Telltale Tool provided direct support for DirectX 11 features, including physics-based models, texture mapping and blending, and dynamic lighting and shadows. and with The Fun Pimps to publish 7 Days to Die for consoles; according to Variety, this publishing deal was as financially successful for Telltale as the first The Walking Dead season. During the company's restructuring in 2017, the publishing branch of Telltale had been put on hiatus but was expected to be reused once the company regained its financial stability.<br />— (Skybound Games) || data-sort-value="4"|4 episodes || Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Microsoft Windows, Xbox One
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| The Wolf Among Us 2 || Originally cancelled, restarted under LCG || data-sort-value="0" || data-sort-value="0"
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| Untitled Game of Thrones sequel || Cancelled || data-sort-value="0" || data-sort-value="0"
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| Untitled Stranger Things game || Cancelled || data-sort-value="0" ||
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| Untitled project || Cancelled || data-sort-value="0" || iOS, Android
|}
Published
{| class="wikitable sortable" style="width: 100%;"
! width="20%" | Title
! width="20%" | Developer(s)
! width="20%" | Release
! width="20%" | # of episodes
! width="20%" | Platform(s)
|-
| Hector: Badge of Carnage || Straandlooper || — || data-sort-value="3"|3 episodes || iOS, macOS, Microsoft Windows
|-
| The Jackbox Party Pack || Jackbox Games || || data-sort-value="1"|Standalone game || PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Microsoft Windows
|-
| 7 Days to Die || The Fun Pimps || || data-sort-value="1"|Standalone game || PlayStation 4, Xbox One, MacOS, Microsoft Windows
|-
| Mr. Robot || Night School Studio || || data-sort-value="1"|Standalone game || Android, iOS
|-
| RGX: Showdown || Shortround Games || || data-sort-value="1"|Standalone game || PlayStation 4, Xbox One
|-
| Stranded Deep || Beam Team Games || Originally cancelled, self-published by Beam Team on