Telltale Games (2013-2018)

Telltale Games
They almost didn't live long enough to tell the tale.
Type: Private Founded: July 2004 Defunct: October 11, 2018 Founder(s): Kevin Bruner Dan Connors Troy Molander Headquarters: San Rafael, California, United States Key people: Pete Hawley (CEO)

Telltale Incorporated, doing business as Telltale Games, was an American video game developer who was best known for its graphic adventure games.

Why They Used to Tell a Horrible Tale

1. Since The Walking Dead, they have produced near-identical games with different licenses yearly. They also milked The Walking Dead despite the quality of the writing dropping in Season 2 and, especially, Season 3.
2. Quantity over quality: Instead of taking their time, they signed deals with many licenses and pushed out games without any polish. As a result, many of their games were released with various technical issues, two notable examples being their Game of Thrones and Batman series of games. This is also one of the reasons why their company fell apart.
   • Technical problems can also be blamed on the practically outdated engine they have used since 2004.
3. A toxic workplace environment and a lack of camaraderie between workers was a major cause of their downfall. The lack of proper management and communication was part of the cause.
4. Terrible mismanagement of their employees, as when they shut down, they only gave their employees 30 minutes to leave the building, and to make things worse, they actually employed people one week before they shut down.
5. While Telltale has shown that they can write well in the past and in modern times (Tales From The Borderlands and The Wolf Among Us being good examples), many of their newer titles are poorly written. Minecraft: Story Mode, for example, contains numerous clichés such as a generic contest the heroes try to win.
6. All of their games use the episodic format, which is not only a horrible practice, but also pointless since buying the season pass gives access to all upcoming episodes in a season. Knowing how many episodes are planned makes the cliffhangers less of a surprise. That format has also let Telltale get away with rushed products since an episodic approach allows developers to work in smaller chunks.
7. While Telltale has mostly made point-and-click adventure games before the creation of The Walking Dead, they had a bit of variety with games such as Poker Night at The Inventory. Nowadays, however, there's little to no variety in the types of games they have made.
8. Some of the employees are leftists that pander to left-wing audiences, and when customers expressed their annoyance by this, Telltale insulted their fanbase, which shows that they can't handle any form of criticism.
   • In fact, they even employed former Gearbox writer Anthony Burch as a co-writer for some of the Tales From The Borderlands episodes, in which he shoehorned his stupid political and social views as usual.

Redeeming Qualities

1. They used to be good when they didn't rush their games out.
   • Despite the technical issues, their Batman games, especially The Enemy Within, are really good.
   • The storytelling in their modern games can be good, as mentioned earlier.
2. After they had revived the company in 2018, LCG Entertainment is offering former Telltale staff freelance positions as well as paying compensation for Telltale's actions.

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