Throughout the studio's many teams, including Mary Kenney's narrative team, morale remained high. This is not to say Telltale was during this time a ship waiting to sink. It was all led by the marketing department and that lack of a voice destroyed the creative team's enthusiasm." "If something like The Walking Dead: Season Two did a fraction of sales of the first season, and the Michonne mini-series tanked, what made people think Season Three, let alone Season Four, was a good idea? After The Walking Dead: Season One, very few people from creative had any say about what projects the studio took on. "It was the choices of the projects that ruined my optimism for the studio's future," said one person who worked at Telltale. There was also concern raised regarding the sequels Telltale was making, especially after lacking returns from previous instalments. "There was a brief ray of light with the sales of Minecraft: Season One, but the deal Telltale inked with Mojang/Microsoft was so bad, Telltale didn't see a lot of the returns from the game's moderate sales." The Walking Dead brought Telltale Games great success, which they would attempt to replicate until their closure. "The Board and publishing were always predicting and budgeting for another The Walking Dead: Season One success, but never gave projects the time, money and resources to really make that a reality," said a source. However, some staff were frustrated by what they considered to be unrealistic targets set by higher-ups. Seeing our fans' enthusiasm and love for the project I was on kept my spirits high, and continues to do so even though I'm no longer working on it." For me, creating games has always been about the people playing them, not so much the numbers. When asked if the sales numbers affected her negatively, Kenney replied: "For some, I'm sure it did, especially people who had been in the industry longer and were considering the long-term effects. While most at Telltale were familiar with the studio's games' diminishing returns, many teams focused on creating rather than dwelling on what disaster might occur down the line. "Through these meetings, it was very clear the last truly great game from the studio was Wolf, which reviewed well and moved slightly profitable numbers, or Tales from the Borderlands, which had great reviews but dismal sales," one source said. But these pep-talks failed to have the desired effect. Telltale held annual meetings where sales numbers and projections were made available to all staff, one source said. "Anyone with access to SteamSpy or App Annie could see that the games weren't selling, never mind hitting the completely ridiculous sales goals the marketing department were hoping for and presented to the board," one person who worked at Telltale said.Ĭracks would appear at regular intervals. A myriad of setbacks and pitfalls befell the studio in recent years, ranging from influential members of senior staff departing to mass layoffs back in 2017, all occurring amid consistently lacklustre sales for new releases. While Telltale's closure shocked the video game world, for many staff the writing was on the wall. But what did the passionate creators within Telltale experience during its final year? What was the human cost of Telltale's final act? To find out, I talked to several ex-Telltale employees, some of whom wished to remain anonymous in order to protect their careers, about their experience at Telltale, and the highs and lows of working there in its final months. It would later come to light that the abrupt departure of a major financial backer was the smoking gun. Telltale was dead and all of a sudden 250 people had lost their jobs. Her retelling of the events of 21st September 2018 depicts a studio of people in mourning for their work, shocked at the situation that was pushed upon them and worried about their future. That's Mary Kenney, a video game writer who worked at Telltale before its closure earlier this year.
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The full weight of what had happened and what it meant going forward - not being in that office, not working with my team, not being on a project I'd spent over a year on - took weeks to sink in." For me, it was a day of mind-numbing shock. In the aftermath, people wondered what they would do without health insurance, what would happen with their work visas, what to tell their families. When we got the news, people cried, hugged, or stared blankly ahead. "No one knew what was happening there was no warning.
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