issue 5// vol 45 life & style // no. 13

Telltale signs

» The gaming studio’s past, present, and future?

Peter Tran
Contributor

 

t's confusing and upsetting when a

widely-known company shuts down
abruptly, leaving a crater where it used to
be. In Telltale’s case, it left approximately
225 people unemployed without warning,
without severance pay, and healthcare only
lasting until the end of the month—in an
instant.

This “majority studio closure’—as
it is being identified by Telltale—is only
keeping a skeleton crew of 25 employees
to “fulfill the company’s obligations to its
board and partners,” said Telltale’s CEO
Pete Hawley in a press release. According
toa source who spoke to Variety, this
is referring to moving Minecraft: Story
Mode to Netflix as part of their “interactive
content.”

The Walking Dead: The Final Season,
the project Telltale was currently in the
middle of when this announcement
was made, is out with only two of four
episodes. Telltale’s Twitter states that
they are “actively working towards a
solution that will allow episodes 3 and 4
to be completed” after “multiple potential
partners have stepped forward to express
interest in helping to see The Final Season
through.’ While it isn’t concrete, the
message left fans and developers conflicted.

This begs the question, why didn’t the
higher-ups look for partners before things
got dire, and when did it all go wrong? All

the telltale signs become more apparent
looking back.

Telltale was founded in 2004 and
made a name for themselves by telling
episodic stories of popular intellectual
properties (IP) through choice-based
gameplay and light puzzle-solving. This
made the gameplay easily accessible to
anyone at any skill level.

 

c¢

can’t deny the impact Telltale has had on the industry.

in 2012. While TWD was captivating, it
had a few technical issues. At the time, it
was refreshing to see the underdog rise
up and deliver an outstanding experience,
so players were willing to look past these
minor flaws. It was part of their charm as
a smaller studio and many thought that
surely they would update and fix things
moving forward.

The Wolf Among Us (TWAU), TWD
Season Two, Tales from the Borderlands
(TFTB), and Game of Thrones were all fully
released by 2015. All were released after
TWD, yet they all had similar technical
issues. This continued consistently
throughout the years, however a decline in
quality was also noticed post-TFTB.

Despite the horrible decisions and leadership, one

 

First known for games such as Sam
& Max, Back to the Future, and Jurassic
Park, the game that garnered them
accolades as well as commercial success
was The Walking Dead (TWD) released

Of a certain age: Who

» An introduction to maturity

Karen Segal
Contributor

 

y cellphone is awash with photos

of Lafarge Lake across from the
Coquitlam campus of Douglas College. The
first week of the fall semester was sunny
and warm and so snap, snap, snap went I.
Despite living in Vancouver for more than
30 years, I had never been to this part of
Coquitlam.

A bit about me. Bear with me if you
will; this will only take a few sentences.
I’m a mature student, over 50 we could
say, though not massively so—and I’ve
laboured the last 20 years as an ESL teacher
for adults. This field is one of the most
chronically-insecure fields around. Many
apologies to those studying it currently.

It wasn't back in 1998-99 when I trained
for it and for seven years I had a great

job with a private international school in
Vancouver—benefits, a good wage, even
sick days! I had never known such job
security, having been a journalist and then
a freelancer prior to teaching.

However, in 20u1, due to bad
management and collapsing economies,
the school closed. Since then, for almost
seven years, I went from contract to
contract with often many unemployed
months in between.

I was stuck in a rut, so stuck that I

tried to make it comfortable and make it
make sense.

“I'm working two hours at the
downtown school today?” I'd tell people.

“How is that legal?” my friends would
respond.

Rut.

Then my father died, and I received an
inheritance (Thank you, Joe Segal. I miss
your presence on the Earth).

In May of this year, I saw an ad
for a new program starting at Langara
College. I enrolled and backed out when I
realized that while the program sounded
informative and challenging, I couldn't
actually get a job from it. Employers I’d
queried said what I'd actually need was a
Therapeutic Recreation Diploma.

I was soon registered for two courses
in the Academic Foundations program.
There are pre-requisites before | am
officially accepted into the Therapeutic
Recreation program. I still need to do
some volunteer hours, but this will get me
started.

Both classes—running three times a
week in total—are at 8:30 am. No matter!
Armed with my backpack, my new binders,
and my new loose-leaf paper I headed
forth on September 4 to attend my first
class, Anatomy and Physiology. I took a
picture of the outside of the D Building,
the inside of the D Building, and the

Telltale began overstretching and
oversaturating itself with too many IPs.
Two Minecraft games, a couple of Batman
titles, Guardians of the Galaxy, and two
other TWD games were fully released by
2018, with two episodes of TWD: The Final

Screenshot of ‘The Wolf Among Us’

Season out. If that sounds like way too
much content to be released in a single
year, it’s because it is. This overreaching
became increasingly apparent as more
games were cited as being bug-filled and
glitchy—an example being when Xbox
button prompts show up on PlayStation 4
copies of TFTB.

This doesn’t even account for the
announced TWAU: Season Two, Game of
Thrones: Season Two, and the discussions
they had with Netflix about developing a
Stranger Things game, which are now all
presumably cancelled.

Amidst all these problems, the studio
was in the middle of restructuring to start
anew, but sadly these efforts seem to have
ended with this closure. Hawley said in his
statement: “It’s been an incredibly difficult
year for Telltale as we worked to set the
company on a new course. Unfortunately,
we ran out of time trying to get there.”

Despite the horrible decisions and
leadership, one can’t deny the impact
Telltale has had on the industry. Many
games adopted and experimented with the
episodic nature of their game releases, such
as the beloved Life is Strange series.

Telltale’s emphasis on storytelling
added to the hunger players have for a
well-written narrative, a trend that is
still growing strong in today’s market
dominated by online multiplayer games.

When looking back on all the
memories, the laughter, and the tears
created playing these stories, it’s important
to remember that it’s the result of the hard
work of the employees who poured late
nights into it, and to hope that the people
who brought you these experiences land
back on their feet.

While Telltale is now gone, their work
is not forgotten, and the bounty of amazing
stories they told will never leave us. The
players will remember that.

is Karen Segal?

classroom. | shot a short video of myself
heading into the classroom.

In all of the excitement, I had slept
about three hours the night before.

lama part-time student.

“You love classroom learning,” a friend
said to me as I paced one evening before
my big day.

“| love classroom learning,’ I repeated.
She was right, but I had gotten my B.A.
almost 30 years ago before the Internet,
the mass use of cellphones, and well before
many of the students I would be in class
with had been born.

“They will call me grandma,” I opined.

“Oh, they will not. Well, probably not,”
said my friend.

And so, it has begun. Let me tell you

 

the Anatomy and Physiology class has me
kind of terrified—so much to memorize
and so many new words (to me, not actual
new words). My other class requires

an essay with APA referencing. APA
referencing it seems hasn’t gotten easier in
the last three decades, but I soldier on.

So, this is me. I will be writing a
weekly column from the perspective of
being a mature student. An early column
may well be about the lockdown drill
we had last week and the awe-inspiring
moment when I realized that getting up off
of the floor after the drill might take me the
whole class. Next time kneel and hold onto
a desk like the instructor, Karen!

No one, I will note, has called me
grandma yet.

Photo by Karen Segal