Long piece by Eurogamer on Telltale's final year, with some more information about TWAU2: https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2018-12-19-the-last-year-at-telltale-a-story-cut-short
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[Eurogamer] The Wolf Among Us 2's budget was 'shoe-string, even by Telltale standards', was still in early development when it was cancelled
- Thread starter chadskin
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Sad. One of Telltale's best deserved far better than this, but maybe it's a good thing that it stands in its own.
*glass this info*
Maan, Wolf Among Us 2 was the only thing I wanted from Telltale. What a shame this all turned out so poorly.
Maan, Wolf Among Us 2 was the only thing I wanted from Telltale. What a shame this all turned out so poorly.
How much do these games need to sell to be successful? Steamspy has TWAU at somewhere between 1 and 2 million copies sold on just pc. The sales alone on PC seem like it would turn a decent profit for a game like this. It just doesn't seem like a game that would require a lot of money to fund.
I imagine it might not be the case for Wolf Among us, but the vast majority of telltale games presumably cost alot due to IP licensing?
Like legit its crazy to think how much they though having a license would get ROI. Batman, Guardians, Walking Dead, Back To The Future, Game Of Thrones, Stranger Things, Minecraft. Non of those would have been cheap.
It's utterly baffling just how much of an utter amateur-hour shitshow Telltale's management were.
Like... how can you have so much talent and access to so many exciting IPs and manage to blow it all away?
Like... how can you have so much talent and access to so many exciting IPs and manage to blow it all away?
This one really hurts down in my soul. I adored the first and was so excited for a sequel. It was the only TT title I truly cared about.
You're right. I completely mislooked licensing costs. I wonder if, once they became a bit more of a household name, if it would have been better for them to try more for their own IPs.
I can only wonder how would fans react if they announced a 3 episode season right at the start. It would probably say a lot about Telltale's situation, more than removing one ep from TWD's final season.
The vast majority of the copies probably came from massive sales (which in Telltale's case often started before even finishing the season), humble bundles etc.
The vast majority of the copies probably came from massive sales (which in Telltale's case often started before even finishing the season), humble bundles etc.
This was the only telltale thing I was ever interested in. I started the first episode then stopped to wait for them to put out more and it just never happened.
Skybound isn't going to throw money at a nascent video game project where they don't even own the IP. The only reason Skybound saved TWD is because The Walking Dead is Robert Kirkman's own IP. It belongs to him and he doesn't have to pay licensing fees to himself.
Yea I know. Never felt the need to go back with it being so clearly an afterthought for Telltale.
I'm still so mad about this. Like, I don't care about most of the rest of Telltale's games, but I really wanted a sequel to TWAU. God damn it.
I don't understand how Telltale's management screwed up so badly. Sure, not every game was a cash cow like TWD, but if they were in so much trouble why not to cut on stuff that they knew isn't going to sell? Instead they kept churning out several games each year until the entire thing broke.
It sounds like they were relying on the cash infusions from the licensing deals just to stay solvent for a while.
?
Far as I know all the episodes were very well received and it's generally considered well-produced.
Damn. Sounds like they were in dire need of relocating the office and most likely (as shitty as it sounds) laying off a good part of their employees if they were going to survive, seems like nobody had a heart to make hard decisions.
Most certainly, but at that point they were still trying too chase the walking dead season 1 dragon. Top that with the fact they had multiple teams working on different projects which all pretty much flopped, there was pretty much no room in management for delays or failures, sadly all of that happened.
Honestly i think the market aswell is just not looking for episodic games as much, i know im not and i loved telltale.
Yeah. I stopped buying their games after Game of Thrones, myself. The only thing I wanted out of them was TWAU2 and they just kept doing everything but that.
Agreed, both phenomenal games. Really sad what happened to Telltale :(
Actually, I'm ok with this. Season one was a good enough self contained story, and I'm still lost on what that cliffhanger was. Better than going the walking dead direction.
It seems really bad if Telltale considered Wolf 1 to not be a commercial hit. Isn't it their best selling non-Walking Dead game? If their standards for a hit were "perform as well as The Walking Dead", I feel like they were always kind of fucked. That was never going to be sustainable.
If the budget was really that low than why in the few screenshots we got did it look like they remade everything with different designs? Why not reuse the same assets from season 1?
I'm pretty sure Minecraft is their best selling non-Walking Dead game by quite long shot.
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Minecraft was their only profitable game, other than TWD Season 1 and some of their earlier, pre-TWD projects. Everything else, The Wolf Among Us, Batman, Game of Thrones, all of those games that they pushed out to keep that TWD lightning-in-a-bottle contained, never accomplished the same.
Best telltale game by a country mile, but now I'm glad we didn't get this sequel.
I still don't get the economics of what happened to this company - so many successful releases, including of a GOTY
So everything that followed literally lost money?
I still don't get the economics of what happened to this company - so many successful releases, including of a GOTY
So everything that followed literally lost money?
Yes, turns out licensing a bunch of hot franchises is expensive and not a guarantee that you are going to get crazy sales numbers
Apparently Batman 1 and 2 were their biggest bombas ever x_x
TWAU is based on the DC Comics IP Fables, published under Vertigo. So even for TWAU they had to pay licensing, and weren't getting 100% of the profits I'd wager.