Article by: Justin Amirkhani
Many have come and many have failed; episodic gaming is a tough thing to master. In spite of this fact the brains at Telltale Games have somehow managed to streamline not just one game, but juggle five simultaneous franchises. Between their current Back to the Future series and the forthcoming Jurassic Park, Walking Dead, Hector, Fables and King’s Quest adaptations they’ve got more than a few items on their plate.
As Telltale broke out of obscurity in 2006 with a revamp to classic Sam & Max it was clear they were doing something right. Now with more projects on the go than ever it looks like the company is stepping in to a new arena, one that has them putting out as many highly anticipated games as more storieWe chatd developers. Dave Grossman, Design Director at Telltale Games was kind enough to give us some words about the company’s recent growth and the future of their upcoming games.
Telltale Games has grown a lot in the past few years, from perfecting the episodic formula to working on a handful of episodic series at once. How does the studio balance so many episodes and so many projects all at once?
A good juggler can keep a lot of objects in the air using only two hands, and our approach is a little bit like a group of jugglers. We keep projects spaced appropriately (or try to) on the schedule so that all of the hands are always busy, deftly tossing the projects to each other. It also helps to scope things so that projects are a similar size - most jugglers will tell you that juggling five balls is easier than juggling a ball, a watermelon, a chainsaw, a layer cake, and a cat. So there’s lots of planning, scoping, and scheduling, combined with flexibility for responding to emergent situations, and many, many talented people doing their jobs really well.
What is it about the studio's strategy with episodic that makes it so successful and why can't most other studios get it right?
It helps that our whole operation has been geared towards it since Studio Day One. And we did grow into this gradually and intelligently over the last seven years, developing a technology base and some production pipelines before diving into the episodic schedule, getting used to that before trying to do multiple series at the same time, and so on, so we’re really only adding one crazy aspect at a time.
Part of what makes Telltale so endearing is its ability to attract fan-favorite franchises. What is the process like for acquiring these licenses and how do the studios play in to the development of the games?
One of the things we do well is decide which licenses we want to work with. We try to go after stuff that has a strong basis in character and story, and that we believe we’ll handle more appropriately than another studio would. We spend a good deal of time thinking about this, and then sometimes it takes years before the stars all line up properly. Both Fables and King’s Quest, for example, have been on our list for a long time. And then we do try to involve the people who created these licenses in whatever way works best for everybody. Sometimes they’d prefer an advisory role, other times they’re more gung-ho to get their hands dirty - Matt and Mike Chapman, for example, are pretty hard core gamers and were writing and editing and drawing and voicing through the whole run of our Strong Bad series. (Thanks again for that, guys!)
