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She shares a kiss with another character, if you chose for it to happen.
Telltale Games is closing its doors
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Skybound Games, the publishing division of Skybound Entertainment (the company that owns TWD comic), has apparently reached a deal with Telltale to finish the Final Season of TWD. Regardless of your thoughts on the management of TTG and this whole disaster, that's good news.
YAY.
ZerbanDaGreat
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I don't know what would be funnier, if The Final Season wound up more janky and slapped-together than the usual Telltale fare for having experienced all these production disasters and thus reached some kind of singularity of terrible, or if it somehow ended up less for having switched teams and managements.
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The rest of the season is just made by Choice of Games.
Yeah, no, the fact that Telltale's management is prioritizing finishing its IP over taking care of its severed employees is actually a big dollop of bad news.
As Jim Sterling put it (with me paraphrasing), the fact that game publishers (even actually no-shit bankrupt ones) are prioritizing game releases and finishing products over healthy management of their employees and treating them with respect and dignity by giving them health insurance and severance, is just a scathing self-indictment of the entire game development industry. And gamers should stop coddling game developers for their bad management practices because they produce a product they like, and should instead start demanding that they be better.
Here's an excellent video essay from the man on the matter, with this great opening line: "No game, no matter how good it is, is worth the rights and health of those who made it -- and anybody who actually appreciates video games should agree with that."
Oh yeah, and the title of this? "Look After Your Workers, Or Get Out Of Business"? Yeah, that's pretty much dead-on as well.
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I would, either way they actively decided to focus on their IP instead of actually caring about their workers.
I love some of the comments there
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i tried to watch that video but the 40 second intro was too much. also who says I actually appreciate video games, checkmate. serious response below.
be warned that I'm still half-asleep while writing this
Telltale isn't pouring resources into completing the game that should be going to severance instead. Telltale isn't holding back from their employees, either. Telltale was shut down after an unexpected failure in financing, something tragic that happens (at least from where I'm sitting.) Should they've shuttered earlier, so they could pay severance and all of that? Maaaybe. When a new CEO is brought in with a mandate to "save the company," though, he's probably not going to throw in the towel early when he has a very good looking gamble on saving it. And it looked like a sure thing. According to basically everyone involved, that round of financing was looking perfect right up until all the companies involved abruptly pulled out. Maybe companies shouldn't operate on that kind of tight-rope, "just make it another quarter" logic, but it's surprisingly common.
As for prioritizing finishing products over healthy management of their employees, again, Telltale didn't have the resources to take care of their employees. This isn't "putting games above people," it's "we might still be able to finish the game that thousands of people paid for using someone else's money, since we have none." There are parties interested in propping Telltale up until the season is completed. There's nobody interested in paying severance.
I'm actually having trouble seeing what your point is here, and could probably use a rephrase for my lizard brain. Gamers certainly weren't coddling Telltale for bad management practices; the management before the current crew ran the company (and the employees) into the ground, and fans deserted en masse. That's the whole reason Telltale got here; they pumped out bad games while burning out talented employees, treated everyone involved like crap, and by the time they started turning it around, they were deep in the hole.
Basically, this is pretty shitty overall. Telltale's management, both past and present, seriously screwed up and it sucks the employees had to pay for it. That said, Telltale's management practices for the final season of TWD were much better, much healthier than the Bruner period. When the choice is either "an outside company steps in to save the game" or "the game remains in limbo forever," I'll choose the not Half-Life route, thankee.
Also bankruptcy is coming up as soon as they've tied up loose ends and that'll be juicy.
edit: well i'm watching the video and i'm already kinda lost. Sure we know 5 people involved in making a movie instead of 1 guy involved making a video game, but that doesn't mean film crews aren't dehumanized. Hundreds and hundreds of people work on both video games and movies, we only know a tiny fraction of either.
also that top comment is kliksphilip. huh.
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There was nothing "unexpected" about Telltale's financial failure. The financial injections it was hoping to secure were not "a sure thing": one company was publicly saying it was interested in getting rid of chaff in its investment portfolio in order to concentrate on its core business, and the other company wasn't yet at all convinced that Telltale would make for a good investment (which, considering its latest games being flops, wasn't necessarily a bad call). The managers told their employees that they thought the latest round of financing was a surefire thing, but it's quite apparent that they were quite possibly deluding themselves and others in order to not have to pull the plug early.
So, yeah. Not having a steady source of capital, taking on too many contracts, hiring people for projects that aren't really sure to end up making returns, and insisting on selling a product that the market is not interested in while also overworking the people you have and expanding without being sure that you can expand safely... That is basically being a bad businessman.
Not ensuring that the employees you've fucked over will find other jobs, have healthcare in the interim, and lay them off without warning and severance? That makes you a bad businessman and a bad person. And consumers should care that the products they buy are made ethically, too.
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Who is that?
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That's all fair. Maybe I should've clarified with "not bad by Telltale standards," they've had a pretty bad go of it overall. I probably shouldn't try to justify Telltale management, but my point is that it is still a good thing the product's being completed. Maybe I'm being entitled, but eh.
Counter-Strike youtuber. Probably most well known for running tests on how the game actually works, but does a lot of stuff.
Why is it a good thing?
Or to rephrase a bit: Why is it "good" that another company gets to finish a game that another company already failed to finish and reap most of the financial benefits from it, while the employees who already did most of the work will indubitably be left hanging in the wind?
Nevermind that we can be pretty sure that the game will be of inferior quality. Studio changes rarely lead to better products; they generally lead to a confused mess as leadership and developers change, institutional knowledge is lost, and so on and so forth.
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All true. I'll still take "product completed" over "product incomplete." Any option leaves the employees in the wind at this point. It's not great, but it's definitely a good thing compared to the alternative that seemed inevitable and sucky.
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it's a good thing because muh vido gam is bieng done.
Nevermind the people getting fucked over by this. The horrific ethical and commercial failures of this incompetent fucking company is less important than my fucking video games.
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Yes and maybe the people responsible for fucking them over shouldn't receive any profits?
I don't think a new video game that people care about is worth that.
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That's awfully charitable.
As for profits, those either go to Skybound or are taken in by Telltale, then doled out during bankruptcy. Since all four episodes were sold together, half the sales should be hidden away as unearned revenue that'll be made available by releasing the other two episodes.
Ironically, this actually means finishing the game would give Telltale more cash to pay out during bankruptcy, some of which might go to the employees. This isn't a choice between "the game being finished" or "the employees being treated fairly," that ship has already sailed. Everyone wants to get the best deal for everyone, both the employees and the thousands of people who paid for the game.
edit: although not actually being an accountant I'm unsure what'll happen to that unearned revenue if they don't complete the episodes. which means the alternative might also be good, i dunno. might go to refunds or just be paid out in bankruptcy anyway.
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Reveen
Castro-Trudeauist
Ah haaa, so not only do we get a continuation of the bullshit that shouldn't have gotten a continuation because the company doesn't understand why people liked the OG season, but we get it with an extra layer of seperation from the original team on top of that. Nice.
Maybe we'll get lucky and some disgruntled employee will take a bottle of Fanta to the company's main server or something. Get the backups too. Though it would have been nice for that to have happened earlier, like after that bullshit with the autistic character in season 2.
They also didn't have a single fucking inkling of why people liked Game of Thrones for that matter. God, that was such a shitshow.
Maybe we'll get lucky and some disgruntled employee will take a bottle of Fanta to the company's main server or something. Get the backups too. Though it would have been nice for that to have happened earlier, like after that bullshit with the autistic character in season 2.
They also didn't have a single fucking inkling of why people liked Game of Thrones for that matter. God, that was such a shitshow.
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ZerbanDaGreat
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ohhhhhhmygod i fucking forgot about that how did i forget about that
yeah burn down the whole building on a nice quiet weekend tbh
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I'm not playing a scab game, that's for damn sure.
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Explain please, what happened?
ZerbanDaGreat
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oh boy *rubs hands together*
Okay so long story short just in case you're totally lost, in Season 2 Clem gets separated from the couple she joined at the end of Season 1 because of bad writing and gets bitten by a dog because of bad writing and the doctor in the new group can't tell it's a dogbite and note a humanbite because of bad writing so she's locked in a shed and has to sneak out and collect the supplies to suture herself up because of bad writing. Sarah is the aforementioned doctor's daughter and she's... "sheltered". That's the limit to which it's actually addressed in-story but the way she behaves she's pretty obviously on the spectrum.
Sarah spends the rest of the season doing nothing and being nothing but an annoying unhelpful punching bag. Start of episode 2, she annoys Clem and possibly winds up pointing an empty gun at her because she's an idiot. Episode 3, Lord Bosscrime of the Bad Writing Group forces her father to backhand her across the mouth so hard she hits the deck right in front of everyone. Later in that episode the only nice person in Lord Bosscrime's group gets the girls to prune two small shrubs in the greenhouse but Sarah is a fuckup so either Clementine wastes all her time showing Sarah how to do it or stays in her lane and Sarah utterly butchers her shrub with the shears so either way Lord Bosscrime storms in and Sparta-kicks the token nice guy off the roof. During the final escape from Lord Bosscrime's compound she starts freaking her shit in the middle of a zombie horde and her father gets shot so she runs away from the group which is part of the confusion that gets Kenny's second girlfriend bitten.
Episode 4 is the big kicker. Clem finds Sarah shut up in a trailer with another group member in complete shutdown mode. Clementine can try to give her a pep talk to make her move but it won't work, and ultimately she's forced to either leave Sarah behind to be violently torn apart by zambambos or haul off and slap the taste out of her mouth because that always works in media. This one is especially vivid in my mind because I was in a full-blown "kill the maximum amount of people I can" troll-playthrough by that point so I just had Clem stare silently at her and leave. Which was immediately ruined by local Hard Woman Making Hard Decisions While Hard, Jane "Euthenize The Inferior" Walkingdead, waxing poetic about how some people just aren't fit to survive in this world and sharing a fun story about how she left her depressed sister behind to be fucking murdered by zombies because she was sick of having to drag her everywhere. This of course immediately shrank my murderboner and I told the stream chat at length that Jane was a fucking awful person and had officially made The List.
And then you get to the determinate part where zambambos invade the new hideout (nobody knew they were coming because Luke and Jane were too busy pounding ass so good job you two but that's beside the point) and part of the building collapses for I-don't-remember-why and if Sarah survived she gets trapped under debris. The choicepoint is whether to try and save Sarah or Jane, or just tell Jane to let go and save Sarah herself. If you do the sensible thing first Jane will protest that Sarah's beyond saving because she's a terrible person, then bad writing will dislodge a plank from the broken deck to smack Jane square on the head which sends her staggering away long enough for the zombies to swarm. If you try to save Sarah Clem is too weak to lift the rubble probably and is driven away by zombies. So in all three outcomes Sarah still dies, torn apart alive and screaming by the zambambo parade. And nobody in the group cares because they're too busy cooing over Rebecca's fucking newborn.
And to top it all off I'm pretty sure there was some interview or something where members of the team responsible for the dumpsterfire that was Season Two laugh about how Sarah's an annoying little shit they can't wait to kill off or words to that effect.
Pictured: The writing team's main creative implement.
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oh boy *rubs hands together*
Okay so long story short just in case you're totally lost, in Season 2 Clem gets separated from the couple she joined at the end of Season 1 because of bad writing and gets bitten by a dog because of bad writing and the doctor in the new group can't tell it's a dogbite and note a humanbite because of bad writing so she's locked in a shed and has to sneak out and collect the supplies to suture herself up because of bad writing. Sarah is the aforementioned doctor's daughter and she's... "sheltered". That's the limit to which it's actually addressed in-story but the way she behaves she's pretty obviously on the spectrum.
Sarah spends the rest of the season doing nothing and being nothing but an annoying unhelpful punching bag. Start of episode 2, she annoys Clem and possibly winds up pointing an empty gun at her because she's an idiot. Episode 3, Lord Bosscrime of the Bad Writing Group forces her father to backhand her across the mouth so hard she hits the deck right in front of everyone. Later in that episode the only nice person in Lord Bosscrime's group gets the girls to prune two small shrubs in the greenhouse but Sarah is a fuckup so either Clementine wastes all her time showing Sarah how to do it or stays in her lane and Sarah utterly butchers her shrub with the shears so either way Lord Bosscrime storms in and Sparta-kicks the token nice guy off the roof. During the final escape from Lord Bosscrime's compound she starts freaking her shit in the middle of a zombie horde and her father gets shot so she runs away from the group which is part of the confusion that gets Kenny's second girlfriend bitten.
Episode 4 is the big kicker. Clem finds Sarah shut up in a trailer with another group member in complete shutdown mode. Clementine can try to give her a pep talk to make her move but it won't work, and ultimately she's forced to either leave Sarah behind to be violently torn apart by zambambos or haul off and slap the taste out of her mouth because that always works in media. This one is especially vivid in my mind because I was in a full-blown "kill the maximum amount of people I can" troll-playthrough by that point so I just had Clem stare silently at her and leave. Which was immediately ruined by local Hard Woman Making Hard Decisions While Hard, Jane "Euthenize The Inferior" Walkingdead, waxing poetic about how some people just aren't fit to survive in this world and sharing a fun story about how she left her depressed sister behind to be fucking murdered by zombies because she was sick of having to drag her everywhere. This of course immediately shrank my murderboner and I told the stream chat at length that Jane was a fucking awful person and had officially made The List.
And then you get to the determinate part where zambambos invade the new hideout (nobody knew they were coming because Luke and Jane were too busy pounding ass so good job you two but that's beside the point) and part of the building collapses for I-don't-remember-why and if Sarah survived she gets trapped under debris. The choicepoint is whether to try and save Sarah or Jane, or just tell Jane to let go and save Sarah herself. If you do the sensible thing first Jane will protest that Sarah's beyond saving because she's a terrible person, then bad writing will dislodge a plank from the broken deck to smack Jane square on the head which sends her staggering away long enough for the zombies to swarm. If you try to save Sarah Clem is too weak to lift the rubble probably and is driven away by zombies. So in all three outcomes Sarah still dies, torn apart alive and screaming by the zambambo parade. And nobody in the group cares because they're too busy cooing over Rebecca's fucking newborn.
And to top it all off I'm pretty sure there was some interview or something where members of the team responsible for the dumpsterfire that was Season Two laugh about how Sarah's an annoying little shit they can't wait to kill off or words to that effect.
Pictured: The writing team's main creative implement.
That's.... I've heard of some fucking terrible writing and retarded storylines but that takes the cake.... the only thing I can think of is the infamous My Immortal.
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Well Telltale seems to have burnt through a lot of staff so eventually they might have hired that one?
Wow. Um.And to top it all off I'm pretty sure there was some interview or something where members of the team responsible for the dumpsterfire that was Season Two laugh about how Sarah's an annoying little shit they can't wait to kill off or words to that effect.
Pictured: The writing team's main creative implement.
...I'm gonna go out on a limb here and advance the position that perhaps it's a good thing that TWD might not get finished.
Because Lordy.
Reveen
Castro-Trudeauist
To follow up on this, this was actually real fuckin' ugly and it made me actively dislike the people who wrote this story, and only deepens my possibly unhealthy level of contempt for gamerdude culture. This must be how Judge Dredd feels a lot of the time.
Granted, the source here is a blogspot with quote gifs from a defunct Tumblr blog, so maybe it's off base. But it's what I found and I just don't feel like looking for the actual video so I can listen to these assholes talk.
Oh, yeah. Content warning for ableism.
The Code: Telltale Games' Devs Eager To Kill Disabled Character
If I end up the leader of a survivor posse in the zombie apocalypse, guys like this get to be the zombie decoys.
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