Telltale Games

Telltale, Incorporated

Type	Private
Industry	Video game industry
Founded	June 2004
Founder(s)	Dan Connors Kevin Bruner Troy Molander
Headquarters	San Rafael, California, U.S.
Products	Graphic adventure games
Employees	~90
Website	www.telltalegames.com

Telltale Games is an independent digital first publisher and game developer founded in June 2004 as Telltale, Incorporated. Based in San Rafael, California, the studio includes designers formerly employed by LucasArts. Its business model revolves around episodic gaming and digital distribution, and it is best known for its various graphic adventure game series based on popular licensed properties.

History

Company foundation

Telltale Games was founded by a group of former LucasArts employees who had been working on Sam & Max: Freelance Police, a sequel to the 1993 game Sam & Max Hit the Road, prior to its cancellation on March 3, 2004. In an early press release the vocal public response to said cancellation was cited as a main reason the company was founded. The Telltale Games team has a large collective experience working on LucasArts' famed classics.

On February 11, 2005, the company released their first game — Telltale Texas Hold'em, a poker card game simulator which was intended primarily to test their in-house game engine. This was followed by two games based on Jeff Smith's Bone comic book series. More episodes were planned, but later aborted. They developed CSI: 3 Dimensions of Murder for Ubisoft, and although it was composed of several free-standing episodes, it was released exclusively at retail as a single package. The same is true for the follow ups, CSI: Hard Evidence, CSI: Deadly Intent, and CSI: Fatal Conspiracy.

After securing two rounds of angel investment from San Francisco Bay Area angels including members of angel group Keiretsu Forum, Telltale attempted to buy the rights to complete Sam & Max: Freelance Police from LucasArts, but when they were denied, they secured the rights to create new games from series creator Steve Purcell. Unlike their previous games, Sam & Max: Season One (published in collaboration with GameTap) was their first episodic series released on a tight monthly schedule—a landmark for the game industry. The series proved successful, and Telltale went on to produce two additional Sam & Max seasons. Since then, they have continued to produce series based on popular licenses released in monthly episodes. These have been largely comedic, including games based on Wallace & Gromit and Homestar Runner. Tales of Monkey Island, based on the popular LucasArts series, marks their most successful series to date, owing in part to the history many of its developers had with LucasArts adventure games.

Pilot Program

To supplement their normal episodic games, Telltale created a Pilot Program in early 2010 to explore one-off games that would explore other gameplay and storytelling approaches that could eventually be incorporated into their episodic games. The first game, Nelson Tethers: Puzzle Agent, a puzzle-solving game in collaboration with Graham Annable, was released in the middle of June 2010, while Poker Night at the Inventory, a crossover poker game featuring characters from Sam and Max, Homestar Runner, Valve's Team Fortress 2, and the webcomic Penny Arcade, was released late in 2010.

Growth of company and acquisition of popular franchises

In June 2010, Telltale announced that they had secured licences with NBC Universal to develop two episodic series based on Back to the Future and Jurassic Park. Further series based on licensed properties were announced in February 2011, including series based on the comic book series The Walking Dead and Fables in association with Warner Bros. Entertainment, and a series based on the early King's Quest adventure games by Sierra On-Line. In April 2011, Telltale announced another licensed episodic series, based on Law & Order: Los Angeles.

By 2010, Telltale has proven itself successful, with yearly revenues of $10 million, 90% greater than the previous year. Part of this is attributed to Back to the Future: The Game, which Steve Allison, the senior vice president of marketing, called their "most successful franchise to date". Allison states that for most of their games, they only need to sell 100,000 copies to break even, but many of their recent releases have seen twice that number or more; Allison anticipates that The Walking Dead series could be a $20 to $30 million franchise. Telltale expects with the additional licensed franchises, the studio and its revenues will continue to grow at a similar pace, expanding from their current 90 employees to 140.

Development philosophy

Telltale Games presents itself specifically as a developer of episodic games. Many critics feel that Telltale is the only company to have done episodic gaming right, usually citing its ability to consistently deliver on a monthly schedule. Telltale is also seen by movie studios and other content producers to take a more realistic approach to movie tie-in games; rather than the difficult model of "see the movie; play the game", Telltale is noted for working with studios and screenwriters to create a strong experience that pays homage to the original film or franchise.

While chiefly a developer, Telltale Games values its ability to self-publish their games; the only times it has had a classic developer-publisher relationship is with Ubisoft for the CSI games. They have struck financial arrangements with GameTap for the first two seasons of the rebooted Sam & Max games, but for the rest their publishing arrangements have been made after the games were already completed and had already been sold via digital distribution.

Telltale aims to have a presence on as many platforms and avenues of digital distribution as possible. To date, they have released games through GameTap, on Windows and Mac through Steam and their own online store, on Wii via WiiWare and disc, on Xbox 360 via Xbox Live Arcade and disc, on PlayStation 3 through PlayStation Network, on iPhone and iPad through iTunes, as well as through various web based games portals. They have expressed interest in the DSi platform as well as PSP Go.

Games developed

Main article: List of games by Telltale Games

• Telltale Texas Hold'em (2005)
• Bone: Out from Boneville (2005)
• CSI: 3 Dimensions of Murder (2006)
• Bone: The Great Cow Race (2006)
• Sam & Max Save the World (Oct 2006–Apr 2007, 6 episodes)
• CSI: Hard Evidence (2007)
• Sam & Max Beyond Time and Space (Nov 2007–April 2008, 5 episodes)
• Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People (Aug-Dec 2008, 5 episodes)
• Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventures (Mar-Jul 2009, 4 episodes)
• Tales of Monkey Island (Jul-Dec 2009, 5 episodes)
• CSI: Deadly Intent (2009)
• Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse (Apr-Aug 2010, 5 episodes)
• Hector: Badge of Carnage (June 2010-Fall 2011, 3 episodes)
• Nelson Tethers: Puzzle Agent (June 2010)
• CSI: Fatal Conspiracy (October 2010)
• Poker Night at the Inventory (November 2010)
• Back to the Future: The Game (December 2010-June 2011, 5 episodes)
• Puzzle Agent 2 (June 2011)
• Jurassic Park: The Game (November 2011, 4 episodes)
• Law & Order: Legacies (December 2011-March 2012, 7 episodes)
• The Walking Dead (April 2012-, 5 episodes)
• Untitled Fables game (TBD)
• Untitled King's Quest game (TBD)

External links

• Telltale Games' website
• Official Telltale Games YouTube channel
• Interview with CEO Dan Connors at GameSpot
• Interview at the GamesCom in Cologne
• Interview following the launch of Tales of Monkey Island