I’m starting to think Penny Arcade picks their PAX East keynote speakers just for me as two years in a row it's been heads of my favorite studios. Last year was Alex Rigopulos of Harmonix and this year was their first tag team story time with co-founders of Telltale Games Kevin Bruner and Dan Connors. You can check it out for yourself over on Twitch if you are interested.
For those of you unfamiliar with Telltale they are the studio that started out bringing back my childhood, rebooting franchises like Monkey Island and Sam & Max. Based off that success they are currently entrusted with making the games for popular multi-media franchises like The Walking Dead, Fables, and Game of Thrones.
The keynote gave the crowd an overview of the start and evolution to date of Telltale. I didn’t realize Connors was born in Lynn, Massachusetts (“Lynn, Lynn city of sin” which he gets no matter where in the country he goes and tells people he was born). They both shared embarrassing photos from their childhood and anecdotes of how they made it to LucasArts, where they met and first started collaborating. Connors started in QA with little PC experience and had a good first day story about trying to start up the DOS version of Day of the Tentacle. It's not as funny in print but it involved confusion around cd . DOT. Breuner had tales of making interactive movies with friends and being surrounded by a lot of creative people from different disciplines as he grew in his career.
The first game they worked on together was Lucas Art’s 1998’s recently remastered and re-released (by Double Fine) Grim Fandango. They also did a few Star Wars titles while there. They were working on Sam & Max Freelance Police (they showed the trailer) when it got cancelled and that was sort of the final catalyst when they decided to leave Lucas and go it alone.
The first game Telltale released was Telltale Texas Hold’em, which was sort of comedy poker. The team learned lots about making a game from scratch and that the target demographic for poker games didn’t really overlap with their love of jokes and cute cartoon characters. But iterating quickly and learning from mistakes helped get them the momentum they needed for bigger and better things.
Their next title was a point and click adventure based on the Bone comic series and then they got the license to make the CSI games based on the CBS series. They never got the rights to finish and release Sam & Max Freelance Police from Lucas but they were able to get the OK to use the franchise and make their own episodic tales of the dynamic canine and lagomorph duo. After that success they kept rolling with point and click adventure games adventure games with new and classic characters.
Sam & Max, Puzzle Agent, Hector Badge of Carnage, Wallace & Gromit, Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People, Monkey Island
I highly recommend all of the games represented on this slide. I didn’t even like Homestar Runner until I played Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People. Now, that is my number one game I’d like them to make a sequel to. I was really hoping that would be their big panel reveal, since Homestar Runner just resurrected itself back from the dead, but alas that was not to be.
More recently Telltale has pulled away from old school point and click adventures and gone to more of a "gut-wrenching choices" mechanic in titles. I like these games, but also wish they’d keep throwing in some traditional point and click stuff into the mix once in a while. Sadly, no announcement there either. They talked about having a big license deal with Lionsgate films, so I’m guessing with that we’re not getting any old skool style soon.
While I am a little disappointed they aren’t making my favorite types of games right now, it was nice to see that they are enjoying evolving types of gameplay and story telling and keeping to the core company mission. They had a picture of the actual slide from their business plan pitch 10+ years ago complete in wonderful powerpoint aesthetic.
They are doing a great job telling stories with their games, and I do play their games instead of watching TV. The choice style ones I find are a little light on the interactive side sometimes though and I feel like I AM watching TV with occasional annoying button pressing to keep the action going. I do like the episodic setup they have though that breaks up the game into smaller bites and sometimes leaves cliff hangers. Although I confess a lot of times I’ll wait till all the episodes are released to play so I don’t get left hanging. In their talk they talked about the ‘water cooler effect’ of older adventure games and having to talk through solutions to puzzle with friends and family. They are hoping the choice and statistics mechanics and the new style brings some of that fun back.
While there were no new game announcements they did have a surprise for everyone at the keynote where they gave a free copy of all their games on Steam (except CSI because Ubisoft owns the publishing rights). I own most of them already but there are a few I haven’t played and I had totally forgotten they did a Law & Order one so will definitely have to check that out. And I guess maybe a game will finally drag me kicking and screaming into Game of Thrones.
