Telltale Games is shutting down

Damn! I want Batman season 3!
 
Their problem was making too many damn games. Focus on your good ones. Wolf Among Us and Walking Dead are masterpieces. Focus on those and not work on pieces of shit like Minecraft series.

<3 Clementine forever
 
It's a bit surprising to me that the industry continues on this way. We've been reading about awful work conditions such as crunch for what feels like a decade; I'm a little surprised that publishers/studios are still able to find people who are willing to work in that environment. How long is it gonna take before people start avoiding game development as a profession and companies have to treat people better to recruit them?
 
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crunch time is just going to be part of doing business for anything that has deadlines, really.
 
Decent post mortem from SuperBunnyHop



Unfortunately that's a pretty common tale. Even my current company took a fair deal of VC, did a mass hiring, and now - about a year later - the layoffs have started.

Same thing happened at Factor 5, as well. Success with the SW: Rogue Squadron games, gambled it all on Lair (which internally had it's own bushel of development problems), lost, and then petered out. What's worse is that they made everyone work for weeks at the end without pay while promising them that funding was around the corner. But it was never coming; the guys at the top of company were actually trying to transfer assets from F5 to a new company they were trying to start. It took years but the employees were finally able to get some of the money they were owed by the studio.
 
Unfortunately that's a pretty common tale. Even my current company took a fair deal of VC, did a mass hiring, and now - about a year later - the layoffs have started.

Same thing happened at Factor 5, as well. Success with the SW: Rogue Squadron games, gambled it all on Lair (which internally had it's own bushel of development problems), lost, and then petered out. What's worse is that they made everyone work for weeks at the end without pay while promising them that funding was around the corner. But it was never coming; the guys at the top of company were actually trying to transfer assets from F5 to a new company they were trying to start. It took years but the employees were finally able to get some of the money they were owed by the studio.

Do you think this could make Venture Capitalists skittish?
 
Do you think this could make Venture Capitalists skittish?

My gut tells me the slowdown has already started, especially in mobile/casual. When the AppStore first hit the scene, investors were tripping over themselves to get a piece of the pie. Now it’s hard to make an impact there unless 1) you’re already a big dev and have contacts at Apple or 2) you’re willing to blow a ridiculous amount in marketing just to get yourself on the charts to help with organic growth. So there’s not really a lot of people looking to invest unless you’ve got a really different idea - but long gone are the days of money being pumped into anyone trying to breakthrough.

I knew some guys who had never made a game in their life who had over $5m given to them all on spec. I haven’t seen that happen in the last couple of years (except maybe AR).
 
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