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TellTale at Nordic Game Conference: "games are too big"

Posted May 15, 2007 at 11:43AM EST by QJ Staff

Listed in: Wii, PS3, Xbox 360, PC Gaming Tags: Nintendo, Telltale, Telltale Games

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In league with Blast! Entertainment's Sean Brennan's views on steep development costs, even TellTale Games, makers of the hilarious Sam & Max episodes, agrees that game development just got too big for itself. Sean Brennan, CEO of Blast!, spoke at the Northern Exposure 07 conference and said the high costs were just due to "ego tripping and copycat mentality."

Kevin Bruner, executive of TellTale Games, also shares this view with Brennan. "We believe that games are too expensive right now. A lot of not only episodic games but games in general are not priced appropriately. We also think that games are too big," Bruner said.

In his speech entitled "Why Episodic Gaming is Good for Developers," Bruner explained at the Nordic Game Conference the advantages of diving into the episodic business model, much like what Valve Software adapted for the Half-Life franchise. For developing a single title each month, TellTale requires a smaller budget, short term goals, smaller overhead, and gains the ability to interact with customers regularly.

"I think the industry is creating one type of content, which is the thousand-page novel. If you went into a bookstore and every book was a thousand-page novel - not everybody wants that," he explained. He also added that if a game company takes two years to create a game and "screws up," there's no way to correct the mistakes - developers just move on.

To him, it is becoming apparent that the game industry is steering toward one type of game: "the 50-hour first person shooter type thing." Games have become too restrictive and too costly, giving a narrow selection of games for customers to choose.

Bruner believes the Nintendo Wii and casual gaming is cluing the game industry that gamers are looking for something different. TellTale Games focuses on telling stories than marketing action, and he thinks if customers were offered games of similar caliber, they would respond more favorably to such games.

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GTA san andreas was the best and was BIG!

squeenix games are the ultimate and are BIG!

Small games are for instant fun, kids, non gamers. What I like is a game were the story is long, cool and were the gameplay evolves for at least 40hours of play. I mean, even GTA is at least 40 hours of play to have 100%!!!

Simple games like cooking mama are for kids in my opinion, I know that a lot of people love those kind of games, but it NOT a food for the brain...

# . — Guest 2007-05-15 14:35

Games are most certainly not too big. If I'm paying $60 for a game I'd better have, at the very least, an in depth single player campaign...one that's not over in 3 hours *cough*GRAW2*co ugh*.

Some games multiplayer aspects don't keep me interested, so I fall back on playing through the single player. Obvlivion was perfect. San Andreas was perfect. Final fantasy is perfect.

At least, that's my opinion.

# They're aiming for the 10hr FPS type thing. — Guest 2007-05-15 15:30

And this impending scenario has been obvious for at least 5yrs. How come they're only just noticing?

# Oblivion was perfect... — Guest 2007-05-15 15:37

...Oblivion is actually a prime example of taking something from a specific genre and sliding it over into the afformentioned FPS "type thing" so as to attract enough players to pay for it's crazy production costs.

It's a great game in it's own right but it's far from the RPG it should have been.

# I don't care how long games are — Guest 2007-05-15 15:59

I dont care how long or how short games are, the main goal is to make a quality game that gamers feel content about slapping down the money to buy the game. If this means an extremely long game for more money then fine, and if it means a short game for less money then fine. But making a crappy game and trying to release it out on the market with a price that doesn't match its quality just doesn' work.

# . — Guest 2007-05-15 17:24

i agree.

what you pay should be a measure of what you are getting.

but i guess some developers do try hard but just cant quite get it right and still need to get paid

# WHAT? — Guest 2007-05-15 19:16

to wiiwii - Those developers should get a different job then. There is no reason people should be expected to buy a unfinished game, or a badly producted game.

Only game developers have the amazing ability go without responsiblity.

Quake Wars article from yesterday: "We could have released the game on time, but then the multiplayer levels would have been quickly done and lame." Well, what the hell has the 3D level artist been doing this whole time, you know? "It's not our fault we miss deadlines, we're just trying to make the game better!" Hell it worked for DNF, didn't it? Oh wait a min, DNF still isn't out.

# ? — Barakku 2007-05-16 11:12

What? Oblivion wasn't as good as I expected, it's certainly not being slid into the FPS type thing; it's following in the footsteps of Morrowind, Daggerfall, Area...these games were a very different kind of RPG--they aren't supposed to be turn based or anything. Oblivion is simply a different style from FF and other RPG titles.

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