Telltale Games Rises From the Grave
Telltale Games laid off 250 employees last September and closed its doors a few months afterwards but, after several of its assets were recently bought by a company called LCG Entertainment, the studio’s legacy might live on.
According to a Polygon report published Wednesday, this new Telltale studio will be located in Malibu, California and lead by mobile game developer Jamie Ottilie and game development executive Brian Waddle.
Ottilie told Polygon that some former Telltale developers are going to be offered freelance jobs at the new studio with the possibility of being hired full-time later. According to Ottilie, this new studio will be “very small” at first and will have a more “distributed development pipeline than Telltale was known for.”
This new Telltale might continue the stories of Telltale games such as The Wolf Among Us and its Batman games since the new studio owns the rights to those games. “We’re still evaluating, but we definitely want to continue some of the stories,” Ottilie said. However, it is unclear if this new Telltale owns the rights to the old studio’s Borderlands, Guardians of the Galaxy, Minecraft, and Game of Thrones games.
As for The Walking Dead, that’s staying with Skybound Entertainment.
Ottilie also said that this new Telltale will “probably” release its games episodically, which is something the old studio was well-known for. “We will probably keep the concept of episodes but with different pacing,” he said. “This is a different world, from a media consumption standpoint. We need to look at how people like to entertain themselves. I like the idea of binge watching.”
When addressing the business decisions that lead to the old Telltale’s closure, Ottilie said this new studio is “working very hard not to make similar mistakes.”