I could also imagine that it has something to do with their focus on episodic games. I don't like this hacking a game into tiny pieces and selling them all separately. So I rather wait for all episodes to be finished and be released as some complete version. I guess many people might prefer complete games over buying their games piece by piece. So a company that publishes exclusively games of the "I'll wait until it comes out complete and cheaper" kind might have to wait for their revenue quite long. Perhaps too long for a small company.

So maybe it was the focus on episodic games that bit them in the behind and not the focus on youtubability.

I always had mixed feelings about Telltale.

At first I considered as some sort of saviors as, at a time where the genre was mostly dead for years, having some old Lucasarts devs releasing brand new point and click adventure games was like a dream come true, not to mention having them releasing sequel to Sam & Max.

But after some time I came to the realization that their games, IMHO, weren't very good, tons of of reused characters models and location, basic puzzle, short episodes, nearly always the same structure (i.e. find three "things" then confront the "boss"/final location, the end). Not to mention that after a while other devs started releasing better P&C games, Dark Matter, the Deadalic ones, etc...

As a result I didn't care or mind when they stopped doing point and click and gone full "interactive movie / visual novel".

Afterwards it was a mixed bags : I enjoyed Wolf Among us, Borderlands (even if it fell apart in the last chapter) and the two first Walking Deads, but the other side Guardians of the Galaxy, Back to the Future, Minecraft and Games of Thrones bored me to tears (Guardian being the most disappointing one); Batman left me rather indifferent (Didn't do the second one yet).

That's sad for the employees who lost their jobs but honestly as a game company I am not really going to miss then that much.

They had their focus on episodic games even in the beginning. Since they were only few back then they did not have that much of a choice bacause it would take them too long to deliver a complete game.

In the end - yes, it killed them - because they just had too many projects with too many deadlines. So there wasn't any time left to put out good stuff (just read the link it describes it all).

At least Telltale always delivered. Some small indie devs that went for episodic weren't even able to complete their game and some simply shortened the number of episodes. Episodic is often problematic because of what you said but in the case of TTG there was no doubt that TTG would deliever ... not in time but still. I was glad to get my games piece by piece because that way it does not take so much take to play through it and when I am finished I was looking forward for the next piece. Because I was forced to wait my excitement was raised when the next part was released. It was always fun to be on the TTG forums (back when you could still call it a forum) and do the countdown for the newest release.

Are these really good at storytelling, though?

Season 2 is great. Way better then the first. you should play it. it's totally worth it.
But, hey, I did like the first Batman too.

Not more or less than the telltalegames. Meaning: not much gameplay and it is possible to experiemce the whole game just by watching a yt video. Still the sales were good. That was my only point here.

I can't say I'm surprised. If major licences like Guardians of The Galaxy were forgotten, I can't imagine how paltry the sales of Strong Bad's Cool Game For Attractive People were.

deleted

so what about TWD the final season? will it be discounted?

Too bad. I loved Sam & Max, great adventure game, and plan to play at least Tales of Monkey Island and Back to the Furure from them.

And I have to say, some of the posts here... sheesh.

Well this sucks. I really enjoyed the walking dead, really sad that the final season will not be completed.

Do we get a refund if we purchased the final season of The Wwalking Dead?

deleted

Yeah, maybe just maybe they'll finish it, chances are almost non-existant, but one can hope. :)

deleted