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I can't help but feel that YouTube played a role in tanking Telltales game sales
- Thread starter SENPAIatLARGE
- Start date
It seems as though you played a role in this, not YouTube. Would you have bought the games otherwise?
No. The cost of running a game studio in the Bay Area isn't sustainable. If anything YouTube probably helped sales of their games.
If Batman, Game of Thrones, Minecraft, and The Walking Dead couldn't save them, then there is something wrong with the company. YouTube isn't to blame for everything.
The first Batman episode was free on a lot of platforms as well.
What are the views like for subsequent episodes? AFAIK the game sold well so if there was a dramatic drop off in views it's possible that....people just went and bought it after seeing it on YouTube
They're extremely consistent in that everything after the first episode stays around half of what that one got (top video still in the millions, 500k or so for less popular channels). The people that stuck with it...stuck with it. But there's no way of knowing for sure how much something like that truly affects potential sales, as we can't really know if individuals wouldn't have been customers were the option not available.
I've known people over the years who still buy games but will pick and choose what they don't, yet still play if you know what I mean. It's a case-by-case thing with them, and in the case with Telltale, the audience never grew or made them one of the cases where they always buy full price, which for Telltale's games wasn't even half the typical retail cost of entry.
Hell, didn't they just remaster the old Walking Dead seasons last year? That probably cost them a bunch for minimal gains as well. They dropped the platinums too, which cuts off that consistent niche that was purchasing everything they made for trophy/achievement addiction. Just bad business decisions over and over, which is a shame for the hard-working developers that had no say in those matters.
I think a factor was that almost everyone who recommended a Telltale game would add a * at the end of the recommendation. Like say something to the tune of "TWD S1 is v good, but S2 is...not as good", or "the game is good but their engine is super old and looks bad".
That kind of v qualified recommendations, fulls of "buts" probably scared buyers
That kind of v qualified recommendations, fulls of "buts" probably scared buyers
Poor mismanagement, a failure to innovate, rampant technical difficulties, and the inability to listen to fan criticism.
Youtube sure didn't help but neither did the fact that the games all looked identical, went on super sale before/during all the seasons coming out, the writing becoming generally poor, and the games running like shit for the most part.
I haven't run any studies but I feel like the free advertising outweighs the loss in sales. I know I personally don't watch anything I don't intend to buy, and if I'm watching something I really like I end up purchasing something I was never going to in the first place.
Bad business decisions probably played a role for sure. I feel like running a studio in san fransisco is also incredibly expensive and not very sustainable.
No doubt some people watch the videos and chose not to buy the game but I'm guessing a lot of those views were from people who wouldn't have bought it anyway? Like a lot of games
No kidding. In the north bay even a 1 bedroom apartment is often over $2500/month. Commercial office space for hundreds of employees is obscene.
I've heard starting salaries for programmers are like 94k? Imagine making that much and having it all eaten up in living costs. Insane
That is not unheard of. I know a guy in Manhattan who makes sic figures and can't afford to live there.
I think the lack of improvement in their games did them in more than anything. I played The Walking Dead season 1 and skipped a ton of Telltale games because the experience was terrible. I had glitches, terrible framerate and it would continuously lose my saves and choices between episodes. I picked up the Batman games and had the same problems. It was funny to see nothing had changed even between console generations.
This!!! I loved the first season of the walking Dead and I think The Wolf Among us is easily their best game however they took too much in and didnt further their actual game design. They didnt evolve their design.
It's one thing if they released a game once a year but at one point they were releasing like 3 different franchises in the span of a year with all the same practical gameplay but different stories. People could only take so much.
It sucks regarding the layoffs cause it's never easy to lose a job but their creativity wasnt moving forward and they took on board too many franchises at one time.
Telltales games were not sold on their gameplay + story, but their story + reactivity. The first one is difficult to recreate the experience when watching a video, the second a bit less.
I watched a YouTube play through of Batman season 1+2.
But I would have bought and played it myself if I hadn't had bad experiences playing their games in the past. Major technical problems, bugs, and lack of polish were the main factors in me not spending money on their games.
But I would have bought and played it myself if I hadn't had bad experiences playing their games in the past. Major technical problems, bugs, and lack of polish were the main factors in me not spending money on their games.
Then they should have made them more interactive, or better looking, or less buggy, or churned less of them out so that their reputation didn't sink. I don't know, it seems petty to just blame Youtube when plenty of story based games sell.
Have you played a TellTale game? It barely has any gameplay. At least you can goof off in the other games with side missions and you know not every streamer is going to 100%, and you know actually play them.
Funny how people are acting as if all single player narrative games are the same. So dumb.
There's a lot of reasons why Telltale games failed, but for me this is at the bottom of those reasons.
Counterpoint: watching a Youtube video of the first Telltale Walking Dead game is what convinced me to buy it.
I had previously stumbled across the game's Steam page, been mildly intrigued, then moved on because I wasn't sure exactly what the game actually was. After watching the first 15 minutes on Youtube I jumped up and said, "I have to play this for myself right the fuck now!" I did and it was amazing.
I then went on to buy TWDs2 (great), TWAU (great), Tales From The Borderlands (great), GOTG (meh, never finished it) and TWDs3 (which I haven't gotten around to playing yet).
Youtube is free advertising.
I had previously stumbled across the game's Steam page, been mildly intrigued, then moved on because I wasn't sure exactly what the game actually was. After watching the first 15 minutes on Youtube I jumped up and said, "I have to play this for myself right the fuck now!" I did and it was amazing.
I then went on to buy TWDs2 (great), TWAU (great), Tales From The Borderlands (great), GOTG (meh, never finished it) and TWDs3 (which I haven't gotten around to playing yet).
Youtube is free advertising.
That could be part of the reason. I think the more obvious reason is the price. Telltale charges $5 per episode for what is the equivalent to a full length movie (which is actually much longer given all the choices in the game). They're also the only developer I can think of in the adventure genre that uses licensed properties. It would be surprising if they didn't try to sell the studio to a company like Microsoft, Sony, or even Netflix.
They closed because management had no idea how to actually manage a project. They were inept and went over budget on ever title they ever made of course they shut down. Had nothing to do with people watching the story on YouTube.
This right here, folks.
I also refused to buy any of their games after I bought a physical copy of The Walking Dead on PS3 and it ran so badly that you couldn't even hit half of the QTEs - they literally refused to acknowledge that they fucked up.
But this can go for any game. Every game has articles and videos about them.
And I don't think SP games get affected negatively at all. If Let's Play videos spoiled plots and sales, then Bethesda RPGs, R* games and Sony SP games wouldn't sell millions of copies. But they do.
If videos are proven to negatively affect TT games, then it shows somethings wrong with the company or game..... especially since their games aren't even $60 to begin with.
I think the genre ran its course.
And for me, I only dabbled with some 360 TWD demos or free season 1 or whatever. All I know is the game ran like crap. The game is display some canned graphics (which aren't even state of the art to begin with), and that cursor you move around to search and shoot was clunky as hell. Felt like a clunky point and click PC game from 1996 but with some fresh cutout kind of animated visuals.
Not to slam them or anything, but if it wasn't TWD (or a zombie game as it was the craze at the time), I don't think the game would sell even half the copies. I think TT got a bit lucky with the zombie craze.
Yeah, they were in the right place at the right time and the concept was still fresh for most people.
Nah. It seemed like they didn't have the cash to upgrade the engine like everyone wanted, and after Walking Dead season one they couldn't land a huge hit again.
I don't think YouTube did it.
It was technology that killed off these slower paced point and click kinds of adventure games.History says "not really".
It sucks, to be sure, but the industry - and the demographics it attracts - just isn't all that friendly to these sorts of games :/
The reason why they were so popular on Apple, Amiga and PC back in the 80s to mid-90s is because computers couldn't handle fast paced games yet. So gamers played consoles/arcades for fast paced whiz bang games, and then sat at home playing strategy and adventure games or sim sports on computer.
When PCs upped the power and got 3D cards to boot, they surpassed consoles with shooters, RTS and anything turn based slowly disappeared. So it showed that PC gamers have always liked fast paced games too. It's just that an Intel 486 can't handle Contra 3 or Sonic the Hedgehog, but handles Earl Weaver Baseball and King's Quest games great.
Youtube may have played a part, but I think a larger factor was that people knew if they waited a few months the entire season would be offered on PS+/Xbox Games with Gold or heavily discounted. If you didn't buy each episode on launch day, you could get the complete package for 50% soon after the full season released.
They made games that could sell over a million copies and still fail to turn a profit. That they never tried to change their business or development models despite so many financial failures speaks volumes about how badly mismanaged they were. It was entirely self-inflicted
I hope everyone lands on their feet. But generally think Telltale was mismanaged.
I never got the feeling my choices mattered.
Almost no reason to buy it day 1 because it would go on sale a few weeks in. They saturated the market.
Barman ran horrible. I gave up after that.
I never got the feeling my choices mattered.
Almost no reason to buy it day 1 because it would go on sale a few weeks in. They saturated the market.
Barman ran horrible. I gave up after that.
Why put the blame on youtube?
Why not blame the game creator itself for not putting in something to make people want to buy the game and play it themselves? On the surface it looks like a choose your own adventure, that to me seems like its something entirely watchable through streaming or youtube.
Why not blame the game creator itself for not putting in something to make people want to buy the game and play it themselves? On the surface it looks like a choose your own adventure, that to me seems like its something entirely watchable through streaming or youtube.
Telltale is the reason. The games were pretty buggy to me and I stopped supporting it. YouTube had nothing to do with it.
I never bought a single Telltale game because of their reputation for bugs. Most reviews (youtube or otherwise) or threads I read always mentioned bugs, glitches and crashes. At this point in my life, I stay away from buggy games. Ain't nobody got time for that.
I think they just released to many games in such a short amount of time that alot fell through the cracks, these are the types of games that most people only play a few times a year. I really don't think youtube was a huge reason for the decline in sales, alot of other story driven games sell just fine.
YouTube, Their shitty engine and not being able to get away with it like Bethesda, bad business, not diversifying
Seems clear from the way management handled things, like hiring people this week, announcing publishing partnerships for games, and releasing a game episode, all around this closure, that management was a clusterfuck and nothing was going to save them.
I mean, it doesn't matter now, but why? If the game is fun or in some cases more fun watching it than playing it then that's your problem to fix.
Because they are pretty much real time rendered Television shows?