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The Resurrection & Reinvention Of Telltale Games

IbizaPocholo

NeoGAFs Kent Brockman

When titles like The Secret of Monkey Island became rarer, so too did Jamie Ottilie’s time with the adventure genre, and, like many, he moved on to other increasingly popular types of games. But then, Telltale Games was formed – roughly a decade after the golden age of adventure games – built from the ashes of LucasArts by a number of former employees, piquing Ottilie’s interest immediately.

Ottilie enjoyed the studio’s first handful of games, but his interest reached new heights following the first season of Telltale’s The Walking Dead, the game that most agree put the studio on the map. And from there, the Telltale of old was born – a studio seemingly destined to create excellent stories in pre-existing universes such as The Walking Dead, and later Game of Thrones and Batman.

For some time, Telltale’s signature formula worked well. Until it didn’t. Overburdened with work leading to widespread crunch in a market oversaturated with the Telltale name, the final blow to the studio came when investors from AMC, Lionsgate, and Smilegate pulled funding. The company began its shutdown in September 2018. It was brutal, coming as a surprise to most everyone there. It was also a massive shock to an industry already weary of crunch and the lack of safety nets for employees.

By the time Telltale shut down, Ottilie’s interest had grown into a full appreciation – he was truly a fan of the studio’s work. Following the studio’s closure, he began to look into what went wrong and how the studio could return. About a year later, he would be the new CEO of Telltale after buying the company, or what was left of it, in 2019.

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