长文：Telltale联合创始人Kevin Bruner谈公司的倒闭风波

原作者：Elise Favis 译者：Willow Wu

Telltale，业内数一数二的冒险游戏开发公司，旗下作品包括《行尸走肉》以及《我们身边的狼》，在去年年底突然宣布倒闭，令众人目瞪口呆。游戏行业内掀起了热烈的讨论，很多人都在猜测究竟是什么导致了Telltale的落幕。

我们近期也发布过一篇关于Telltale倒闭原因的深入研究，其中，前Telltale CEO&联合创始人Kevin Bruner的离职是一个关键。虽然他于2017年离开公司，跟倒闭事件没有直接关系，但是他曾在某些最困难的时期带领Telltale撑过危机，然而也正是这些危机最终导致了巨人的陨落。

今年早些时候我们采访了Bruner，他和我们分享了Telltale这些年的背后经历，给出了坦率、详细的见解。以下是完整的采访过程。

-跟我说说早期的Telltale吧，一开始和Dan Connors、Troy Molander创建这个公司是个什么样的过程？

我1997年加入LucasArts，我是这个公司的忠实粉丝。那时候已经算是LucasArts黄金期的尾声了。我在那做的第一个项目是《冥界狂想曲》。选择在Lucas工作是因为我喜欢冒险游戏，比如《猴子岛》和《极速天龙》。回想起面试的时候，当时我不知道自己在面试什么职位。看到《冥界狂想曲》时，我就跟他们说“我不在乎我的工作是什么，但是我一定要加入那个项目。”

我做过编程，所以我就成为了《冥界狂想曲》的系统工程师。LucasArts有一个创作冒险游戏的系统叫Scumm，《冥界狂想曲》之前的所有内容都是用它来做的。当时周围人都在讨论“Scumm的下一代会是什么样？”《冥界狂想曲》就是第一个非Scumm系统制作的游戏。那段时间其实也挺有意思的，因为我们是跟Scumm的创始团队一起工作的，公司的那么多经典热门都要归功于这个系统，我们算是站在巨人的肩膀上。在交流时，我们问说“你们学到了什么经验教训吗？Scumm的优势是什么？缺点是什么？”Scumm可以制作出不同的游戏，但从本质上来说它们都是冒险游戏，可以看出某些共同点。

从Telltale的产品中你也能看到Scumm的影子。所以那段时间对于热爱冒险游戏的我来说真的非常特别，能和LucasArts的资深开发者交流合作，讨论下一代系统的制作，真的是美梦成真般的感觉。然后我们就着手制作《山姆&麦克斯：自由警察》。我们也参与过《星球大战》项目——只要你在LucasArts工作，早晚都得接触这个项目。但我觉得Tim Schafer是成功躲过了（笑）。在《山姆&麦克斯：自由警察》开发期间，我们尝试了很多新时代设计，把游戏做成3D模式。然而就在这时，Lucas就决定让所有人都停下手头的工作，全都投入到《星球大战》上。

可以说这在一定程度上促使了Telltale的诞生。我们本来对下一代冒险游戏充满了期待，规划了宏伟的蓝图，但后来失去了实现的机会，所以我们决定自己创造机会。Telltale成立之时，我们对于冒险游戏的未来有不同的想法，但公司命名为“Telltale”是因为我们都想“讲故事”。我非常喜欢LucasArts的剧情设计、叙事方式以及角色塑造，但谜题方面就不是那么喜欢了，有时还会被卡住，令人沮丧。因此我们肯定会更注重游戏的剧情和角色扮演部分，而不是解谜。冒险游戏的叙事和解谜都很吸引人，但我们更偏爱叙事。

-之前有为“冒险游戏已死”这种观点担忧过吗？尤其是在那个时候？

哦，是的。“《冥界狂想曲》终结了冒险游戏。”说起来也有意思，Troy和我都是《冥界狂想曲》开发成员， 而Dan和我在另一个游戏《山姆&麦克斯：自由警察》一起合作。我觉得当时的LucasArts非常在意“冒险游戏已死”这种说法，Simon Jeffery——也就是当时的公司领导者——他的想法大概就是“我们依然想做冒险游戏，但是我们得实际点，花这么多钱在冒险游戏上风险实在是太大了。”

虽然我们有机会制作了《山姆&麦克斯：自由警察》，但还是受到了不少束缚。我们必须得按时完成任务、控制预算、保证游戏的质量，不然这个机会就泡汤了。我们的制作策略、技术策略、开发策略因此做了很大调整，这样才能确保我们能做自己喜欢的游戏。Telltale也延续了这种做事风格。新生公司的资源是十分有限的，清楚认识你们的能力，在人力物力都非常紧张的情况下你能交出什么样的拿手之作，这就是决定公司是否能发展起来的关键。

尤其是后者，当我们在做IP内容或者类似的项目时脑中也需要这种理念。在开发《超级无敌掌门狗》游戏时，我们的资金非常有限，一不小心可能就会超出预算。这款游戏的市场机会也非常有限，或者说目标用户非常明确，你只能从这些人身上找机会。所以这种能力认知就是Telltale能够蒸蒸日上的原因。人们会问说“这些家喻户晓的IP你们要怎么改编成游戏？”每个项目都是比之前更好一点的机会，刚开始的时候我们只能做一些非常小的IP合作项目。

你要知道如何充分利用眼前的机会做一个好玩的游戏。Telltale在这点上一直做得很好。大多数时候我们都得面临客观条件的限制，尽量做出最好的游戏。这很让人沮丧，条件限制是一方面，另一方面是因为那时没有人会做冒险游戏了。我们想要做规模更大、更精致的游戏，但那需要很多钱和时间，而我们都没有。

当然，早期我们也尝试跟传统发行商合作，但是他们都对我们想做的内容不感兴趣。所以我们只能自食其力，物尽其用。当游戏大卖，Telltale甚至成为了行业中的新潮流引领者，大家都非常兴奋。但在大部分时间里，我们还是处于非常忙乱的状态。要制作这种游戏只能靠我们自己，包括发行——这就意味着不管你懂多少发行方面的事也只能硬着头皮上。

-你认为Telltale的最大优势是什么？

我知道并不是每个人都会认同我的观点，但我认为Telltale是冒险游戏的传承者之一：从80年代的Sierra和LucasArt，90年代的Cyan，迈入21世纪的Quantic Dream，然后就是Telltale。我喜欢Scumm游戏、文字冒险游戏和Cyan游戏主要原因之一就是它们有一种特定的视觉风格和感觉。当有人说“看，Cyan要出新游戏了，”你大概就能猜到游戏的样子。这些公司的品牌辨识度非常高，产品特色鲜明，Telltale也是如此。

就如我刚才所说的，有些人或许不同意我的说法，但我十分肯定地认为这就是Telltale的优势。这种标志性的设计体验贯穿我们的所有游戏，无论是《权力的游戏》《行尸走肉》还是其它项目，我喜欢它们之间的这种共性。

-特定画风和多线剧情的确是Telltale游戏的标志。

我认为这是Telltale的财富。但是这个量不好把握。过于突出公司特色不行，过于低调也不行。我不知道这个问题有没有什么好的解决办法，但我还是觉得有标志性风格是挺酷的。其它顶级游戏开发公司也有自己的独特风格，不管是不是做冒险游戏。我想特色鲜明也是一流开发公司的表现之一吧。

-Telltale是因为探索特色才在游戏中加入QTE和分支剧情吗？

其中有两个原因。初期Telltale是一个小而散乱的工作室，我们认为跟那些资源较为充足的公司竞争不是个聪明的选择。我们不想在这些游戏中加入传统的动作场景，因为那样的话我们就不得不与那些非常擅长制作高质量动作场景的大型公司竞争，比如Naughty Dog。

所以一方面，我们是想避免竞争，不然肯定会被碾压。既然不这样做，那我们要拿什么来娱乐大众？这大概就是比较有意思的部分了。我们想出一个新方法，将动作场景的效果最大化。我不是在暗示快速反应事件（QTE）系统是我们发明的，但是我们尝试了很多与以往不同的QTE模式。当然，角色扮演以及角色之间的关系发展是我们非常看重的部分。我们努力探索，想从更深层次娱乐人们。

再强调一下，重点就是要遵循“做自己”的原则。曾经，我们也有人想过做第一人称模式或者加入格斗/射击/驾驶玩法，然后每次我的第一反应就是“拜托，外面已经有擅长做这种游戏的牛逼公司了，再说这也不好做啊。”我们有专长，并为此成立了一个工作室。大家肯定不想三四周就凑出个四不像的产品。所以，为什么不安心在自己所擅长的领域做好自己的事呢？我想，正是因为多年来我们谨记着这一点才成功打造出Telltale独特的游戏体验。

但是事情不会是总是一帆风顺的，期间肯定有动摇的情况出现，毕竟实验不会在短时间内就成功的。

-你们有没有讨论过对Telltale的这套玩法设计结构进行大调整，创造出一些新东西？

我们当然有讨论过关于改进设计模板的事，还有改进的方向。有人提过“在游戏中加入更传统的机制”，但真的，一个工作室很难面面俱到，剧情创作、角色扮演、动作设计不可能都达到顶级的水准，尤其是在我们这种预算条件下。所以，我总是用这样的话来鼓励大家“让我们一起探索未知的领域，寻找新方式，不要随波逐流，共同去创造人们未曾见过的新型游戏。”我想Telltale的角色扮演、对话主导模式就是这么来的吧。

我们一直以来都非常注重对话，我记得当时在讨论《行尸走肉》这个项目，我们有不同的原型，提供了各种不同的游戏体验。看了所有的原型之后，我们最终决定将焦点放在对话和分支选择上，这是最适合我们的。当时我们非常忐忑，只能希望玩家会喜欢这种模式。那时大家都全神贯注地想把这一件事做好，我认为这就是Telltale能够撑过低潮的根本原因。如果当时我们同时尝试各种不同的模式，Telltale可能不久之后就倒闭了。

但这个过程并不容易，你会感到迷茫。你玩了其它的游戏，或许就会想说“我们应该按照那个游戏那样做。”但这就像(令人心情愉快但可能无益健康的)安慰食品，你可以立即打开编辑器，加载美术资源，按照之前看到的那个游戏设计。虽然探索未知的领域会遇到更多困难，但也会获得更多乐趣。你会逐渐找到属于自己的那条路。

-在你看来，Telltale曾经是非常厌恶风险的吗？

我们在早期是比较愿意多做尝试的。比如，在《行尸走肉》项目之前，我们有Poker Night at the Inventory、Homestar Runner这样的游戏，后者没有任何文字，所有的选择都是利用图标来表现的，而且谜题比较多，是一个较为传统的point-and-click游戏。我们的早期作品更加多样化。

我认为在Telltale，另一个重要影响因素是投资者们。最初的时候，我们只有风投，然后是狮门公司——一家大型的上市公司。之后《行尸走肉》获得了巨大的成功，名利双收，大家就有了更大的野心。这时的我们可以获得更大、更好的IP项目，但选择相对保守的策略对我们来说是更有利的。你不能跟HBO说“我们想在《权力的游戏》上做新的尝试。”而是“我们会按照《行尸走肉》那样把你们的电视剧改编成游戏。”

公司的领导层要求我们追求更大、更有意思的游戏创造机会同时也要降低风险，保证公司的为稳定增长，这是非常有压力的。降低风险是公司的升值途径吗？回答因人而异。对于Telltale未来的发展方向，我有很多想法。我们想要规模更大、更有意思的IP，这样就能有更好的市场机会。而且我们得确保公司没有走下坡路，这是最重要的。我们不想让《行尸走肉》成为一个侥幸成功的产品，或者成为Telltale的唯一热门游戏。这就是为什么《我们身边的狼》被视为Telltale最重要的游戏之一。我们当时很担心，如果反响不好，《行尸走肉》就会被视为昙花一现。

-可以说说那些没谈拢的IP项目吗？

有很多，但我觉得没有必要详述。我一直都想做一个超级棒的《星球大战》冒险游戏。但Telltale没有这个机会。在《行尸走肉》之后，我们有资格跟别人说“嘿，要是把你的书/电影/电视剧改编成冒险游戏肯定很酷。”这种机会相比以前是更多了，但并没有那么常见。我们到处去跟人交涉，想着“这恐怕是唯一一次他们有兴趣跟我们讲话。”不是所有授权方都愿意跟我们合作，我想再强调一下，这些机会真的不常有。

特别是对于一个喜欢冒险游戏却处于冒险游戏寒冬大背景下的人来说，能够有机会做这种尝试——让授权商考虑将那些一般会设计成格斗或者动作冒险游戏或者是类似体裁的IP改编成叙事冒险游戏——已经很难得了。其中当然包括《权力的游戏》和《蝙蝠侠》，也有很多像《星球大战》这样的项目，我们和授权方讨论过这个想法，但实现的可能性为零。我们完全理解，我希望Telltale能做出一流的《星球大战》游戏，但现实又是另外一回事了。

-你们曾考虑过与Netflix进一步合作吗？

有。《我的世界：故事模式》是一款非常有意思的产品。我们一直主张把界面做的简单些，便于用户通过电视遥控手柄玩游戏。Netflix是一个很棒的平台，互动电视也是我很感兴趣的领域。我们需要做很多工作才能搞定技术问题，让游戏在电视上顺畅运行，之后还有管理团队接手，保证游戏质量过关。

准备工作都由我们负责。《我的世界》是一个世界闻名的IP，这个项目需要开发商Mojang、发行商微软和平台商Netflix的三方的协调合作，很复杂，所以也耗费了很多时间。但我认为Netflix在互动电视方面还有很多有趣的东西值得探究，未来肯定还有更多关于这一领域的内容出现。你在Netflix上运行《我的世界：故事模式》是完全没有问题的，游戏体验非常好，它并不算是单纯的移植产品，而是为平台量身打造的。我对这个游戏的一切都非常满意。我想在Netflix看到更多类似的产品。就比如《黑镜：潘达斯奈基》，媒体报道非常多，成为了观众的热议话题。

-有一位前Telltale员工告诉我他们认为公司对用户有根本性的误解。你之前有觉得你们与用户之间存在某些障碍吗？

我觉得倒闭事件导致了一些噪音的产生。对于所有牵涉其中的人来说，那是一段非常不好过的日子。事实上，我认为Telltale还是非常了解用户的。在做IP授权项目时，我总是告诉大家我们就像是在邀请客人来做客。你一定得竭尽全力给别人提供最好的体验。你不能跟人家说“这是《权力的游戏》，因为我们平常都是开发格斗游戏，所以我们打算把《权力的游戏》做成格斗游戏。”我们总是做很多市场调查，思考着“好的，我们要做一款《我的世界》游戏。它应该是什么样的？”原版游戏中没有任何剧情，所以我们就从这一点出发做市场调查，和Mojang密切合作设计概念。实际上，《我的世界：故事模式》是Telltale最畅销的游戏，所以我认为Telltale并没有误解它的用户。
说起来也是有意思，当我看到有玩家说“《行尸走肉》是我玩过的最棒的游戏。然后我玩了《权力的游戏》，完全不喜欢。”以及“《权力的游戏》太棒了，我真的很喜欢，我不明白那些人为什么讨厌它。我试着玩了《行尸走肉》，太压抑了。”这样的话，我觉得这就是公司在往正确方向走的一个依据，也就是玩家对Telltale的游戏有不同偏好。这跟你是不是Telltale粉丝没有关系。更大程度上是看你是不是《权游》的剧迷，如果你是，那就可能会喜欢这款游戏。《行尸走肉》也是同理。如果IP本身就无法引发粉丝共鸣，那他们估计也不会喜欢改编的游戏。

对我而言，这就意味着我们呈现的是非常品牌化的体验。我不会把《蝙蝠侠》游戏设计得跟《行尸走肉》一样，或者让你觉得《权力的游戏》和《行尸走肉》差不多。我相信我们对目标用户的了解还是十分透彻的，但不免还是有人会觉得被排除在外。如果你非常清楚Telltale的游戏特色，但你又不是《蝙蝠侠》的粉丝，那么你可能不会喜欢Telltale的《蝙蝠侠》游戏。

-我觉得Telltale非常善于探索不同的风格，就比如《无主之地：传说》就做成了一款喜剧风格的冒险游戏。

又或者是《我的世界》，它主要是面向儿童的。当时很多人的反应是“有没有搞错啊，为什么你们在做《我的世界》而不是《我们身边的狼2》？”关于这个，我想确实如果你想要的是《我们身边的狼2》，《我的世界》的确不会让你高兴。这两个游戏的用户几乎没有交集。我自己是都喜欢，但是我能理解为什么有人会对其中一款游戏很愤怒。我们有一群非常狂热的粉丝，所以伴随而来的就是热烈夸赞或者非常强硬的观点。

-能谈谈当时是什么导致你离开公司的？以及这件事所引发的诉讼？

诉讼还在进行中，所以我不能谈论太多。但毫无疑问，随着Telltale持续扩大规模、更关注热门IP，《行尸走肉》就成了一把双刃剑。你不能一直指望推出不同游戏的年度最佳版本来获得收益。要成为年度最佳游戏涉及到很多外界因素，比如你的竞争对手，行业环境。所以复制《行尸走肉》的成功对我们来说是很有压力的的。我们试图去降低公司领导层的期待值，但并没有什么明显效果。我们还是得不断寻找更重量级的IP合作项目，而像Poker Night at the Inventory、《无主之地：传说》这样的非主流产品就因此失去了机会。

Telltale的第二个热门畅销游戏是《我的世界》。之前我还跟他们说别抱太高的期望，游戏不一定会成功，然后我们又成功了。类似的话之后就没有人会听了。在Dan离开后，我独自运营这个公司，对于公司的未来规划大家有很多不同的看法。那时Telltale已经走过了12个年头，实际已经不再是由我们这几个创始人控制，经常会出现矛盾、冲突，不同的利益方（比如投资方、董事会）和我闹过很多不愉快，最终导致我们分道扬镳。

但我认为Telltale的领导方式和人才还是一流的。我们创建了一个专注于互动叙事产品、高效产出内容的组织，我们曾经是首屈一指的业内佼佼者。公司宣布倒闭的时候我真的非常难过，尽管我已经不参与Telltale的日常工作，但它仍然算是我理想中的工作场所。如果你想要探索互动叙事、动画或者其他人之前没有尝试过的东西，Telltale就是你的归处。我们已经坚持了10多年，而现在Telltale已经不复存在，一想到这我就很伤心。

-你对公司倒闭感到很意外吗？

我在倒闭前的8个小时得知了这个消息，非常惊讶。对我来说，工作室倒闭是完全无法想象的，我觉得没有任何情况能使我们接近这种坏结局。这件事发生得太突然、太戏剧化，我真的不知道还能说什么。后来我知道了导致公司倒闭的原因，但我不能透露其中的内幕。我能明确地告诉你它们跟工作室本身以及正在开发游戏没有任何关系。

Steam有些文章提到了Telltal的销量每年都在下降——与《行尸走肉》这样的年度最佳游戏相比，确实如此，但就常规产品来说，事实并非如此，而且这也不是Telltale的病根所在。我希望能畅谈更多细节，但情况不允许。

-但那时Telltale也失去了很多投资者。这是工作室倒闭的诱因之一吗？

是的，我认为投资者撤资肯定是原因之一。他们当时在寻求融资，对吧？我们之前也有做过。公司刚成立的时候，我们从风投那里获得了资金，然后就是狮门公司的投资。但融资并不是Telltale的主要任务，我们之前并没有这样到处求资，然而利润也没有出现下滑，所以我觉得事情的源头应该和新的管理策略有关，关于公司的发展方向。想要完成他们想做的事必须得到充足的资金。作为一名创始人，你不会想去依赖融资……你希望公司的产品能成为收益的主要来源。这也是我们的矛盾之一。投资者们总是想要获得更多钱，而创始人们总是想让游戏业务好好发展下去。

-你跟Telltale同事之间的关系是怎样的？

我离开的时候，Telltale已经是一个规模庞大的组织。但我还在的时候，公司的大部分时间是不到一百名员工，大家彼此之间很熟悉。我最好的朋友都在这里工作，其中很多是在我们离开LucasArts后，特地来帮我们处理Telltale成立事宜的，他们也是老员工了。

这是一个特别的地方，如果你对互动叙事感兴趣，那就来Telltale。这里吸引了很多资质优秀、富有贡献精神、彼此互相尊重的人才，而公司也因此得以蓬勃发展。Telltale就是从这一组核心成员逐渐壮大起来的，直到今天我们还经常联络。

但是我离开之时，Telltale已经不是原来的样子了，因为公司实在是太大了。有些人我甚至从来没有跟他/她私下交流过。最终我的世界变得越来越小，公司变得越来越大。因为我在最后阶段只跟经理们打交道——公司规模扩大，管理需求就会随之增多，我就逐渐远离了日常的开发工作，远离了我喜爱的东西。我觉得工作室的所有人都是非常有才能的，而且真的付出了非常多的努力去创造独特的内容，你可以从这些人找到新工作的速度看出。其它公司都想抢Telltale的人才，因为他们想通过这种方式得到Telltale的一点魔力。

-裁员和倒闭事件发生之后，有些前员工说Telltale存在加班问题。你觉得公司有强迫他们长时间加班吗？

Telltale的大部分游戏都是按章节发行，所以这也导致了我们和其它公司的工作模式有所区别。要说的话……这就像《周六夜现场》？如果你是类似这种节目（或者任何连载节目）的策划或表演者，你每周都要设计一个节目。不管你准备得怎样，幕布依然会定时升起。其它连载节目，比如电视剧《广告狂人》，你需要在固定的时长内呈现那么多内容，这真的很难。

其它工作室，有些开发团队说“我们将在今年秋季发行游戏”，然后时间到了，他们又会发声明说“游戏还没做完，大家只能等明年春季了。”这种情况屡见不鲜。在Telltale我们不能这么做，再拖延下去就会超出预算，不存在缓冲时间。我们就是做连载产品的，我们卖季票，必须按时把内容呈现给用户。

你之前说到的《无主之地：传说》，它是Telltale发行规划做得最糟糕的项目之一，我们被整得很惨。游戏内容很好，但是没能按时发行。我们一直在想要怎么利用有限的时间，你只能尽力把内容赶完。

看到有些部分效果好，有些部分不好，你就不禁想去找办法解决它，很难置它于不顾，工作室的所有人都是如此。从像我这样的管理层人员到动画师，如果你很在乎这些内容，看到一个能够让游戏变得更好的机会，即使游戏一周后就要正式发行了，你也很难放着不管，说“这已经够好了，没必要再改，我先回家了。”我们想让大家觉得在Telltale你必须有这样的意识才能生存下来，因为我们没有长达三年的开发周期。但有时你又不得不放下，虽然非常重视这款游戏，但另一边是接触《蝙蝠侠》IP（或者其它项目）的宝贵机会。两天后就要录脚本了，你只能希望它能展现出最好的效果。

按原计划工作真的很难很难实现，大家都无法放弃可以改进的机会。最简单的解决办法就是花更多时间。但是大型工作室每天要花很多钱才能维持正常运营，我们没办法花更多时间，即使这是最好的解决办法。每个人都是因为真正热爱这类游戏才如此拼命地工作。我们想要竭尽所能呈现出最好的内容，我想行业中的每个人都是如此。Telltale的不同之处就在于能坚持不懈地创造出引人入胜的内容。

一个章节做完后，你就会不禁想要尝试多加些内容，想让游戏变得更好。然后又发现另一个你觉得可以稍加打磨的场景，真的是停不下来。我们想要让大家回家休息，但是他们都很难放下手头的项目。就像是你已经穿过英吉利海峡的中点了，这时没有人会想掉头返回，你得向着终点努力。

-你觉得人们对Telltale或者你有什么常见的误解？

有一种误解是大家觉得Telltale的游戏都是由我或者单独某个人的创作的产品。其实对Telltale的很多人来说，这是属于他们的第一任务，我对此颇感骄傲。我们总是会一下子分配很多任务，不管是简单的还是困难的。开发《行尸走肉》的团队和开发《我们身边的狼》《无主之地》以及《我的世界》的都不是同一群人。事实上，大家可以选择自己想要的项目加入，帮助团队打造优秀的产品，尤其是在他们职业生涯的早期。

Telltale的环境或许很辛苦，但是在这里你能更快地实现成功，很多人在Telltale抓住了机会。这些优质的内容都出自不同的创作者之手。我认为Telltale有能力帮助人们实现成功，这让我倍感自豪。

另外一个误解是工作室阻碍了员工的个人发展。我的看法恰恰相反，Telltale是起到了推动作用，有时候或许是有点狠，但是大家的成果确实令人称赞。他们在Telltale实现了个人突破，尽管这个过程很艰难。事实是在Telltale，有很多人都做出了非常具有吸引力、获得高度评价的故事， Telltale就像是个培育基地，人们加入进来，逐渐发展成为一名优秀的设计师/导演/编剧/艺术家。他们是在十分艰难的环境中成长起来的，这就像是一场被火包围的试炼，但那里绝对有成功的机会，很多人都做到了。

我经常看到有人认为公司在阻碍人才的发展，我觉得这就像是看待装一半水的玻璃杯，有人会说这是半满的杯子，有人会说半空的杯子。或许有的人在不同的环境中会有不同的表现，但Telltale的员工真的是一群常有天赋的创作者，能够制作出非常优秀的游戏。

公司刚成立的时候，行业里没有谁会想做冒险游戏。有的人会说《蝙蝠侠》开发团队在这家公司没有前途。然而是Telltale促成了这个团队的诞生。当然，无论从哪个角度来看我们都算不上是一家完美的公司，而且差得很远。但是我们做了《蝙蝠侠》冒险游戏，不夸张地说这已经算是普通人难以达成的成就了。尽管游戏多少还有些瑕疵，但这也是我们的一段宝贵经历。

如果Telltale没有倒闭的话，我们会尝试去改进。Telltale的这些领导团队有着不同的背景和不同的经验水平，但他们都能很好地起到带头作用，创造杰出的内容，而如今他们在其他工作室继续发挥他们的优势。我自己也是如此，没有人是带着毫无成长的状态离开Telltale。我跟公司成立初期的时候完全不同了。我想其他人也是如此，这是一段艰难的经历，但千金不换。

-我知道你不能谈论公司倒闭的内幕细节，但是能谈谈你的个人看法吗？你说这件事完全出乎你的意料，你觉得关闭公司对管理层来说也是非常意外的吗？

是的，我认为他们对持续指数增长的追求实际就是为了钱。一步一个脚印对他们来说是困难的，这需要耗费时间。相反，他们希望孤注一掷，更快、更大胆地做事情。我认为这就是导致公司倒闭的原因吧。哪里可能会收获爆炸性增长，他们就把人手全都调到那里。
这样做肯定会增加风险，但我不觉得有人会故意把全公司都置于危险的境地。他们这么做只是尝试让公司换个新方向，把旧模式淘汰。我知道他们的转型目标、要借此做什么，但是我不知道他们具体要怎么实现。显然，现实没能如他们所愿。这种局面没有谁是赢家。

Telltale不复存在是个悲剧，但更令人难过的是员工的遭遇。公司倒闭的方式对我来说是不敢想象的。周五，人们跟往常一样来上班，却被告知公司无法运营下去了回家吧——我绝对不会认同以这样的方式告知员工，永远都不会这样做。我还在Telltale的时候，公司从没有过真正意义上的裁员。当我们遇到不得不辞退员工的情况，我们会以一种非常尊重的方式对待他们，并帮助他们做好交接。然而最后的裁员事件真的很不寻常，跟我们之前辛辛苦苦建立的Telltale价值观背道而驰。

-你觉得Telltale为什么会把局面弄得这么糟糕？

我不知道。在早期，公司也有生存不定的时候。我记得我们很多人都在为圣诞节假期做最坏的打算。“要是下一个合作项目拿不下来怎么办？要是出了问题怎么办？”我们经历过各种绝望的会议，但后来我们有了一些成绩，不会遇到这种情况了。

这种全速前进，然后停下来的做法对我来说是难以理解的。我肯定不会这样经营公司。我不知道他们决策的前几周发生了什么，怎么做出这个决定的，但我不理解为什么连给员工两周的缓冲时间都做不到，至少对这些人好一点。公司倒闭是一个单项选择题，没有什么传达方式能让这个骇人的消息变得不那么可怕，但是如果你能给员工们两周时间，那就应该要给。尽可能地尊重、善待他们。我不清楚最后一刻究竟发生了什么导致他们这么做，真的想不通。Telltale对我来说有非常重要的意义，这种落幕方式真的让我痛心疾首。

-你听说了Vernie Roberts代表全体前任员工向Telltale提起了集体诉讼吗？能谈谈你对这件事的看法吗？

继创始人纠纷之后，Telltale如今又遭到了全体前任员工的起诉。当我提交诉讼的时候，人们的反应都相当惊讶——他们并不了解我们的具体情况，我认为现在整件事情会清楚很多。当时我没有被解雇，也不是员工，所以我不是诉讼的其中一员。我不知道具体的细节情况，但是我知道《劳工调适与再培训通知法案》（WARN act）就是为了这种情况而存在的。加州的法律和联邦的法律有点不一样。如果我是员工之一，我肯定也会觉得自己没有受到公正的对待。现在的情况很不妙，Telltale所引发的并不是小问题，我会继续关注事情的后续发展。

-如果你现在有机会让Telltale重头来过，你会采取哪些与之前不一样的策略？

首先，我可能会放缓公司的增长速度。获得年度最佳游戏后公司有了指数增长，领导层想要延续这种魔力，我们的压力很大。所以我会更加坚定地拒绝复制《行尸走肉》成功模式。我是个技术人员，我可能会更换当时的游戏引擎，保持Telltale的游戏特色、剧情创作工具。我们有过不少关于换成Unreal引擎的内部讨论，但那会对公司的业务带来不小的负面影响。

我们不会为了技术转型好几个月甚至是一年都不发游戏，也有没足够的资金去雇佣一个专门的开发团队。Unreal是很棒的游戏引擎，我自己也是Unreal技术的忠实粉丝。我们总是说“下次再做这事吧。”如果能回到过去，我应该会想办法让公司顺利度过技术转型期。还有就是保持小规模吧。

随着公司规模不断扩大，我们所能承受的风险变得越来越低，而期待值则在不断攀升。现在看来，我会放缓节奏。我认为塑造游戏体验的关键在于剧情创作，我现在自创叙事引擎就是基于这个想法。不要白费力气去重新发明别人所拥有的更好技术或做事方法。选择一个好的游戏引擎和一个好的后端服务就行了，将精力集中在游戏的特色塑造上。

-你创造了Telltale Tool引擎对吗？

最初的几年，我是程序员，负责游戏引擎的相关工作。从各种意义上来说，Telltale Tool就是我的孩子。但是它已经过时了。Telltale Tool的亮点不在于帧数、艺术效果，但是有不少东西真的跟不上时代了。为互动叙事作者制作设计工具是我最喜欢做的事情之一，我不喜欢用着色器、渲染器、声音引擎等创作剧情。2004年公司刚起步的时候Unreal的价格真的非常贵，而Unity还没诞生。到了最后，我们有点束手无策了。我们努力优化Telltale Tool，但真的很难。

Unreal有一整座大厦的人在合力制作世界上最好的游戏引擎，我们只有一个小小的部门，也就20人左右。你不可能赢过他们的。将精力集中在创作工具以及Unreal做的不是很出色的部分，且不去跟他们争强项，这就是我现在的哲学。

其实我们之前在Telltale就明白了这一点，但关键是要怎么过渡到你想要的那个阶段？这座衔接桥要怎么造？说实话我没能想出答案。Telltale在最后阶段所做的事情之一就是转向Unity，但这会产生巨大的影响。你还得给这些来上班的人发工资，你不能停止游戏开发，更不能断了收益来源。

人们希望能有更多时间开发游戏，我也是啊。但这就意味着我们要有更多的预算，我们之前一直在为此努力。作为一个独立工作室，我们凭借自己的努力拼搏获得了成功。

-最后我们来谈一个轻松些的话题吧，能分享你在Telltale期间最美好的回忆吗？

它们来自于不同的时代。很早的时候，我们招聘了第一位画师Brian Gillies，他是从广告上看到的消息。这些年他一直在Telltale，直到倒闭事件的发生。他完全不了解我们，也不知道LucasArts这个公司，只是想找一份工作。他不惜为此跨越大半个美国，从大老远的亚利桑那州搬过来，当时我们总共只有20人左右，真的很惊讶竟然有人这么看好Telltale。Brian是位非常优秀的艺术家。对我来说，那是最令人兴奋的时刻之一，Brian是Telltale真正意义上的首批员工之一。

当然还有《行尸走肉》的成功，让我们喜极而泣。跟Robert和Skybound团队的合作是段一难忘的经历。我们觉得它一定会成为一个非常特别的冒险游戏。在我心中，《银河系漫游指南》《神秘岛》《冥界狂想曲》《行尸走肉》和《猴子岛》都是殿堂级别的游戏。作为一个热爱冒险游戏的人，能够成立这样的一个工作室，发行一个能够被视为经典的冒险游戏，对我来说真的非常不可思议。另外，我也是《冥界狂想曲》开发团队的一员——也就是说，我参与了两款具有里程碑意义的冒险游戏。但我只是《冥界狂想曲》的一个小小程序员。而Telltale，我们让它成为了经典游戏的创造者。开发《行尸走肉》时，我们承受着巨大的风险，事实证明这完全是值得的。它在游戏史册画下了浓重的一笔，成为人们心中的经典冒险游戏，这种感觉真是太棒了。

其它美好回忆是在公司初期建设的时候。Brian加入的时候我们才感觉到Telltale是一个真正的公司，《行尸走肉》成功之后我们才意识到Telltale是一个有重要市场地位的公司。

冒险游戏重新回到人们的关注范围，我们在一定在程度上也算是功臣。也许就算没有Telltale，它们也会凭借自身的发展潜力再复辉煌。当《冥界狂想曲》发行时，我跟所有的朋友说“你必须玩这个游戏，真的做得太棒了。”然而我的大部分朋友的反应都是“我不懂好在哪里，这太蠢了。”从“冒险游戏已死”到如今叙事冒险游戏成为众多人喜欢的类型之一，再想到Telltale发生的这些糟心事，这种转变真的令我倍感欣慰。

《奇异人生》《逃出生天》《底特律：成为人类》《佛洛伦斯》，这些优秀的游戏让我联想到Telltale所拥有的同样的激情，坚决不放弃这类游戏。冒险游戏是Telltale的核心，现在也是行业非常重要的领域。我们在其中扮演了推波助澜的角色，这是我在Telltale期间获得的取得的最重要成就之一。

Telltale发生过很多不好的事情，尤其是在公司的最后阶段。但我还是希望它能与Infocom、Sierra、LucasArts、Cyan、Quantic Dream并列，成为神圣殿堂中的一员。10年过去了，我希望人们能记住Telltale的成功，而那些我们做得不好的……我不想说遗忘，我们不想忘记这些教训。但无论是好是坏，它们都是Telltale的遗产。

本文由游戏邦编译，转载请注明来源，或咨询微信zhengjintiao

Telltale, the adventure-game juggernaut known for games like The Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us, shuttered late last year in a shocking and abrupt fashion. Speculation erupted through the games industry, with many wondering what circumstances led to the closure.

We recently published an in-depth investigative piece about the factors leading to Telltale’s end. Former Telltale CEO and co-founder Kevin Bruner plays a big part in that story. Because Bruner left the company in 2017, he wasn’t there during its closure, but he was present during some of Telltale’s most trying times that ultimately led it to shut down.

We chatted with Bruner earlier this year. He gives a candid and detailed look at what was going on behind the scenes at Telltale. You can read the whole interview below.

-Tell me about the early days at Telltale. What was it like starting your own company with Dan Connors and Troy Molander?

I got to LucasArts in ’97. I was a big fan. That’s kind of like the very tail-end of the golden era of LucasArts. So, just a little bit of magic left there. My first Lucas project was Grim Fandango. I went to Lucas because I loved adventure games, like Monkey Island and Full Throttle. I remember when I interviewed with them, I didn’t know what I was interviewing for. And I saw Grim Fandango, and I said, “I don’t care what I do, but I need to work on that.”

I have a programming background, so I came as a systems engineer on Grim Fandango. There was a system for creating adventure games at LucasArts called Scumm, which everything prior to Grim had been made in. There was a very vibrant discussion around, “What would its the successor be?” and Grim Fandango was the first adventure game that wasn’t made with Scumm. But it was a really interesting time because we were working with the team who had built Scumm, and Scumm had made all these great games, and we got to talk to them about it and kind of stand on their shoulders, and say, “What lessons have you learned? What was great about Scumm? What was difficult about Scumm?” Scumm could make all these different kinds of games, but they were all adventure games. They all had very similar aspects to them. There’s a lot of parallels to what we did at Telltale to Scumm.

A lot of Telltale games had a similar look and feel to them. So that was a really special time, particularly with loving adventure games for most of my life, to be able to talk and work with all these people who’ve made all that great content and then help define what the next generation might be like. It was really magical. Then we started working on Sam & Max: Freelance Police. We did some Star Wars work too, because when you work at LucasArts, you’re going to work on Star Wars sooner or later. Although I think Tim Schafer managed to never work on a Star Wars game [laughs]. Sam & Max: Freelance Police was very exciting. We did a lot of modernizing, going into 3D adventure games … and at that time that’s when Lucas decided to go all in on Star Wars, and they shut down everything that wasn’t Star Wars.

And that’s kind of what facilitated the beginning of Telltale. We had all this ambition about what next-generation adventure games could look like and then we lost the context of how we could pursue that, and just decided to start on our own. So we started Telltale with a lot of different ideas of where adventure games could go and all that, but I named the company Telltale because we wanted to tell tales. It was the storytelling, scripts, and the characterization that I loved about all the LucasArts stuff. Not so much the puzzles and the getting stuck part of it – that was more frustrating for me, so we definitely set out to pursue the kind of storytelling and the role-playing aspects more than the puzzle side of it. Both aspects of the genre are really interesting, but we just like the storytelling part.

-Were you ever worried about the whole sentiment of “adventure games are dead,” especially around that time?

Oh yeah. “Grim killed adventure games.” It’s funny because Troy and I worked together on Grim, and then Dan and I worked together on Sam & Max Freelance Police. I think the “adventure games are dead” aspect of it – it was really important at LucasArts, at the time, LucasArts was run by a guy named Simon Jeffery, and he was like, “We want to be back in the adventure-game business but we have to do it in a realistic way. We can’t spend huge amounts of money on adventure games.”

With Freelance Police, we were able to have the opportunity to make a game, but we couldn’t get out of control. We had to stay on time, we had to stay on budget, and be disciplined about the game we were making otherwise we would lose the opportunity. I think a lot of that affected our production strategy, our technology strategy, development strategy, so that we wouldn’t lose the chance to make the games that we loved to make. And that very much got instilled at Telltale as well. When you’re a brand-new startup, you have very limited resources. Understanding what you can do and what the most interesting things you can build with a very limited set of resources are, was what got the company off the ground.

Particularly later, when we were working on licensed properties and things like that, there was a similar kind of value there. When we were working on Wallace & Gromit, there’s an appropriate amount of money you can spend on a Wallace & Gromit production. You could easily go out of control, but there’s a very limited market opportunity, or a very specific market opportunity for that game. So the skillset of really understanding, “Okay, how much can you do with a little?” was really how Telltale leveled up over the years. People would say, “How did you make a game on a property like Bone and Homestar Runner and the Wallace & Gromit license?” Each one of those was a little bit of a bigger opportunity than the last, but they all were really small to start with.

So you had to figure out how to make an interesting game with the opportunity that was in front of you. And that was always something Telltale did really well. For the most part it was, “Make the best game we could make under the constraints that we had to deal with.” Frustrating. It’s super frustrating. It’s frustrating on one hand to do that, but on the other hand, we were making games that nobody else would make. Like we would have loved to make a bigger, fancier game, but that would require more money and more time that we didn’t have.

Certainly, early on at Telltale we tried to get regular publishers involved, but traditional publishers weren’t interested in the kind of content that we wanted to make. So we had to do it ourselves and make the most of what we had. Everyone was really thrilled that the content kind of blew up and became kind of this new genre. But for the bulk of the time at the company, we were super scrappy. There was really just no other way to make the kind of games that we wanted to make. You had to self-publish them, which means you had to make do with how well you could publish them. So that’s what we did.

-What do you think was Telltale’s biggest strength?

I don’t think everyone might agree with what I think the strengths are, but I see a lineage from adventure games in general and text adventures that I loved growing up: Sierra and LucasArts, Myst and Cyan’s era of games, Quantic Dream, to Telltale. One of the things that I loved about Scumm games and text-adventure games and Cyan games was they always had a certain look and feel to them. When you say, “Oh look, there’s a new game coming out from Cyan,” you know what it’s going to look like. I know what it’s going to play like. Each of those companies had a strong identity and brand of what it felt like to play those games, and I think at Telltale, we really did a good job of that.

Like I said, some people might think it’s a strength and some people might not, but I definitely thought it was a strength. It was a very unique experience and that experience kind of crossed [over through all our games], whether it was Game of Thrones or The Walking Dead, or any of the other things we worked on – I liked the similarity between them.

-Telltale definitely had a signature to its games, with its aesthetic and branching narrative.

I thought that was definitely a value it had. The amount of signature was controversial. Too much or too little. I don’t know if there’s an easy answer to that question, but I think it’s super cool that there is a signature. Like all the great studios have a signature, whether it’s adventure games or not. I think a signature is a sign of a great studio.

-Was trying to find that signature touch what led Telltale to explore QTEs and choice/consequence in its games?

It was kind of two-fold. Being a small, scrappy studio, we didn’t think it was smart to compete with people who were bringing a lot more expertise and resources. We didn’t want to put a traditional action sequence in a lot of our games because then we would be competing with very large studios that were very, very good at making very high quality action sequences. We didn’t want to compete against Naughty Dog.

So on one hand, we were like, we just need to keep some distance from that, otherwise we’ll get clobbered, and then I think the more interesting aspect was “OK, if we’re not going to do that, then what are we going to do to entertain people?” How do you do cinematic action sequences in a way that hasn’t been fleshed out? I don’t mean to imply that we invented quick-time events at all, but we explored them in a lot more different ways than had been done before. And certainly the role-playing with the choice and the character relationships was something we leaned into very heavily. We explored how to do that and how to entertain people much more deeply than other studios did.

Again, it was that self-discipline of “Let’s just be who we are.” There were times when we were like, “We need to put in first-person mode or fighting mechanics or shooting mechanics or driving mechanics” and every time my gut reaction to that was, “Man, there are people that do those games really, really well and that’s really hard to do well.” You develop an expertise and you build a whole studio to do that stuff. We’re not going to throw together something in three or four weeks that comes anywhere near that. So, why don’t we claim our own ground that can truly be ours? I think over the years holding that line is what gave Telltale that unique gameplay experience.

But it didn’t always work out great. When we’re basically trying to not be like the other folks and be our own thing, there’s definitely swings in the middle – when you’re writing experiments like that, definitely not everything works.

-Were there ever talks of overhauling Telltale’s uniform gameplay structure completely for something new?

There were definitely talks about overhauling or evolving the format going forward, and which direction we wanted to evolve. There were definitely people who had ideas which were like, “Let’s put in more traditional game mechanics” which again, it’s hard to build a studio that does really great writing, really great role-playing, and really great action, particularly when you’re doing it on the budgets that we needed to do it on. So I always encouraged people to, you know – I would try to phrase it as, “Let’s explore the unexplored. Let’s find new ways to do things. Let’s throw our energy into it instead of doing what everybody else already does. Let’s do something people haven’t really seen before.” I think that’s where the role-playing, the very dialogue-driven type stuff [came from].

We’ve always been a very dialogue-heavy company, but I remember when we were talking about The Walking Dead, we had all kinds of prototypes of what different The Walking Dead experiences could be. But we were like, “Okay, we’re going to go all in on just talking and choices.” After we looked at all the prototypes, that was the lane we decided was the best lane for us to be in. And it was super scary at the time for us to say, “There’s going to be talking and choices and we hope it’ll work.” But I think being really focused on doing that one thing well is what got us across the hump as opposed to trying to be too many things at the same time.

But it’s hard. You feel lost. You play all these other games and think, “Well, we should just be doing what they’re doing in that game.” But that’s like comfort food because you can fire up your editor and your art package and you can start building something that’s like that thing you want to emulate, but I definitely think it’s harder and more interesting to do the thing [where] you don’t know what you’re doing as much. You’re finding your way.

-In your opinion, do you think Telltale was too risk-averse?

Well, we were much more experimental early on. Like, pre-The Walking Dead, where we had things like Poker Night at the Inventory, Homestar Runner, that game had no text in it – all the choices were icon-based choices and it had a lot more puzzles in them. It was a lot more of a traditional point-and-click game. We had a lot more diversity early on.

I think one of the other big influences at Telltale, was, Telltale had investors. Originally we had venture-capital investors, and then Lionsgate, a big public company, invested in it. Then we had this big hit with The Walking Dead. And then everybody wanted more of that because it had a lot of notoriety and it sold a lot. When we would go out to license holders to get bigger and better licenses, it made sense to be more conservative there. You weren’t going to talk to [HBO] and say, “We’re going to run a big new experiment on Game of Thrones.” [Instead, we would say,] “We’re going to do what we did with The Walking Dead for you as well.”

So there was a lot of pressure from the leadership of the company to pursue bigger and more interesting opportunities and to de-risk those opportunities so the company could continue to grow and become more valuable. Is de-risking the way to become more valuable? It’s certainly subjective. I have had many arguments about what the best path for Telltale forward would or wouldn’t be. But those are the dynamics that were in play. We wanted bigger and more interesting licenses so we had bigger and more interesting market opportunities. And we wanted to make sure that we didn’t – really the most important thing was that we didn’t go backwards. We didn’t want The Walking Dead to be a fluke; or to be a one-hit wonder. That’s why The Wolf Among Us was one of the most important games we ever did, because we were terrified that if it wasn’t good, that would be perceived as a one-hit wonder.

-Can you speak about any licensing deals that didn’t pan out?

There are lots [of licenses that didn’t work out]. I don’t think there’s any that I should be talking about. Like I always wanted to make a great Star Wars adventure game. There certainly was never a Telltale-style Star Wars game, but when you have the opportunity to talk to people about like, “Hey, it would be great to make an adventure game out of your book, movie or TV show.” On the heels of The Walking Dead … you only get those opportunities so often. They’re rare. We can make an adventure game out of Game of Thrones, we can make an adventure game out of Batman. We had conversations with everybody and thought, “This is the one time in our lives that they would ever entertain talking to us.” And they didn’t all pan out, but again, it was rare [to have these opportunities].

Particularly coming from a guy who loved adventure games but adventure games were dying, to be able to have a shot – to have people talk about making an adventure game out of things that they might more traditionally make a fighting game out of or an action/adventure out of or something like that. So we talked to everybody at that point. Certainly like things like GoT and Batman came out of those conversations. There were a lot of things like Star Wars, we would have loved to do Star Wars. We had conversations about Star Wars, but it just wasn’t in the cards. And that’s totally fair. I hope we would have done a great Star Wars game, but we’ll never know.

-Were there ever any further plans of collaborating with Netflix?

Yes. Yeah. Well, Minecraft: Story Mode was super interesting, and one of the things that we always championed was keeping the interface simple so that it could played on a TV remote. I think Netflix is an amazing platform. Interactive TV is a thing I’m very interested in going forward. It was a lot of work to get the technology right so that it would run on the platform, and then it was the management team after myself that got it across the finish line.

We were doing all the legwork beforehand, but there’s also a lot of complexities. Minecraft is one of the biggest IPs in the world. It’s Mojang, and Microsoft, and Netflix – it’s a very complicated space. So it took a lot of time for all of that to come together. But I think it really shows how interesting the platform is for interactive TV, and that there’s interesting things coming in the future for interactive TV as well. Like I think the content, when you play Story Mode on Netflix, it plays really well. It’s a really nice – it’s not really a port – but a nice adaptation to the platform. And it’s really good. I love everything about it. I’d love to see more content like that on Netflix. Bandersnatch got a lot of interest and got a lot of hype.

-One ex-Telltale employee told me that they believe Telltale had a fundamental misunderstanding of its audience. Did you ever feel that there was a disconnect there too?

I think there’s some noise out there around [the closure]. It was a frustrating time for everybody that was involved. I actually think understanding its audience was something that Telltale did really well. When you’re in the licensing business, I always try to tell people that we’re like invited guests into people’s worlds. You really have to deliver the best kind of experience that you can. You can’t come in and say like, “Well it’s Game of Thrones and we make fighting games so we’re just going to do fighting with Game of Thrones.” We always did a lot of market research to say like, “Okay, great, we’re going to do a Minecraft game. What should it be?” There isn’t a narrative and there isn’t a story mode in [the original] Minecraft. We did market research on it, we worked very closely with Mojang on developing the concept, so yeah. Minecraft was in fact the bestselling game that Telltale ever did, so I don’t think that Telltale was out of touch with its audience.

I think one of the interesting things that I look at that makes me think we were okay, is the number of people that love Telltale Game A and hated Telltale Game B. When they were so mechanically similar, it’s like, “I played The Walking Dead and it was the best game ever. And then I played Game of Thrones and I hated it.” I can find people who say, “Game of Thrones was awesome, I really really dug it, I don’t understand why all these people hate it. I tried The Walking Dead and it was depressing.” Because it’s not about whether you’re a Telltale [fan] or not. [It's more] about whether you’re a Game of Thrones fan then you like the Game of Thrones game. If you’re a Walking Dead fan, then you’ll like that game. [And so on.] If it wasn’t an IP that resonated with [a fan], then they didn’t enjoy the game.

To me, that means we were delivering very on-brand experiences. We weren’t trying to make Batman feel like the The Walking Dead, or Game of Thrones like The Walking Dead. In that regard, I think we knew the audience we were trying to address really well, but that definitely left people on the outside looking in. If you knew everything about what made a Telltale game tick, but you weren’t a Batman fan, then you’re probably not going to like Telltale’s Batman game.

-Yeah, and I think Telltale was very good at exploring different tones, like Tales from the Borderlands being a comedy adventure game.

Yeah. Or even like Minecraft. Minecraft was targeted for children. So many people were like, “What the hell, why are you doing Minecraft instead of Wolf Among Us 2?” And I think it’s, at its heart, that like yeah, if you wanted Wolf Among Us 2 then you don’t want Minecraft. There’s very few people who want both of those. I like both of them, personally, but it makes sense why you would rage against one and not the other. We developed a rabid fanbase. And when you have a rabid fanbase, one of the things that comes along with it is strong or positive [opinions].

-Can you talk to me about the circumstances that led to your departure from the company and the lawsuit that is surrounding that?

Well, the lawsuit is still pending, so I can’t really talk about that. But definitely as Telltale got bigger and more focused on mega-hit type things, basically, The Walking Dead was a double-edged sword. You can’t duplicate Game of the Year over and over again. We made a really great game, but there’s a lot of external factors that influence what is going to be Game of the Year in any particular year, like what other games are out there, and the environment that the game is going into. So there was a lot of pressure to duplicate The Walking Dead. Success-wise again, from a business requirements point of view. We tried to temper those expectations as best we could, but it was still like, “This is what we need the company to do.” We needed to go out and find bigger games, just get bigger and bigger and bigger and that kind of squeezed out opportunities for Poker Night at the Inventory and Borderlands and weird stuff like that.

The second kicker was Minecraft, where we [were extremely successful] again. It’s almost like you lose credibility when saying, “Look, we shouldn’t expect to do this again.” And then it happens again. After Dan left, and I was running the company by myself. There were very different perspectives on what the purpose of the company was, what the goals were, and what the right next moves for the company were. The company was 12 years old at that point. It was led by the founders, but it wasn’t controlled by the founders anymore and there was a lot of confrontation, and not fun times between myself and the other interested parties, [i.e., the investors and the board of directors] at Telltale, which ultimately led to us to go our separate ways.

[As for the] leadership at Telltale and the talent at Telltale, I still think it was unmatched. We made an organization dedicated to the craft of interactive storytelling and producing content efficiently. It was second to none. The fact that the studio doesn’t exist anymore just kills me. Even I wasn’t directly involved day-to-day, it was the kind of place [where] I wanted to work. And if you wanted to explore interactive storytelling or cinematics or all these kinds of things that nobody else was doing, there was a place in the world where you could come and do that. We did it for more than a decade. I really lament that a place like that doesn’t exist right now.

-Were you surprised about the closure?

I learned about the closure about eight hours before it actually happened. I was completely taken by surprise at the closure. It was unthinkable to me that the studio would shut down, and I certainly knew that there [weren’t any] circumstances that get us anywhere near that. It was very dramatic, very sudden, and I can’t really speak more [about it]. I’ve since learned about the circumstances that caused the shutdown, and I can’t really speak to them. But they had nothing to do with the studio, with the products that were being built.

You read Steam articles or articles about people saying, “Telltale’s sales were diminishing every year.” Compared against a Game of the Year like The Walking Dead, that’s true, but normalized out that’s not the case and certainly that wasn’t what impacted Telltale at all. It had nothing to do with the studio and the products that the studio was building at the time. I wish I could elaborate more.

-But those investments fell through right around that time too. Was that a factor that led to the closure?

Yeah. I definitely think [the investments falling through] was one of the factors. They were out raising money, right? Which we had done before in the history of the company. When we started the company we raised money with venture capital, and then Lionsgate invested. It wasn’t a big part of what Telltale did, like we weren’t out raising money all the time and the business ran off of its profits, so I think that had to do with some of the ambitions with the new management strategy, the direction they were going towards. To do the things they aspired to do required fundraising. As a founder you’re generally not really… fundraising is… you would rather that the business would run off of its products. That was also a point of conflict. Investors always want to raise more money, and founders always want to build a business.

-How would you describe your relationships with coworkers and everyone you worked with at Telltale?

Telltale was a very big organization by the time I left. But for the bulk of my time there, it was less than 100 people and I knew everyone really well and they knew me. All of my best friends worked there, many of them came to help start Telltale with us when we left [LucasArts] and they were there for a very long time.

It was a special place where if you were interested in interactive storytelling, you could come there, and that attracted a lot of people who had an enormous amount of respect for its talent and the ways they could contribute. They could come and really thrive there which was awesome. We started with this core group of people who had been together for a long time and we still know each other today, and we started to attract people who shared our passions and it got bigger and that was super awesome.

It got weird by the time I left, because the company was so big. There were people who worked there who I never spoke to personally. My world ended up getting smaller as the company got bigger, because I ended up just dealing with the managers and it was one of the things that – if the company is going to get bigger, you need more management, but then you get further away from the actual work, which is what I loved. I think everybody at Telltale was super talented and worked really, really hard to make really special content. And I think that’s reflected in how quickly people were able to find new jobs afterwards. Studios wanted to gobble up Telltale people because they wanted some of that Telltale magic.

-Since the layoffs and the closure, some former employees have brought up dealing with crunch. Did you feel that there was a lot of crunch that was mandated at Telltale?

Telltale was a really different studio because of its episodic nature. I always – it’s like Saturday Night Live, right? If you’re a writer or performer on a show like that, or any serialized show, you have to write a show a week. The show curtain goes up regardless of how ready you are. On other serialized shows, like if you were working on Mad Men or something like that, you have a fixed amount of time to deliver so much content. That’s really hard to do.

For other studios, it happens all the time in games where, “Our release date is this fall” and then the studio will announce that fall, “Oh you know what, the game wasn’t ready, we pushed it out until next spring.” And that really wasn’t something that Telltale could do. We didn’t have the budgets to delay production that long; we didn’t have the cushion. We were serialized – we sold season passes to people – so we needed to get them their content.

You mentioned Tales from the Borderlands, which had one of the worst release schedules we ever did. We got beat up pretty hard. It was great content, but it didn’t come out on time. It always was like, “What can we do with the time we have?” And then it wasn’t a lot of time, so then you’re trying to pack in as much as you can.

But when you look at the game, and something is working well or isn’t working well, and you think you have a path to fix it in that time, it’s really hard to say no to that. That was rampant across [the studio]. For me, at an executive level, all the way down to the animator – if you see an opportunity to make the game better, and you know it’s going to ship in a week and you care about the content, it’s really hard to walk away from the content and just say, “You know what? This is as good as it’s gonna get. I’m going home.” We tried to create an environment where you really had to do that to survive at Telltale, because we didn’t have these three-year long production cycles. You would have to say, “You know, I need to go home and not work on the game that I care so deeply about and that I want to be the best game ever, because this is the chance I get to work on Batman or this is the chance I get to work on that or the other thing. I know they’re going to record my script in two days and I want it to be as good as it can be.”

Managing that was really, really hard because everyone cared really deeply. The simple answer is: “Just take more time.” A big studio costs a lot of money every day in order to open the doors. We didn’t have the option of taking more time even though that would have been the perfect thing to give to everybody. Everyone worked really hard because they were really passionate. We wanted to make the best content possible, which I think is what everybody does in the industry. I think the difference with Telltale was how relentless and ceaseless the content was.

As soon as you finished passionately working on an episode and you’re just like “I’m just going to put in a couple extra things to make sure it’s as good as possible,” you turn around and there’s another scene that you’re like, “I want that to be good too.” It really was ceaseless. We needed people to go home, and we encouraged people to go home, but it’s hard when you care. And then you’ve swung halfway across the English channel, so you can’t turn around and go home at that point. You’ve got to finish. It gets really, really hard when you’re trying to do a little bit extra. It can spin out of control really quickly.

-What do you think is a common misconception about Telltale or about yourself?

I think one of the misconceptions is that Telltale was auteur-led, and what I mean is that [the games are envisioned by] myself or by particular individuals. One of the things that I take the most pride in is that for many people at Telltale, it was their first job. And we would give people a lot of responsibility really quickly for better and/or worse. But then team that made The Walking Dead was a different team than the team that made The Wolf Among Us, Borderlands, or Minecraft. The fact that people could come in and really do stellar work, particularly early in their career – I take a lot of pride in that.

It may have not been an easy environment, but it was an environment where you could succeed really quickly. A lot of people launched their careers, in the most positive sense, they cut the line from exploiting their opportunities at Telltale. And I say that in the most positive way. We kept coming out with great content, and they came from different people. I think the studio as a whole was able to get people to that place, and that I take a lot of pride in.

One of the misconceptions is that the studio was holding people back. And I think the studio was actually pushing people forward, maybe too hard, but those people really did make great content. They had what they needed to break through. But it was hard. I’m not saying it was easy, but the fact that so many people made really compelling, really great, highly regarded content to me makes it seem like Telltale was a nurturing place. It’s a place where people could come in and become great designers, great directors, great writers, and great artists. And they did it under duress. It was trial by fire, but there were definitely opportunities to succeed there and many, many people did. I take a lot of pride in that but it cuts both ways. Succeeding there was hard.

But I think the notion that the company was holding talented people back is something that I see a lot and it really does – it makes me – I think it’s like the glass half-full or the glass half-empty. These are people who did really, really well under the circumstances that they were given, and maybe under different circumstances could have done differently or done better, but they were genuinely talented and they were able to make their talents work and bring great, great games out of a studio that empowered that. That’s one of the things that I take a lot of pride in.

Nobody wanted to make adventure games when we started. Some would say that the studio is “holding the Batman team back.” Yeah, but we got the Batman team to exist in the first place. But we’re not perfect by any means. We’re far from perfect. But we get to make Batman adventure games which is a hell of an accomplishment in the first place in my humble opinion. And the fact that we do it in a flawed way is just part of the process.

If [Telltale] were still alive, we would still be trying to fix that. I take a lot of pride that so many different leadership teams, with different backgrounds and different levels of experience, were able to come and really lead teams and do great things and that they’re continuing to go and do great things at other studios. For myself as well, nobody walks away from Telltale without having grown in many ways. I would say I’m a totally different person than when I started Telltale. I think that’s everyone’s experience, and it’s a hard experience, but I wouldn’t trade it.

-I know you said you can’t talk about specifics about what led to the closure, but can you offer some insight? You said you were surprised and didn’t see this coming. Did you get the sense that having to close the studio was a surprise for Telltale’s executives too?

Yeah, I think in the pursuit of growth and that continued exponential growth that people wanted, I think people just go for the brass ring. I think doing it incrementally one step at a time is hard and it takes time and [they instead] want to go for broke and do things more quickly and aggressively. I think that’s kind of the circumstances that led to [the closure]. “Where are we going to get the next big giant growth spurt from? We have to be all in on that.”

That can obviously introduce some risk – I don’t think anybody intended to put the entire company at risk. Nobody expected to do that. They were trying to move the company in a new direction and left an old direction behind. I knew where they were trying to take the company and what they were trying to do with it, but I didn’t know the specifics or details of how they wanted to get that done. But obviously, the plan that they were trying to execute did not pan out the way that they planned it, or the way that they intended it to. There’s no winners in that situation.

It’s sad that the studio doesn’t exist and it’s super sad that the employees got … I will say that the way the studio was shut down was horrifying to me. People just showing up on a Friday and being told to go home because the company doesn’t exist anymore is not something I would have ever endorsed, and is absolutely not something I would have done. When I ran the company, we really didn’t have any layoffs, and whenever we needed to let people go, we treated them with a lot of respect and helped them transition. Those [final mass layoffs] were very uncharacteristic. It didn’t reflect the Telltale values that we had taken the previous decade establishing.

-Why do you think it was handled so poorly?

That? I don’t know. In the early part of Telltale, there were definitely times where we were like “We don’t know if we’re going to survive.” I remember we would many a Christmas break be planning for the worst. Like, “What would we do if this next deal doesn’t come through or if something doesn’t work out?” Those were miserable meetings, but then we got a little bit more success under our belt and it was no longer the case that we needed to do that.

But the notion that you would go full-speed and then stop was just unfathomable to me. It’s certainly not how I run a business. I don’t know the details of the weeks that led up to that decision and how that decision was made, but I don’t know how you don’t at least give people two weeks. And be a little kinder. Like, it sucks. If you have to shut the business down, you gotta shut the business down. And it sucks. There is no way that there’s a right way to do that or a way that isn’t just absolutely horrible, but if you can give people two weeks, you should give people two weeks. At that point it’s over, right? So you should be as respectful and as kind as you possibly can. I don’t understand exactly what happened in the final moments there to know why they executed the shutdown the way they did. It kills me, though. It really kills me. Telltale was such a big part of who I am. That definitely killed me.

-Have you heard about the class lawsuit from ex-Telltale employee Vernie Roberts? Can you comment on that?

You have one of the founders suing the company and now you have all the ex-employees suing the company. When I filed my suit, people were like “What the hell” – they didn’t understand the dynamics of what we were dealing with. I think now it paints a much clearer picture of what kind of circumstances we are all dealing with now. I wasn’t let go and I wasn’t an employee when that went down, so I’m certainly not a member of that lawsuit. And I don’t know the details of what’s going on there other than … the WARN act is there for circumstances like this. California law and federal law are a little bit different. If I were an employee there, I would feel wronged, definitely. We’ll see what becomes of that. It’s tough now because there’s not much of a Telltale left to right the wrongs.

-If you could do it all over again with Telltale, knowing what you do now, what would you do differently?

There’s a couple of things that I would do differently. I might grow a little slower. It’s tough after a GOTY, where you have this exponential growth, the need to continue that magic. So I would push back harder on saying that we can repeat The Walking Dead experience again. I’m a technologist, but one of the things I would do is get on to a different game engine; keeping the special stuff that Telltale made, the writing tools, and some of the things that were very unique to Telltale, but internally we talked a lot about transitioning to Unreal and it was very disruptive to the business.

We couldn’t shut the business down and not ship a game for months and months or a year to transition the technology. And we couldn’t afford to hire a separate team to develop it. Unreal is this awesome thing and I’m a big fan of the Unreal technology as well. We kept saying, “Maybe we can do it next time.” I probably would have tried to figure out a way that we could have survived a technology transition like that. And tried to stay smaller, I think. The big studio is a beast that needs to be fed.

As the studio kept getting bigger and bigger, it reduced the amount of risk we could tolerate and the expectations kept getting higher and higher for what we could achieve. In hindsight, I would slow all of that down. In foresight, I do think that what I’m doing now with the narrative engine that I’m creating, is like just focus on the super important stuff to make the experience which to me is the writing. And don’t reinvent technologies or processes that other people do better. So use a good game engine, use a good back-end service. Basically anything that isn’t part of what makes you really really unique and special, try to get the best-in-class version of that from someone else. And just really focus on what makes you super unique and special.

-You created the Telltale Tool, correct?

I was the only programmer working on the game engine for the first couple years. In many senses, it was my baby. But it was old. The cool things about it had nothing to do with framerate and rendering and the things that by the end really really needed to be changed and upgraded. The design tools were what were what I took most pride in. Making design tools for interactive writers was one of the things that I truly truly loved. I did not like writing in shaders and in renderers and sound engines and all those things. But when we started in 2004, Unreal was super expensive and Unity didn’t exist, so you kind of had to do that. And certainly towards the end we were kind of stuck with it. We tried to upgrade it, we tried to keep it competitive, but it was really hard.

Unreal has a giant building filled with hundreds of people making the world’s best game engine, and we had an engineering department of 20 people trying to compete with that. You’re never going to win that. I think focusing on the writing tools and the things that Unreal doesn’t do fantastically and letting Unreal do its thing would be – it’s certainly my philosophy now.

Learning that lesson earlier at Telltale and then – I think we did learn that lesson at Telltale earlier, but how do you get from the circumstances that we created for ourselves to the circumstances we wanted to be in? How do you bridge that? That was the really challenging part, and honestly I didn’t come up with a solution for that. It’s one of the things that they were doing at the end, switching to Unity, but that’s a huge impact to change game engines. And you still have to pay everybody to show up every day. You really can’t stop making games or stop making money.

People were like “I wish we just had more time to make games.” And I was like, “I do, too.” But that means I wish we had bigger budgets for the games, and we were making the budgets as big as we could. The struggle of being an indie games studio … We struggled and succeeded with the hand we were dealt.

-To end on a bit of a lighter note, can you tell me your favorite memories from working at Telltale?

There’s a couple of them from a couple of different eras. Very early on, we hired our first artist who was there when Telltale shut down, a guy named Brian Gillies – he answered an ad for the company. He was the first person who took a job at Telltale not knowing anything about who we were or who LucasArts was. He was just a guy who wanted a job. He moved from Arizona to here for the job and I was terrified. This guy is expecting a real job at a real company and he’s moving across the country to be here and we were probably like 20 people at the time. It was terrifying for somebody to trust in us. And then Brian was there for the whole run. He’s a great artist as well. But that was one of the most exhilarating times for me was when Brian showed up, and he was like one of our first real employees.

[Another favorite memory was] the success of The Walking Dead obviously, making people cry, making ourselves cry, working with Robert and the guys at Skybound. We felt that we made an adventure game that was going to go down as one of the really special adventure games. In my book, it’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Myst, Grim Fandango, The Walking [Dead], and Monkey Island. Those games will all be grouped together. We actually – me – I actually figured out of a way to bring one of those into the world. And as a guy who loves adventure games, making one of the classic adventure games or making a company that made one of the classic adventure games, felt miraculous to me. And the fact that I worked on Grim too – I worked on two of these seminal milestone adventure games. But certainly on Grim, I was a grunt on Grim. I was just a programmer. But at Telltale, we made a company that made one of these. When I realized that The Walking Dead was an important game, that was just amazing. We went way out on a limb when we made that and the fact that it worked and became an important game was super special.

[Other memories are] company-building moments. Brian showing up was the first time we felt like we were a real company, and then The Walking Dead was the first time we felt like an important company. And then we got to make great adventure games.

Adventure games are a thing again, and we played some role in that. Maybe they would have become a thing again on their own without Telltale, but certainly when Grim Fandango came out I had to tell all my friends, “You have to play this game because it’s absolutely amazing,” most of my friends were like “I don’t get it, it’s obtuse.” To go from that to where so many people were playing adventure games and really getting into them – going from “adventure games are dead” to now a narrative adventure is a genre that people are interested in and lots of people play, that’s – with all of the bad things that happened at Telltale, that’s one of the things that is so amazing.

And then Life Is Strange, A Way Out, Detroit: Become Human, Florence, all these games, these beautiful games that I feel [mirrored] our passions at Telltale, by sheer force of will, we were like “No, this type of content matters.” It mattered at Telltale, and now it matters to the industry at large, and the fact that we played some sort of role in that is one of the ultimate positives that I can take away from my Telltale experience.

There’s a lot of bad things that have happened particularly at the end of Telltale, but I hope it will be remembered in the pantheon of Infocom, Sierra, LucasArts, Cyan, Quantic Dream. 10 years from now, I hope that the things that Telltale did the best are what it’s remembered for, and the things that we certainly did not do the best at are – I don’t want to say forgotten about because we don’t want to forget about them – but that those are not its sole legacy.

（source:game informer ）