游戏邦在:
杂志专栏:
gamerboom.com订阅到鲜果订阅到抓虾google reader订阅到有道订阅到QQ邮箱订阅到帮看

长文:以Telltale工作室为例聊不当管理所导致的人才流失

发布时间:2018-05-25 09:27:42 Tags:,

长文:以Telltale工作室为例聊不当管理所导致的人才流失

原文作者:  Megan Farokhmanesh  译者:Megan Shieh

2012年,《星际迷航》女演员Zoe Saldana在一个灯光昏暗的舞台上宣布《行尸走肉》荣获“Spike视频游戏评选年度大奖”。这场胜利对于Telltale Games这个规模较小的开发商而言是一次巨大的成功,它用这款以情绪化、故事叙述为核心的僵尸系列游戏击败了许多大型热门游戏,比如《Dishonored(耻辱)》和《Mass Effect 3 (质量效应3)》。

包括联合创始人Kevin Bruner、Dan Connors以及《行尸走肉》作者Robert Kirkman在内的三位Telltale成员一起登上了领奖台。Kirkman从女演员手中接过了这座巨大的奖杯,并将它交到了两位联合创始人手中。然后工作室创始人之一Bruner示意了台上的另外两个人(Sean Vanaman和Jake Rodkin,他们分别是《行尸走肉》第一季的项目主管和联合创造者),感谢他们创造出了游戏中的几个英雄。在台上,没有人感谢这俩人创造出了该工作室有史以来最大、最成功的项目。接着,Vanaman突然毫无预警地从Bruner手中抽走了奖杯,并说道:“我们工作室的成员都是地球上最棒的!”

the walking dead(from gamerin.com)

the walking dead(from gamerin.com)

当时Telltale是一个不足100人的工作室,按照主流工作室的标准来说,它们的规模算是小的。相比叙事游戏,人们往往更喜欢“好玩”的游戏,而这次获奖则使Telltale这家将叙事和游戏角色放在首位的工作室成为了一家成功的开发商。在接下来的几个月里,《行尸走肉》的奖项不断增加;对于一个一年前刚刚经历过财政困难的工作室而言,这是一个关键的决定性时刻。

接着,该公司开始已惊人的速度招聘员工,公司规模在短短几年内增加了两倍。没过多久,它们吸引到了一些好莱坞超级热门IP的注意,接着推出了《蝙蝠侠:The Telltale Series》、《权力的游戏》、《银河护卫队:The Telltale Series》等衍生游戏,这些游戏往往更注重叙事和情感投资,而不是动作或夸张的场景。

但在2017年11月,该公司宣布将一次性解雇90名开发者,约占其员工总数的四分之一。对于Telltale的某些员工而言,这是一个令人震惊的消息;但对另外一些人来说却是意料之中,消息人士称,Telltale多年来的文化助长了持续性的过度工作、不当管理和创意停滞。

为了写这篇文章,我们采访了十多位目前或曾经在Telltale就业的开发人员,其中许多人要求匿名,因为他们担心会受到现任或前任雇主的报复。尽管有些问题是Telltale管理层独有的,但不可持续和不稳定的开发实践在很大程度上困扰着整个电子游戏产业。

裁员是生活中普遍存在的事实,即使是成功的工作室也常常会集体雇用一大批开发者来赶截止日期,然后在游戏发布或取消后再将他们解雇以削减成本。随着下一个截止日期的到来,这种周期又会再一次发生。过度工作、工作不稳定和严重的职业倦怠等问题无所不在。超过四分之三的开发人员表示自己大多在“紧张”的条件下工作,比如每天工作20个小时、每周工作超过100个小时。这种情况可能会在很大程度上磨灭员工的活力和工作激情。虽说Telltale的兴起、衰落和潜在改革只是一家工作室的故事,但在整个电子游戏产业中还有许多相似的例子。

冒险游戏曾经是PC游戏的同义词,而Telltale则是从冒险游戏的灰烬中诞生的。在《King’s Quest(国王密使)》、《The Secret of Monkey Island(猴岛的秘密)》和《Myst(神秘岛)》等游戏中,创造力、想象力和解谜技巧是最重要的。在20世纪80年代末和90年代初,冒险游戏开发商Sierra和LucasArts是该领域的佼佼者;但到了90年代末,他们的受欢迎程度出现下降,因为玩家的喜好转向了射击类或3D游戏。

Telltale Games的创始人Bruner Connors和Troy Molander都曾是LucasArts工作室的员工,他们在2014年创建了Telltale并重做了曾经大受欢迎的LucasArts游戏,比如《Sam & Max (山姆和麦克斯)》和《 Monkey Island(猴岛)》,然而当时人们普遍认为“冒险游戏时代已经不复存在了”。为了让这种游戏再次成为主流(而且有利可图),该工作室的几位联合创始人决定改善互动故事的叙述,并深化随之而来的角色扮演。

2007年,Telltale筹集了600多万美元的风险资本融资,而这些投资自然也带有附带条件——即向工作室以外的董事会证明该工作室可以实现增长并取得成功。就像在电影业一样,打造原创IP代价高昂,而授权IP则会保险一些。因此Telltale没有把资源投入到原创作品中,而是将目光转向了《回到未来》、《侏罗纪公园》、《行尸走肉》等现有品牌和它们的粉丝群。

*《侏罗纪公园》表现不佳,《行尸走肉》后来居上

2011年推出的《Jurassic Park: The Game(侏罗纪公园)》被评论家形容为“低劣”和“令人失望”的一款游戏,而《行尸走肉》则被评为是该工作室目前为止最令人兴奋的项目。《行尸走肉》不是一款典型的冒险游戏——玩家在游戏中四处游荡、解答谜题,它更专注于主人公Lee和年轻女孩Clementine之间的“父女”关系,Lee拯救了这个女孩并在后来的日子里一直保护着她。这种场景给了玩家一种看电影的感觉,使它有别于其他Telltale游戏,该作带有引人入胜的剧本、强大的声音表演,并可以吸引玩家投入大量情感。它迫使玩家作出艰难的道德选择,而不是简单的“对或错”选择:你的团队中有两名成员濒临死亡,但你只能救一个。谁会被你救活,而谁又会被你抛弃?你的选择会改变故事展开的方式。

Telltale内部的多个消息来源指出,核心开发者Jake Rodkin 和Sean Vanaman是推动该作取得成功的主要因素。Vanaman撰写了游戏中的多个剧情章节,Vanaman和Rodkin导演了第一个章节并共同执导了第一季《行尸走肉》的开发。其实Telltale当时面临的财务困境对《行尸走肉》产生了一个积极的影响——《侏罗纪公园》的受欢迎程度很低,这就意味着该工作室几乎没有时间放慢或停止研发,游戏必须尽早推出,这就给了《行尸走肉》的创意团队一个优势:他们可以忽略或绕过管理层给出的一些他们不认同的反馈。一位熟悉该项目的消息人士称,Rodkin和Vanaman的性格都比较强势,强势到可以反对工作室创始人所提出的创造性决策并一次又一次地按照自己想要的方式创造游戏。“因为这款游戏是按照他们自己觉得理想的方式开发的,所以《行尸走肉》才能取得这么大的成功。”

2012年4月Telltale推出了《行尸走肉:第一季》游戏的第一集,当时大众的反应都非常积极,就连参与了游戏制作的一些工作人员也对此感到惊讶。截至2013年1月,该游戏已经售出850万份,销售额累计超过4000万美元。2013年10月,该公司宣布该作销量突破2100万份。

*迅速扩张改变了Telltale的企业文化

紧接着Telltale开始拓展业务,与Gearbox Software游戏公司、HBO电视网以及开发商Mojang签署了合作协议,并从一个小型工作室转型为拥有多个授权IP的中型公司。

然而,Telltale的企业文化因此发生了翻天覆地的变化。前雇员将Telltale的早期阶段描述为一个紧密团结的小团队,具有强烈的友爱意识。后来新雇员慢慢进来了,公司高层在日常事务中的参与要少得多,开发人员们也可以更自由地按照自己的想法去工作。但为了满足Telltale不断增长的雄心并让投资者感到满意,这家公司成为了一家不再受到其长期雇员认可的公司。2008至2015年间曾在Telltale任职程序员和设计师的Andrew Langley说:“我们从一个紧凑、斗志旺盛的团队变成了一个拥有300多人的巨型工作室,整个办公室里充满着陌生的面孔。”

消息人士说,Telltale的企业文化从来没有完全适应从独立工作室转换到大型工作室的过程。员工之间缺乏交流导致了很多混乱,他说:“很少有人在wiki或某个共享频道上记录下任何信息,人员也经常换来换去。有时候你会听到几个星期前的消息,但告诉你的人不会知道这是过期的消息,因为这是他们听到的最新消息。”

此外还有人事调动。尽管打造了该工作室自开创以来最为成功的项目,但Vanaman和Rodkin并没有留下来参与第二季《行尸走肉》的研发;相反,他们选择在取得成功之后高调离开公司。这预示着随着Telltale的不断前进,问题将一次又一次地出现,而这些问题最终也导致团队中最优秀的开发人员接二连三地离开。

*工作量太大导致员工怨声载道

随着Telltale日渐扩大,它同时承担了越来越多的项目。2013年,Telltale推出了多集《我们身边的狼》和《行尸走肉:第二季》;2014年底推出了多集《权力的游戏》和《无主之地传说》并计划将项目延续到2015年,同时还推出了一款《我的世界》游戏;随着2016年进入到2017年,公司还开始制作《蝙蝠侠》、《银河护卫队》,以及《行尸走肉》和《我的世界》的续作。一名员工描述说:“公司给我们每人发了一件T恤,上面印着各个游戏项目的发行日期,不仔细看你会以为那是件碎花T恤。”

为了跟上工作量,Telltale开始分配开发人员进出不同的游戏项目,这些分配方案有时会让他们觉着摸不着头脑。随着现有开发人员的日程越来越紧凑,管理层试图通过招募更多员工来缓解这个紧张的局面,但这一“解决方案”并没有产生多大作用,于是公司对质量的关注开始慢慢转向了数量。

时间管理是一个主要问题。发行日期往往会推迟,因为每次内部审核都会生成大量反馈,但开发团队却没有足够的时间来对游戏进行修改。一位前雇员表示:“公司的运营速度达到了令人惊叹的地步,但这也是该公司的最大问题所在。公司高管常常会临时要求团队在没有适当调整日程的情况下,重写、重新设计或更新游戏内容。每次成功发行游戏以后,高管的要求会急剧增加,到后面真的是连上洗手间的时间都没有了。”

多位Telltale前雇员表示,他们每天工作14到18小时,或者连续几周每天都来上班。但最可怕的是游戏上架前的几个月,在这几个月里这种工作量是持续不断的。因为Telltale的游戏大多都是一集一集发布,所以这种开发周期也都是一个接一个的。一集开发完了就接着开发下一集,重复重复再重复,根本看不到终点。

公司需要实现财政目标而且还得面对大型IP持有者的施压并满足他们的严格要求,有时这些IP持有者还会临时给出额外的要求,许多开发人员都理解这一点;但这种开发速度让许多员工都明显感到精疲力竭。公司高层偶尔也会向员工发来邮件鼓励他们撑过这一段艰难时期,但最终,这些邮件开始让人觉得有些多余:“感觉上个月就收到过这类邮件,上上个月也是,还有上上上个月….实在是太累人了。”

Telltale向员工提供无限制的带薪休假,但是因为大家都很忙,一个人休假就意味着其他人得承担起TA的工作,那么这些承担起别人工作的人就没得休假了。消息人士表示,在Telltale,休假就意味着你愿意把自己负责的这项工作推给团队中的其他成员,尽管公司没有强制员工留在办公室加班,但给人的感觉就一直是这样。

那些连续几个月,每周都必须工作6天的开发人员感觉他们只有两种选择:要么辞职,要么接受。一位前雇员表示:“那些最在乎的人到了后期会变成工作量最大的人;那些为自己参与的项目感到最骄傲的人,往往都忙到要崩溃。但你不想这些人奔溃,因为它们是公司里最有价值的人。”

*薪酬低于行业标准

多位消息人士还谈到了Telltale的低薪文化,称该公司的薪酬低于行业标准。对于由许多刚毕业的年轻成员组成的动画组而言,过度工作和低薪问题尤为普遍。一位消息人士说:“很多人刚从学校出来,他们会想说‘我真的很想证明自己,我要确保公司可以看到我的贡献!’最让我心碎的是看到这些新成员如此活跃、乐观、兴奋,但是因为他们不愿划清界限,说‘这是我的极限’,所以总是被过度使用和滥用。这些人要么努力工作、要么累到生病,要么变得痛苦或愤世厌俗。”

动画部门同时也是公司中负担最为沉重的部门之一,有些时候,上级安排下来的时间表根本就没有给他们足够的时间去处理叙事/故事方面的变化。例如,你可以在几个小时或几天内重写一个场景,但要将其转换成视觉效果则需要花费更多时间。

有些主管会通过提供食物或酒精的方式来为加班员工减轻过度工作所带来的痛苦,让这个过程尽可能舒适。消息人士说:“他们试图在一个存在多年的伤口上贴创可贴。这些主管心里都只想着把眼下的事情做完,没有人从长远的角度看过这个问题,然后想说‘这种运营方式是不可持续的’。”

*资深员工陆续离开

除了Vanaman和Rodkin之外,该公司的资源还因其他高调离职而减少,包括Adam Hines, Chuck Jordan, Dave Grossman和Mike Stemmle。2017年早些时候,资深员工Dennis Lenart, Pierre Shorette, Nick Herman和Adam Sarasohn四人同时离开Telltale加入了育碧。他们都曾参与过工作室的主力游戏项目,而他们的离开也使Telltale的创造性部分出现了空白。一位消息人士表示:“这些人都曾是公司的创意头头,在创造性方面为公司指明道路,他们离开了以后有时我会想,不该走的人都走了,我们还剩下谁?”

还有很大一部分人默默离开了公司。一位消息人士表示:“这些人真的很善良,工作努力但不惹是生非,他们很擅长自己的工作,但都是很低调地在工作。令我难过的是那些真的很有才华、有进取心、但又有些粗暴无礼的人在Telltale取得了成功,而许多更安静、更协作的创造性人才却纷纷离开了。”

*不安的来源:Kevin Bruner

多个消息来源称,工作室中最令人不安的动态来源于一个人:联合创始人Kevin Bruner。在开创Telltale之前,Bruner是一名程序员,包括在LucasArts任职期间也是做这类工作。但他在Telltale任职期间戴了很多顶帽子:先是首席技术官(CTO),后来是公司董事兼首席执行官。根据许多现任和前任雇员的说法,Bruner的行为在《行尸走肉》获得成功后变得更加粗暴和强硬。由于Bruner在编程方面的背景,公司在打造游戏开发工具的时候他提供了很多帮助。随着Telltale人气的激增,一些员工觉得他想要涉足游戏设计领域,而这种向往也使得他不愿让媒体把焦点放在公司的其他员工身上。

一位前雇员说:“那是情况变得非常糟糕的时候,我认为《行尸走肉》的成功给他带来了很多不安全感。”该作的成功大大提升了Rodkin和Vanaman的形象,并为他们赢得了广泛赞誉。这位消息人士说:“我认为这让Bruner感到非常恼火,他觉得他才是应该得到赞誉的人。因为这是他的项目,或者说因为这是他的公司,所以他必须得到所有的风光和夸赞。”

有人说Bruner的行为导致Rodkin和Vanaman在《行尸走肉》第一季大获成功后选择离开。一位了解内幕的消息人士说:“他们厌倦了与Bruner的战斗。”离开公司后,他们开创了自己的独立工作室,而这家工作室正是开发了著名游戏《看火人(Firewatch)》的Campo Santo。此外,Telltale前资深员工Adam Hines离开后也开创了自己的Night School工作室,该工作室开发了饱受赞誉的惊悚青少年冒险游戏《狼奔豕突(Oxenfree)》。

一位消息人士说:“Bruner不太愿意认可别人的创意眼光,他认为这些创意人才最终会离开公司,成为Telltale的竞争对手(因为真的有些人这样做了)。”然而如果他的行为旨在击败未来竞争对手,最终只会把更多人逼出家门。那些留下来继续担任项目负责人的员工常常会感到Bruner的不信任,而且为了让Bruner成为众人瞩目的焦点,这些人往往会被推到一旁。“当时有一段极其黑暗的时期,在这段时期里项目负责人不会得到任何采访。而Bruner会随时化身成为‘研发小组成员’去接受采访,上杂志的人必定是他,也只能是他。”

Bruner本人对这些指控提出质疑。在一封邮件中他表示,没有哪款Telltale游戏是由单人做出来的,每个项目都需要小组成员协同合作。他说:“所有Telltale作品都是团队合作的结晶,而我也都是本着这种想法去接受采访的。游戏开发是一项极其复杂的工作,需要整个团队的人共同努力才能使之成为现实。”

了解Telltale内部运作的前雇员和消息人士都纷纷将Bruner描述为公司的创造性瓶颈,他对开发过程的每一个环节都进行了微管理,从最初想法到最终产品,甚至亲自重写了教程文本。一位前雇员说:“从墙壁颜色到他们雇用谁来编写具体对话,所有环节他都希望我们征求他的意见。”

*Bruner担任首席执行官,在公司内部培养了一种恐惧文化

2015年,Bruner接替Connors成为了Telltale的首席执行官,据前雇员描述,Connors的形象远不像Bruner那么强势。许多员工形容Bruner培养了一种恐惧文化,公司里流传着一个笑话,员工们把Bruner的注意力比作电影《指环王》中的“索伦之眼”。一位前雇员表示:“当索伦之眼看着你的时候,那束光只会把一切搞砸,让你不再相信自己正在制作的东西。很多时候你在Telltale会感觉其实公司不是很想要你呆在那里。”

据六位消息人士透露,Telltale高层举行的“高管审查会议”在公司内部变得声名狼藉,因为Bruner会贬低并质疑那些项目参与者的选择,这些会议通常会变成一场长达数小时的残酷辩论。消息人士说:“当Bruner看到一些他觉得自己不喜欢的东西(通常情况下是他之前要求我们做的东西),对团队来说就会变成一个大麻烦。”

Tulley Rafferty在2008到2017年期间在Telltale做程序员,他也认为这些批评常常是毁灭性的。“毫无预警,一旦项目进入行政审查阶段,他们就会对你大发雷霆。他们的反馈时常是‘我们讨厌你做出来的这个东西’。”

一位前雇员说:“我记得曾经听到我的一个老板说‘我们可以在会议上互相吼叫,相互咒骂,这种感觉真是太棒了!’我觉得这种感觉很糟糕。我不想每天必须对着别人大喊大叫…我想很多人都被这种情况弄得心灰意冷。”

Bruner本人为高管审查辩护,他认为这是游戏制作过程中必不可少的一部分,并对前雇员的描述提出了质疑。他说:“我认为我们的高管不会故意去欺负或贬低自己的员工。游戏制作过程中如果出现了问题,我们必须迅速做出决定,这样才能按时做出尽可能好的内容。”

*某些雇员觉得Telltale是在为Bruner量身定制游戏

但多个消息来源告诉我们,他们常常觉得自己没有办法做出最好的游戏,公司做出来的游戏几乎都是按Bruner的个人喜好设计的。一位消息人士表示:“我们常常觉得自己是在专门为他量身定制游戏,经常需要根据他的口味来调整游戏内容,不仅仅是游戏机制,而是整个游戏基调以及我们选择使用的人物类型。这是他作为首席执行官的最大问题之一:它深信自己的品味就是每个人的品味。”

Bruner反驳了这样一种观点:“品味是很主观的东西,我相信我们做出来的游戏反映了工作室中许多人的不同品味,而不是我一个人的品味。我们的游戏风格非常强大,但也很受限制,并不是每个人都愿意在这些限制下工作。Telltale是有意想要打造出一种易于辨认的基调,这样才能促使他们在同类游戏市场中成为佼佼者。遵循《行尸走肉》的研发模式意味着当人们看到Telltale这个名字时,他们会立马联想到某种类型的玩法和游戏,我对此感到非常自豪。”

尽管他有很多缺点,但有些前雇员说Bruner也确实对工作室产生了一些积极影响,并且有许多人将他描述为一个对编程非常了解的聪明人。除了帮助构建Telltale的主要游戏开发工具之外,他还很擅长在游戏项目中发现玩家失去使命感的时刻。

一位前雇员说:“很多时候,他对某些事情的直觉是正确的,但他向员工表达这些观点的方式却很极端。”另一位消息人士指出,尽管与他合作困难重重,但有一些出色的项目已经走出了Telltale的大门。“他没有关闭那些项目,但是他挑战了那些团队,结果后来这些团队都选择独立出来自己做。说实话,我想如果没有他,这些独立工作室可能不会成立。”

然而在公司内部,沮丧和怨恨在员工中酝酿,许多人觉得公司在创意上停滞不前。一位消息人士说,许多人认为《行尸走肉》之所以很受欢迎是因为它打破了当时的模式,做了一些新的事情;公司里的许多创意人员希望再次做到这一点。但他们表示,公司的领导人不仅厌恶风险,而且坚决反对试验。

尽管开发人员曾试图在游戏中引入新的、更具冒险性的机制,但他们的向往大多会被打碎。一位消息人士表示:“如果展现出来的东西存在不确定性或者没有完全做好,Bruner就会对它说不。他缺乏那种洞察力,没有办法从长远的角度来看待这些东西,或者说没有办法看到这些东西的潜力。”

*公司大体出现创新瓶颈,上级只认一个模板

然而根据六位消息人士的说法,大多数员工面临的问题不是新点子不被取用,而是公司大体上缺乏新点子。《行尸走肉》的成功无论是在艺术方面还是在财务上都为Telltale开辟了新天地。但不幸的是,它也把某些公司高层束缚在一个不可动摇的想法上:“《行尸走肉》的模板是唯一值得追求的模板。”一位前雇员说:“公司的高管从未真正理解是什么让《行尸走肉》的配方发挥了作用。他们获得了一本食谱,后面就只会遵循这本食谱,因为它们并不真正理解为什么这个食谱味道好。”

在《行尸走肉》之后,Telltale的所有游戏都差不多是一个样子的:一个由多个连续性剧集组成的冒险游戏,玩家在游戏中作出艰难的道德选择。这成了Telltale的创意模式,前雇员表示,公司的每款新游戏都在试图重拾《行尸走肉》的火花。

所有消息人士都表示,Telltale是一个充满了才华横溢开发者的工作室,但是许多人对公司的不愿创新感到沮丧或厌倦,在持续的过度工作中精疲力竭,而且Bruner动不动就裁员、一时兴起就会改变目标,还喜欢抢功劳,以上种种原因迫使某些优秀开发者离开了该公司。但是Telltale正在慢慢走出黑暗时期,现在已经开始往好的方向走了。

*Bruner离职,员工压力改善

Bruner对Telltale的统治直到2017年3月才结束,当时有员工看见他背着背包离开了Telltale办公室。他把大部分东西都留在了办公室;不久后公司收到了他发来的一封邮件,宣布他辞去了首席执行官一职,Connors将再次回到首席执行官的职位。尽管Burner的离职传言已经流传甚广,但许多人仍对此感到震惊,某些人对Burner选择默默离开公司的方式感到更为惊讶。

一位消息人士说:“我猜他可能是感觉到了一个信息:多年前我们就该打破Telltale的惯用模式,做一些不同的事情,给人们带来惊喜。网上的各种文章,用户的评论和游戏收到的评分都折射出了这一点。不仅是在Telltale工作的人,每个人都能看到这一点。”

Bruner走后,公司中那种令人窒息的压力得到了改善。临时的项目变化变得越来越少,工作量也开始缓和。工作室里的人们感觉到他们有了更多的创作自由,在自己参与的项目中也更有自主权。

对于许多人而言,这是一个积极的调整。一位消息人士表示:“我们已经学会了如何克制自己不去大胆地想创意,甚至习惯了在展现成果之前,先把作品调整成Bruner会喜欢的样子。他真的在有意无意间训练了我们的思维方式,但我们已经意识到了这一点,现在也有机会去克服这一问题。这只是第一步,我相信未来还会出现更多积极的改变。”

* Zynga前高管接手CEO一职,大举裁员

截至2017年9月,Telltale已经任命了另一位首席执行官:Zynga的前高级副总裁兼游戏总监Pete Hawley。他的任职也带来了一定程度的恐慌。“Zynga是电子游戏世界的优步,一听说他要来,我们的防范心理立马就起来了。”因为Hawley在Zynga任职的时候,该公司也经历了大量的裁员,当他为Telltale的员工举办问答会时,大家首先问的就是‘他是否有可能在Telltale进行裁员’。一位消息人士称,Hawley的回答很公关,并没有缓解他们的担忧。

11月7日,也就是Hawley上任一个多月后,Telltale解雇了25%的员工。上午10点左右,受影响的员工(约90人)收到了电子邮件,要求他们参加强制性会议。参加会议以后,他们发现自己已经没有工作了,然后被转移到另一个单独的会议上讨论福利问题。Rafferty说:“当时的场面就像‘行尸走肉’,人们交换着相互拥抱,有些人哭了、有些人很难过,这是一个很大的打击。”这次裁员影响到了公司各个领域的新员工和长期员工。

但无论如何,这次裁员是尽可能以温和的方式处理的。那些失去工作的人可以领工资领到年底,而且Telltale还安排了一个招聘会,让这些失业人员有机会与招聘人员交谈。没有人的遣散费被剥夺,也没有人被保安‘送’出大楼,而且公司还给这些人留了一些时间来整理他们的东西并与同事们说再见。其他员工当天也都不用再工作了,可以花时间陪陪离开的同事,后来他们聚集在了San Rafael市中心的一家酒吧。

许多人说,他们不会因为裁员而责怪Hawley,而是将其视为一个较为积极的改变。Rafferty说:“如果当初Telltale没有死命添加员工的话,这次裁员实际上是可以避免的…我认为这位新上任的CEO也看出了这一点,所以才会裁员。如果这次裁员能够让公司变得更好,那我也不会太过责怪他。”

至少有两位消息人士表示,对于一家不断推出类似游戏的公司而言,这是不可避免的。一位前雇员表示:“我一直在想,观众是否会对我们推出的游戏数量以及我们所做的游戏感到有点疲劳。我比较惊讶的是,这次裁员等到这么晚才发生。”

另一位消息人士说:“裁员的专业态度,再加上Hawley给了工作人员更多研发自由,标志着该公司已经进入了一个新的、更积极的时代。我们希望可以帮助公司重新定义自己,并找到新的定位。”

*总结

从依赖单一游戏模板,到无法留住精英人才,再到残酷而无休止的种种危机,Telltale犯下的种种错误为整个游戏行业提供了一个警示:在游戏行业,长时间工作、工作不稳定和不专业行为往往是常态。但随着Telltale的发展,现在它有了一个新的计划:数量更少质量更好的游戏;数量更少待遇更好的员工;并加强对创造性创新的支持。一位前雇员总结说:“Telltale能够取得成功并没有什么独家秘诀,才华横溢、充满激情的人才就是Telltale出色的原因。”

尽管留在Telltale的人们仍对失去这么多同事感到悲伤,但许多人说,他们现在对自己和公司的前景感到更为乐观。一位消息人士表示:“我们现在感到比以往任何时候都更自由,拥有更多的空间和机会去做试验。去年的公司和现在的公司相比就好像是黑夜和白天。现在当我走进高管审查会议的时候,我知道我会得到有用的反馈,而不是直接被骂得狗血淋头。”

Telltale将继续研发先前宣布的项目,一位消息人士透露,这些项目并没有受到本次裁员的影响。其中包括最后一季《行尸走肉》,该作计划于2018年夏季上映。

本文由游戏邦编译,转载请注明来源,或咨询微信zhengjintiao

In 2012, on a light-drenched stage amid screams and cheers, Star Trekactress Zoe Saldana announced Spike Video Game Awards’ game of the year: The Walking Dead. The win was a huge coup for its relatively small developer, Telltale Games. Its emotional, storytelling-focused take on the popular zombie franchise beat out hugely popular games like Dishonoredand Mass Effect 3 that required hundreds of developers and cost tens of millions of dollars to make.

The Telltale Games team, including co-founders Kevin Bruner and Dan Connors, and The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman, made their way onstage to accept the award. Kirkman accepted the large, black statue from Saldana with both hands and handed it off to Connors and Bruner. Bruner, in turn, gestured two others onstage: Sean Vanaman and Jake Rodkin, the project leads and co-creators of the game, thanking them for creating the game’s heroes. Neither of them was named onstage for their work in creating the studio’s biggest creative success. Shortly before two women in sparkly outfits ushered everyone offstage, Vanaman abruptly pulled the statue from Bruner’s hand in a moment that appeared unplanned and said, “We work with the most talented people on the planet.”

At the time, Telltale was a studio of under 100 people, small by mainstream studio standards where headcounts can range from hundreds to thousands. And in an industry where storytelling often takes a back seat to “fun” gameplay, the win established Telltale as a successful developer that valued storytelling and character development above all else. Over the next several months, awards for The Walking Deadcontinued to pile up — a pivotal and defining moment for a studio that had been in a challenging financial situation just a year before. The company began hiring at a breakneck speed, tripling its headcount over just a few years. Soon, it would capture the attention of some of Hollywood’s most well-loved franchises, delivering spinoff games
likeBatman, Game of Thrones, and Guardians of the Galaxy that focused on narrative and emotional investment instead of action or bombastic set pieces.

But the studio’s meteoric rise would not last. In November 2017, the company announced that it was laying off 90 developers, roughly a quarter of its staff. For some at Telltale, the news was a shock. For others, the inevitable outcome of what sources familiar with the company describe as years of a culture that promoted constant overwork, toxic management, and creative stagnation. (The Verge spoke to more than a dozen current and former developers at Telltale for this story, many of whom requested anonymity for fear of retribution from current and prospective employers.) Although some of the problems were specific to Telltale and its management, many of the developer’s troubles were emblematic of the unsustainable and erratic development practices that plague the video game industry at large.

These conditions almost always hit one group the hardest: developers, or the people who actually make the games. Layoffs are a pervasive fact of life, even at successful studios where developers are often hired en masse to help hit tight deadlines and then fired to cut costs after the game ships or is canceled. With the next deadline, the cycle begins anew. Overwork, job insecurity, and profound burnout are omnipresent concerns; more than three-quarters of developers report working under “crunch” conditions, which can mean working up to 20 hours a dayand more than 100 hours a week. These practices can have a significant and debilitating cost to employees, one that often feels baked into video game development culture.

The story of Telltale — its rise, decline, and potential reformation — is not just the story of the missteps of one studio. It’s a shocking window into the $36 billion video game industry (which is now so large and lucrative that it rivals the film industry), and how its worst practices can grind down and burn out even the most devoted and valuable employees.
Telltale emerged from the ashes of the adventure game genre, which was once synonymous with PC gaming. In popular titles like King’s Quest, The Secret of Monkey Island, and Myst, creativity, imagination, and puzzle-solving skills were the most important toolset to have. Adventure game developers Sierra and LucasArts were kings in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but by the late ‘90s, their popularity declined in favor of shooters and 3D games. Telltale Games’ founders — Bruner, Connors, and Troy Molander — were all former LucasArts employees, and by the time they created Telltale in 2004 and resurrected once-popular LucasArts properties like Sam & Max and Monkey Island, adventure games were widely considered “dead and buried.”

To make this style of gaming mainstream (and profitable) again, the co-founders decided to focus on improving interactive storytelling and deepen the role-playing that came along with it. In 2007, Telltale raised more than $6 million in venture capital funding, investments that inevitably came with strings — namely a burden to prove growth and success to a board of members outside of the direct studio.

Just like in film, licensed properties offer a safer alternative to pursuing the costly business of building out original IPs. So rather than putting its resources into creating original worlds, Telltale turned to established worlds and the fanbases that love them — franchises like Back to the Future, Jurassic Park, and of course, The Walking Dead.

Coming off the heels of 2011’s Jurassic Park: The Game, which was described by critics as “subpar” and “a disappointment,” The Walking Dead was the studio’s most exciting project yet: a perfect storm of in-house creative talent, mainstream name recognition, and storytelling that took advantage of Telltale’s narrative strengths. Instead of a typical adventure game where players wander around and solve puzzles, The Walking Dead focused on the paternal relationship between the hero, Lee, and a young girl named Clementine, whom he rescues and protects. It had a cinematic feel that set it apart from other Telltale games, with riveting writing, powerful voice acting performances, and high emotional stakes. It pushed players to make tough moral choices with no easy answers: two members of your small band of survivors are on the edge of death. You can only save one. Who gets to live, and who will you abandon? Your choices transform the way the story unfolds.

Internally, multiple sources pointed to a specific locus for the success ofThe Walking Dead: lead developers Jake Rodkin and Sean Vanaman. Vanaman wrote several of the game’s episodic chapters, and Vanaman and Rodkin directed the first chapter and guided the overall first season together. If Telltale’s financial woes had one positive creative impact onThe Walking Dead, it’s that the poor reception for Jurassic Park meant the studio had little time to slow or halt development. The game had to come out, which gave the Walking Dead creative team leverage to ignore or skirt around feedback from upper management that they vehemently disagreed with. Rodkin and Vanaman developed a reputation as personalities strong enough to challenge the founders on creative decisions, and pushed over and over again to create the game the way that they wanted, says a source familiar with the project. “They won, and it ended up being this huge success.”

When Telltale released the first episode of The Walking Dead in April 2012, even some of the people who worked on the game were surprised by how positive the audience reaction was. By January 2013, the game had sold more than 8.5 million copies — or episodes — raking in more than $40 million in sales. In October 2013, the company claimed to have sold more than 21 million different episodes individually across all of its platforms. Telltale started to expand, signing partnerships with Gearbox Software, HBO, and Mojang and transitioning from a small studio to a midlevel company with multiple licensed properties.

The culture of the company changed dramatically as a result. Former employees describe Telltale in its early days as a small, tight-knit group with a strong sense of camaraderie. New hires trickled in slowly. Upper management had been much less involved in the day-to-day, and developers were given more freedom to do their jobs as they saw best. But the success of The Walking Dead spurred the company to expand rapidly: in order to suit both its growing ambitions and keep investors happy, it became a company that many long-standing employees no longer recognized. “We went from a small and scrappy team to kind of a giant studio full of 300-plus people,” says former Telltale programmer and designer Andrew Langley, who worked at the studio from 2008 to 2015. “You walk around the office, and you don’t really recognize anybody anymore.”

Sources say the culture of the studio never properly adapted from its indie mentality to one more appropriate for its larger size. Tribal knowledge persisted over clearly documented processes, and a lack of communication among employees bred confusion. “Very rarely people were writing things down on a wiki or a confluence page or any sort of documentation,” says a former employee. “People were shifting so often that you would hear a version of a story that was actually weeks old, and the person telling you has no idea because that’s the last thing they heard.”

Then, of course, there were the personnel shifts. Despite shepherding the studio’s most successful project to date, Vanaman and Rodkin didn’t stay to continue work on season 2. Their high-profile departure, particularly in the wake of their success, foreshadowed problems that would come to the fore again and again as Telltale moved forward — ones that would lead some of their best voices to leave the studio, time and time again.

As Telltale became more prolific, it took on more and more simultaneous projects. In 2013, it released episodes of The Wolf Among Us and The Walking Dead: Season 2. In late 2014, it launched episodes from its newly procured licenses with Game of Thrones and Borderlands that would stretch into 2015, along with a Minecraft game. As 2016 rolled into 2017, it also took on Batman, Guardians of the Galaxy, and more seasons of The Walking Dead and Minecraft. One employee described a T-shirt that the studio distributed with its episode release dates as so packed that it looked it was promoting a concert tour.

To keep up with the workload, the company started rotating developers in and out of different games during the development process, sometimes in ways that employees say made little sense. As the developer’s schedule grew more aggressive, management sought to remedy tighter turnarounds by adding more people to the department — a “solution” that did little to help the problem. As one former Telltale developer put it: nine women can’t make a baby in one month. “Focus on quality really started to shift to ‘let’s just get as many episodes out as we can,’” the source says.

Time management was a major issue. Release dates would often slip after games underwent multiple, extensive reviews that came with a great deal of feedback, but failed to budget enough time to make the changes. “The pace at which the studio operated was both an amazing feat and its biggest problem,” says a former employee. “Executives would often ask teams to rewrite, redesign, recast, and reanimate up until the very last minute without properly adjusting the schedule. The demands on production only became more intense with each successful release, and at some point, you just don’t have anything left to give.”

“Crunch culture” is well-documented and endemic in the gameindustry, and Telltale was no exception. Some former employees reported working 14- to 18-hour days or coming in every day of the week for weeks on end. But where most developers go into “crunch mode” in the final months of a game leading up to its launch, they described it as constant. Because of the episodic nature of Telltale’s games, the studio’s development cycle was a constantly turning wheel. As soon as one episode wrapped, it was on to the next one, over and over with no end in sight. “Everything [was] always on fire,” one source with direct knowledge of the company says. “You never [got] a break.” This sentiment was echoed over and over to The Verge by four different people across several parts of Telltale.

“EVERYTHING WAS ALWAYS ON FIRE.”

Although many employees were sympathetic to the pressure to hit financial goals and meet the strict requirements and late requests of major IP holders, the rapid pace of development caused many employees to feel significant burnout. Eventually, the emails from higher-ups encouraging the staff to push through a particularly rough patch began to feel redundant. “This just feels like last month. And the month before that,” said the same source, describing the reaction to the emails. “And the month before that… It was exhausting.”

Telltale offers unlimited paid time off, but as is often the case, that places the burden on individuals directly to establish their limit and makes some people less likely to take vacations. At Telltale, sources say taking time off meant a willingness to push that work on to other members of their team and that while the crunch was never billed as a “mandatory” time to be in the office, it often felt that way.

Developers who were given a six-day-a-week schedule that lasted months typically felt they had two choices: quit or suck it up. “What happens is the people who give a fuck the most are the people who pay the price,” says a former employee. “[People who] take a lot of pride in this product are the people who are going to kill themselves. And those are the people you really don’t want killing themselves because they have the most value in the company.”

More than half a dozen sources across the company also talked about a perceived culture of underpayment, citing salaries below industry standards that also required living in the notoriously expensive Bay Area. Issues of crunch and underpayment were particularly pervasive for the cinematics team, which was staffed by many junior members who had come straight from college.

“You’d get a lot of people coming right out of school, going, ‘Oh I really want to prove myself, and I really want to make sure that they see that I’m contributing,’” says a source familiar with the company. “The thing that broke my heart the most was seeing new team members that were just so gung-ho and optimistic and excited to be at Telltale get overused and abused because they did not feel comfortable drawing the line in the sand to say, ‘This is my limit.’ They either worked themselves out and would get sick or would become bitter.”

The cinematics department was also where the burden of visually building Telltale’s fictional worlds fell most heavily, especially when production schedules did not account for the time they needed to address narrative changes. A scene could be rewritten in a few hours or days, for example, but translating that into visuals is a much more time-consuming process. One person with direct knowledge of Telltale’s inner workings described it as building train tracks while the train is already speeding along them.

Some managers would try to alleviate the pain of crunch by supplying overtime workers with food or alcohol, “token gestures” sources say were an effort to make the process as comfortable as possible. “They were putting a Band-Aid on a wound that had been there for years,” the source says. “They were just trying to get their job done right now, but nobody was looking long-term and being like, ‘This is unsustainable.’”

In addition to Vanaman and Rodkin, who are often cited as two of the biggest creative losses for the studio, the resources at the company were diminished by other high-profile departures, including Adam Hines, Chuck Jordan, Dave Grossman, and Mike Stemmle. Earlier in 2017, veteran employees Dennis Lenart, Pierre Shorette, Nick Herman, and Adam Sarasohn left the studio simultaneously and moved to Ubisoft. Between the four of them, they’d worked on some of the studio’s most successful games. Their absences left a vacuum of creative leadership. “These people who have been the stewards of the creative torch at Telltale, when they leave, it’s like, who the fuck do we have left?” one source says.

Many more also quietly exited the studio. “They were really kind, hardworking people that didn’t make waves, but they were really good at their job and kept their heads down and worked,” says a source with direct knowledge of the company. “Every time one of them left, my heart [broke] a little bit. It was sad for me to see that the really talented, aggressive, abrasive people were very successful at Telltale, whereas a lot of the quieter, collaborative creative people were leaving.”

Multiple sources say the some of the studio’s most troubling dynamics originated from one person: co-founder Kevin Bruner.

Bruner worked primarily as a programmer prior to Telltale, including during his stint at LucasArts. But he wore many hats during his time at Telltale: first as the company’s CTO and later as a director and CEO. According to numerous current and former employees, Bruner’s behavior became significantly more abrasive and inflexible after the success ofThe Walking Dead. Thanks to his background in programming, he had been a strong force in creating game development tools for Telltale. As the studio’s popularity exploded, some employees felt he wanted to step into the role of a design auteur, which sources say made him resistant to give the spotlight to other employees at the company.

“That’s when things got really bad,” says a former employee. “I think a lot of the insecurity came from The Walking Dead.” The game’s success had significantly raised the profiles of Rodkin and Vanaman and earned them widespread praise. “I think that that really irked [Bruner] a lot,” says the source. “He felt that… he deserved that. It was his project, or it was his company. He should have gotten all that love.”

Some say Bruner’s behavior led Rodkin and Vanaman to ultimately leave after the wildly successful first season of The Walking Dead. “They were tired of fighting with [Bruner],” says a source with direct knowledge. They jumped into indie development and founded their own studio called Campo Santo, where they released the award-winning game Firewatch. One source points to Campo Santo’s success, along with Night School Studios and its supernatural thriller Oxenfree — co-created by former Telltale veteran Adam Hines — as a catalyst for Bruner’s tightening grip.

“He was hesitant to give anyone much credit for having significant creative vision,” one source says. “He thought they would leave and become a competitor because he had a couple of strong examples of people doing exactly that.” If Bruner’s behavior was aimed at quashing future competitors, however, it only wound up driving more people out the door. Those who stayed as project leads often felt that they were no longer trusted to do their jobs, and were shuffled to the side in favor of giving Bruner the limelight. “There was a dark period of time where if you were in charge of a project, you are not getting any interviews,” one source says. “He’s going to be the one on the panel. He’s going to be the one doing the interviews. He’s going to be the one in the magazine.”

Bruner disputes this characterization. In an email to The Verge, he says he wanted to ensure that no series had the appearance of being the brainchild of a single contributor or small set of contributors, because of each project was so collaborative. “All Telltale productions were truly team efforts and I thought it was important that they be presented that way,” he says.

“Developing any game is an enormously complicated endeavor with many people working together to make it happen. This is particularly true when you make a five-episode series, with five sets of leads (writing, design, art, chore, etc.).”

Former employees and sources with direct knowledge of Telltale’s inner workings consistently describe Bruner as a creative bottleneck who micromanaged every part of the development process, from pitch to final product — even going so far as to personally rewrite tutorial text. “He wanted to be consulted on everything from the color of the walls to who they’ve hired to write specific dialogue,” a former employee says

“HOW MANY MORE TIMES CAN YOU SHOOT A KID AGAIN AND MAKE IT FEEL LIKE A REALLY INTENSE, CRAZY GAME MOMENT?”

Bruner took over as CEO of Telltale in 2015 from Connors, who former employees described as a far less imposing figure. Numerous employees describe Bruner as cultivating a culture of fear, and a running joke at the company compared Bruner’s attention to the Eye of Sauron, the fiery gaze of the villain in The Lord of the Rings. “Inevitably, the Eye of Sauron looks at you, and that beam of light just blows everything up and makes it a hellscape where you don’t believe in a thing you’re building anymore,” says a former employee. “A lot of times at Telltale, you don’t feel like you’re wanted there.”

Executive review meetings with higher-ups like Bruner became infamous within the company as brutal, hours-long arguments where Bruner would belittle and question the choices of those involved with the studio’s projects, according to half a dozen sources. “When [Bruner] saw something he decided he didn’t like — which very often was exactly what he had asked for — [that] was really undeserved, and often really difficult for teams to deal with,” the source says.

Tulley Rafferty, a former Telltale programmer who worked at the company from 2008 until the November layoffs, agrees that the critiques were often devastating. “There was no warning. You go into the executive review, and they take a giant turd on you. That was your feedback: ‘We hate this thing that you made.’”

“I remember hearing one of my bosses say, ‘I love that we can just shout at each other and curse at each other in a meeting. It’s totally great,’” says one former employee. “I [didn’t] feel that way at all. It sucks. I don’t want to work every day where I have to yell at people and scream to have my voice heard… I think a lot of people burned out that way.”

Bruner defended the executive reviews as a necessary part of the studio’s process and disputed the way former employees characterize them. “I don’t think anyone was intentionally bullied or belittled. The episodic nature of the games meant decisions had to get made quickly so we could produce the best possible content.”

But multiple sources told The Verge that they often felt like they weren’t making the best games possible, but rather the ones that Bruner personally preferred. “It often felt like we were building games specifically for him,” says one source with direct knowledge of the process. “We were tailoring the type of content we were building — not just gameplay mechanics, but tone, the types of characters we chose to use — to his taste. This was one of the biggest issues with him as a CEO: he was pretty convinced that his taste was everyone’s taste.”

Bruner pushes back against the idea that Telltale’s games only reflected his whims. “Taste is a tricky thing, and I’m confident the games reflected a lot of different tastes at the studio,” he says. “Our style of gameplay was really powerful but also constraining, and not everyone was comfortable working within those constraints.” Bruner said the studio’s decision to develop an easily identifiable tone was intentional, a way for them to become “world-class” in interactive storytelling. Adhering to the model pioneered by The Walking Dead meant there was “a certain type of game and gameplay that people could expect when they saw ‘The Telltale Series’ moniker,” Bruner says. “I’m very proud of that.”

For all his faults, former employees say Bruner did have some positive impacts on the studio and often described him as an intelligent guy with a great understanding of programming. In addition to building Telltale’s primary game development tool, he had a knack for spotting moments in game projects where players lost a sense of agency. One of the most recognizable mechanics in Telltale games, where players are told that a character “will remember that,” was his idea.

“A lot of times, his gut instinct for some things was correct,” says a former employee. “But the way that he expressed that to his employees was extremely toxic.” Another pointed out that despite the difficulty in working with him, some excellent projects have made it out of Telltale’s gates. “He didn’t shut those down. He challenged those teams, and I think you can look back at some of the output of the studio and you can say, well, he made that happen.”

Internally, however, frustration and resentment brewed among employees who felt the company had stagnated creatively. “How many more times can you shoot a kid again and make it feel like a really intense, crazy game moment that’s heartbreaking and harrowing?” says a source with direct knowledge of Telltale’s process. Many believed The Walking Deadwas a hit because it broke the model at the time and did something new; creatives within the studio wanted to do that again. But they say the company’s leaders were not just risk-averse, but adamantly opposed to experimentation.

Although developers tried to introduce new, more adventurous mechanics into games, including reinventing how quick-time events would work, their work never came to light. Despite the inherently unfinished nature of the sort of prototype they presented, developers felt that they still needed to present something “shippable” in order to get their ideas approved. “If it at all looked janky or not fixed or not done, [Bruner] would say no to it,” says one source with direct knowledge of the process. “He just lacked that insight, to see beyond what was there and go ok, I see where this was going.”

When asked why employees might feel they weren’t trusted to do their jobs, he says it was because he asked them “to entertain ideas that were generated from outside their discipline or from someone more junior to them. I think it’s important to be open to new ideas and that great ideas come from everywhere.”

According to about half a dozen sources familiar with Telltale, however, the problem for most employees wasn’t new ideas, but the lack of them.The Walking Dead had broken new ground for Telltale, both artistically and financially. Unfortunately, it also chained those running the company to an immovable idea: that the template of The Walking Dead was the only one worth pursuing.
As the company continued to expand, former employees say, its growth came at the expense of the creativity and originality that inspired their success in the first place. “They just wanted to put butts in seats,” one former employee says. “The folks at the very top never really understood what made Walking Dead work. They were given a recipe book, and they just followed the recipe because they don’t really understand why the recipe tastes good.”

After The Walking Dead, to describe one Telltale game was to describe all of them: an episodic adventure game that unfolded across sequentially released episodes, where players make difficult choices with emotional consequences. This became the creative mold at Telltale, where former employees say every new game was — to some degree — trying to recapture the spark of The Walking Dead. “Every game was held up to that standard, regardless of how realistic that was,” one source says.

Every source The Verge spoke to hailed Telltale as a studio full of some of the most talented, creative developers they’ve had the chance to work for. Many left — or say others left — because of their frustration or boredom with the company’s unwillingness to innovate, exhaustion at the constant crunch cycle, and Bruner’s tendency to cut people down, change objectives on a whim, proclivity to hog credit, or make them feel as though the company had no faith in them. But change has been coming to Telltale, however slowly and, in some cases, painfully.

Bruner’s time at Telltale came to a close in March 2017, when employees spotted him leaving the Telltale offices with his backpack. He’d left most of his things in his office; shortly after, the company got an email from him announcing that he had stepped down as CEO, and Connors would once again resume the position. Though rumors of Bruner’s departure had circulated widely, many were shocked when it came to pass. Others were more surprised by the quiet way Bruner had chosen to leave.

”My guess is that he saw writing on the wall,” says a source with direct knowledge of the company. “We needed to break out of the Telltale formula, do something different, surprise and delight people, multiple years ago. It’s reflected in [online] comments in articles about us. It’s reflected in our review scores. It’s reflected in our sales. It’s reflected in our game scores. Everyone [could] see that, not just people who work for Telltale.”

Asked about his departure, Bruner says that the time had come to explore other endeavors. “Telltale’s board of directors has been pursuing a path that I know will be better served by someone else,” Bruner says. “Of course, I personally spoke with the senior staff, producers, directors, and some longtime employees before I announced my departure more broadly to the entire staff.”
With Bruner gone, some of the stifling pressure improved. Last-minute changes became rarer, crunch began to ease up. People within the studio began to feel as though they had more creative freedom, as well as ownership and power over the projects they worked on.

For many, it was a welcome adjustment. “I didn’t realize how much we had learned to hold ourselves back from thinking big,” a source says. “How much we learned to tailor even initial pitches to what we knew would fly and what we knew wouldn’t with him … We’d really been trained to think small, and realizing that and beginning to get over that was a freeing experience.” And more changes were still to come.

“I DIDN’T REALIZE HOW MUCH WE HAD LEARNED TO HOLD OURSELVES BACK FROM THINKING BIG.”

By September 2017, Telltale had named a new CEO: former SVP and GM of games at Zynga, Pete Hawley. His hiring came with its fair share of trepidation. “Zynga’s kind of the Uber of the video game world,” Rafferty says. “Immediately, our guards [were] up.” Zynga had also undergone massive layoffs during Hawley’s time there, and when he held a Q&A session for Telltale employees, one of the first questions was whether layoffs were on the table for Telltale as well. Hawley’s response, which one source describes as a “PR answer,” did little to assuage their fears.

On November 7th, little more than a month after Hawley’s start, Telltale laid off 25 percent of its staff. Around 10AM, the affected employees — roughly 90 people — received emails asking them to attend a mandatory meeting. When they showed up, they learned that they no longer had jobs, before being shuffled off to a separate meeting to discuss benefits. “To use a cliche, it was like The Walking Dead,” says Rafferty. “People shuffling around hugging. There were tears. It was a blow.” The cuts affected both new and longtime employees in every area of the company.
By all accounts, the layoffs were handled as professionally and gently as possible. Those who had lost their jobs were paid out until the end of the year, and Telltale planned a job fair for them to meet and speak with recruiters. People were not denied severance or escorted from the building by security, but given time to gather their things and say goodbye. The remaining staff was given the rest of the day off so that they could spend time with their departing co-workers; they gathered at a pub in downtown San Rafael.

Many say they don’t fault Hawley for the cuts, but see them as the result of years of questionable business decisions. “Where Telltale was [as a company] right then, absolutely inevitable,” says Rafferty. “It was certainly preventable by not scaling up as aggressively as they did … I think this new guy came in and saw that, and was like we’ve gotta do something about it. I don’t totally blame him for doing what needs to be done to make the studio work.”

At least two sources said it was an inevitable move for a company that continued to pump out the same sort of games over and over. “I kept kind of wondering if the audience was going to become a little fatigued with the amount of games we were putting out, and the kind of games we were making,” says a former employee. “I guess my surprise was that maybe it didn’t happen sooner.”

Another source says that the professional manner of the layoffs coupled with Hawley’s more hands-off approach to development were signs that the company has entered into a new and more positive era. “We want to help the company redefine itself and find what its new niche is because it’s certainly not in making games that are cookie cutter what we’ve done before,” the source says.

Telltale’s mistakes — from its reliance on one monolithic vision to its inability to retain its top talent to its brutal and unending crunch — offer a cautionary tale for the wider games industry, where long hours, job insecurity, and unprofessional behavior are too often the norm. Now, as Telltale moves forward, it does so with a new plan in place: fewer, but hopefully better, games; fewer, but hopefully well-treated employees; and more support for creative innovation. “There is no Telltale secret sauce,” says a former employee. “Talented passionate individuals are why the good Telltale games are good.”

Although people within Telltale are still saddened by the loss of so many of their colleagues, many said they now feel more optimistic about the developer’s future than they have in a long time. “We’re certainly at a place where we have more freedom to experiment than we ever had in the past,” says one source. “Between last year and now the difference in the company is like night and day. I now walk into an executive review meeting knowing I’ll get usable feedback instead of wondering who will be in charge of the project tomorrow.”

The company will continue with its previously announced projects, including new seasons of established properties like Game of Thronesand The Wolf Among Us. One source tells The Verge that those production plans were not impacted by the layoffs.

Among those projects is The Walking Dead: The Final Season, slated for summer 2018. Six years after the first episode’s release, the fourth season of the game that helped define the best and worst of the studio will mark the end of an era — and perhaps the beginning of a new one. Telltale repeatedly declined any interviews for this article, with a representative noting in an email, “We want to be able to show our fans what the future of Telltale looks like rather than simply tell them, and we’re just not ready to do that yet.” (Source: theverge.com


上一篇:

下一篇: